𝗪𝗛𝗘𝗡 𝗔𝗠𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗔 𝗠𝗔𝗞𝗘𝗦 𝗔𝗡 𝗘𝗫𝗘𝗖𝗨𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗔 𝗦𝗣𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗔𝗧𝗢𝗥 𝗦𝗣𝗢𝗥𝗧

WHEN AMERICA MAKES AN EXECUTION A SPECTATOR SPORT — HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING?

“Bought and Paid” — conceptual editorial artwork accompanying Grace Notes commentary; not a documentary photograph of an execution.

It is with such gutted appall that my thoughts take me back to the grotesque displays of lynching in America, where all-white gatherings of men, women, and children assembled to witness the brutal destruction of a human life. Some came as spectators, others as willing participants, and even photographs of these atrocities became souvenirs of the occasion. Today, we would prefer to believe that many of their descendants would be horrified, even ashamed, to be associated with such practices.

Yet I am inclined to believe that a nation whose history includes the slaughter, displacement, and dispossession of Native and Indigenous peoples, so that others could claim their lands as their own, ought to have learned something about the depravity of violence exercised under the authority of power. And let us remember, those who came from European soil were themselves immigrants. Among them were adventurers, settlers, opportunists, and men whose conduct would hardly have earned them a welcome in the lands they left behind. Yet they arrived on lands already inhabited, declared possession, and perpetrated generations of violence against the people who were there before them.

And here we are, centuries later, with descendants of those original European immigrants occupying the highest offices of American government, presenting as a demonstration of justice the proposed public execution of a convicted criminal, a man whose heinous acts we do not dispute, but who, happenstance, is also a Muslim bearing the name Hasan.

And I cannot help asking whether his religion, his name, and the political appetite for a public demonstration of punishment have become part of the calculation. Because the message being presented is not simply that a convicted murderer will face the sentence imposed by law. It is that the American public should be given the opportunity to watch him die.

What part of our history have we learned from, and what part are we now prepared to reenact with the sophistication of modern technology?

And while this announcement was breaking across the news, what was America being shown? Mike Tyson, a man whose claim to fame was the voracious force of his strength in a boxing ring, witnessed by worldwide audiences, from which he accumulated extraordinary wealth. And I will not dismiss the many who may have been inspired by his achievements to pursue sport rather than the destructive alternatives available on the streets and in the inner-city ghettos of America.

Yet there he was, appearing alongside the President, and to my eyes, almost as though in a stupor, another extraordinary image of celebrity standing beside political power. I cannot know what Tyson was thinking, nor would I presume to speak for him. But the imagery struck me with a force I cannot dismiss.

BOUGHT AND SOLD.

And perhaps that is what troubles me most about the juxtaposition. A celebrated Black American athlete, whose own life and career emerged from a society still wrestling with the consequences of its racial history, standing beside the President while the nation confronts an announcement that its government intends to make the killing of a condemned man available for public viewing.

I am not equating a lawful criminal sentence with a lynching. I am confronting the disturbing historical resemblance in the deliberate invitation to gather and witness the taking of a human life. The rope may have given way to a military firing squad, the crowds beneath the trees to audiences behind electronic screens, and the photographs once circulated as souvenirs to digital images travelling across the world in seconds.

But what has changed in the human appetite for public violence?

If the purpose of this proposed livestream is to demonstrate the power of American justice, then I ask whether America has become so removed from its own history that it can no longer recognize the grotesque contradiction.

We do not need to witness the death of Nidal Hasan to acknowledge the lives he took, the suffering he caused, or the gravity of his conviction.

And we certainly do not need another generation of Americans being taught that watching a human being killed is an acceptable form of public instruction.

— Grace Notes.

Endnotes & References

1. Equal Justice Initiative, Public Spectacle Lynchings — Historical context.

2. Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America — Research and historical documentation.

3. Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Grabbing Land — Indigenous dispossession and settlement.

4. Associated Press, reporting on the proposed military execution livestream — News report.

5. United Press International, photographs of the Trump–Tyson White House appearance — Photo coverage.

Author's note: This essay is personal commentary. Questions concerning motive, religion, and the symbolism of the Tyson appearance are interpretations, not established findings. The montage is editorial artwork.