Oh, Hell no.
No, no, no, no fucking way.
Hegseth you sick bastard, you must be shitting me.
He isn’t, though.
No, he isn’t joking, and no, it’s not an internet hoax. Pete Hegseth, the shit-for-brains former Fox News weekend couch potato, the moron who found himself, by a twist of fate so improbable that it pretty much seals my argument that we’ve been shifted to the wrong timeline, installed as the fucking Secretary of Defence** – I say again, the FUCKING SECRETARY OF DEFENCE – has had himself a Great Big Idea. In the course of an interview with right wing agent provocateur Jack Pasobiec, our Pete, the jumped-up frat boy and low-IQ booze hound who is currently in the midst of losing a war, announced that the pending execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan will be live-streamed, so every patriotic American can watch it go down.
You could be forgiven for thinking I’m just making shit up here, so here’s the clip, filmed aboard the poor battered USS Abraham Lincoln, where Pete gave one of his typically rousing speeches to the crew:
And in case you think that the hard-drinking Hegseth is just talking out his ass and needn’t be taken seriously, the Pentagon, just hours after Testosterone Tommy went public with his Great Big Idea, released an official statement confirming that yup, we’re going to fill this guy full of hot lead live on the internet, and by golly you should all tune in to watch. Gather ‘round with the wife and kids. Munch some buttery popcorn. It’ll be a blast.
If you’re like me, then time and again you’re realizing that the depths to which the Trump Regime is willing to descend outstrips your imagination.
Now, let’s be clear, it’s not as if Hasan is much of a sympathetic figure. He’s guilty of an especially heinous crime: in 2009, when serving as an active duty Major in the US Army, he marched into the massive Fort Hood, armed with at least a couple of guns, a .357 Magnum, as well as the same model of “cop killer” semiautomatic pistol favoured by the Mexican cartels, and shot 13 of his fellow soldiers dead, ten men and three women. Thirty-two others were wounded***.
He had his reasons, of course. As an Army Medical Corps psychiatrist, he’d dealt with what was probably an endless stream of PTSD-afflicted veterans returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, and had grown to view those wars as profoundly immoral. He was disturbed by what he’d been told about the deeds and bahaviour of US forces in prosecuting the war. As a Muslim, he dreaded his own pending deployment to the Afghan Theatre, and believed he shouldn’t contribute any longer to the war machine that was killing so many of his faith. He thought he should qualify as a conscientious objector. Conflicted, tormented, and deeply angry, he lashed out those he now saw as his tormentors.
Reasons, then, but no excuse, and nothing the law would generally view as mitigation. Nobody’s pretending that Hasan has any particular claim to clemency. His crime was hideous, pre-meditated, and shocking, and, I have to concede, if it was ever a good idea for the state to be putting someone to death in cold blood owing to the severity of the crime involved, you’d be hard pressed to argue this guy doesn’t meet the criteria. As it happens, I’ve believed since adolescence that actually, no, it isn’t ever a good idea for the state to be killing criminals, as I articulated in this space a few years back, in a post which nobody read then, and I’m sure nobody will read now, but what the hell, here it is anyway:
…yet when it comes to such extreme cases, I can understand why some people think the death penalty should still be available, even if I disagree.
But sweet Jesus, no matter what you think about capital punishment, live-streaming a goddam execution? What the fuck?? What country are we talking about here? Iran? Saudi Arabia? North Korea? And which organization is in charge of this horror show? The Taliban? Isis? Al Qaeda? And what platform is going to stream this government-sponsored snuff film? What, they’re going to show it on YouTube? Facebook? Maybe Truth Social?
Actually, come to think of it, I bet that insufferable tech-bro oligarchs like Zuckerberg and Musk would be only too happy to do Donald yet another solid. Sure they would. They’d probably compete for the rights. Just like millions upon millions of bloodthirsty MAGA viewers would probably be eager to sit there glued to their phones and tablets to watch.
The Bulwark’s J.V. Last asserts, and I completely agree, that this abomination would never have been contemplated if Hasan, instead of being a brown-skinned Muslim, was a white nationalist extremist of the Timothy McVeigh variety, who’d shot up Fort Hood because, say, the Army, by recruiting trannies, gays, and goddam women, had joined the despicable cult of DEI. In fact, if any such malicious maniac had been sentenced to die, Trump would almost certainly have commuted his sentence by now. Hell, Donald might even have given him a full pardon. Anybody who doubts this is living in a fantasy world.
Look, I don’t believe this is actually going to happen. C’mon. A public execution? Not possible. Nope. Can’t be. Somebody will kill this vile idea. Still. Just to suggest such a thing. My God, to carry on as if it’d be not just proper and righteous, but downright entertaining, to broadcast the violent, gory, judicial murder of a criminal, leaves me at an uncharacteristic loss for words. When I first heard about it, I was flabbergasted, and I can’t seem to articulate how appalled I’ve been ever since. None of the usual invective seems powerful enough. I’ve grown well accustomed by now, as I’m sure you have too, dear reader, to the lawlessness, corruption, bigotry, and cruelty of Trump and his band of incompetent reprobates, even, sad to say, to the point of becoming inured to the viciousness of masked ICE operatives, and the hideous policies that involve breaking up families and deporting innocuous immigrants to third party countries to which they have no connection. Yet still, this beggars belief. This time I’m genuinely taken aback. These thugs are so keen to offer up disgusting spectacle to simultaneously cow and titillate an increasingly numbed and apathetic public that I can’t really wrap my arms around it. It’s depraved. It’s frighteningly decadent in a last-days-of-Rome sort of way. It is, in fact, evil, and the saddest aspect of this whole nauseating affair is that probably, most Americans won’t even give a crap. Execute a guy live on the internet? Meh. Whatever. Do something that raises the price of gas? OMG. Unacceptable! That’s it! Time for the torches and pitchforks!
You know what’s both sad and risable? They still think they’re special. They still believe they’re the greatest nation that ever existed, or ever will. They’ll tell you as much at every opportunity, sitting there 40 trillion in debt, losing wars of choice, their alliances shattered, their hard power dissipated, their soft power obliterated, their government committing mortal sins on their behalf, and keep on saying so even if it this latest atrocity actually happens, and they’re sitting there in their BarcaLoungers, big, fat, dumb, and happy, eating pork rinds while watching a helpless guy strapped to a chair and ripped to shreds by a firing squad.
Boy, that’s some shining city on a hill you got there, buddy.
**And no, I will not call him the Secretary of War. The Department of Defence, created by statute, isn’t named the Department of War just because those assholes say it is. Nobody changed its name. I wish the media would refuse to go along with it.
***Some find it strange that a gunman could go on a killing spree on a massive Army base, and kill soldiers into the double digits instead of dying immediately in a fusillade of return fire. It’s because the Army isn’t crazy enough to let thousands of personnel wander around armed when they’re not deployed. The Military Police were the only ones equipped to respond.
