I believe capital punishment is wrong, I think it is a way of feeling victorious over someone, even though there is nothing you can do to undo whatever crime they may have committed, it would be ludicrous to release a murderer back into society where he or she could commit a similar crime, but it is just as ludicrous to think that killing them solves anything, all it does is reduce us as a society to their level, if unnecessary killing is wrong, then it is wrong, there is no excuse, and voting for those who would support it is just as bad as pulling the trigger yourself, just because that murder takes place off stage and out of sight and out of mind doesn’t mean that we all as members of this society are not implicated in it - Who knows why we act. From moment to moment there are a myriad of factors in every decision, every mood, impulse, desire, thought. What can predict which of these will manifest in action? There are many reasons not to judge others. Though the universe seems not to work on some sense of justice revisiting the sins of individuals back on themselves via karma, yet humans establish systems that purport to do just that. But in that revisitation, if that system, comfortable in its anonymity, commits the same act it has condemned, what justice then? If one could trace back the shock of realization, out from the heart of the criminal, through the neural network that once carried his murderous intent, out into the points of contact where society makes its mark upon him, cold metal without remorse, back down through the wires of power, both electric and dominating, created of vengeful hatred codified, back through a switch whose physicality hides its deeper meaning, back through the halls of justice, or at least of legality, through the words thrown against the stoic certainty of the law, black unalterable words on a page which give weight and action to the decision of so-called peers – which way would the path lead then? Would it lead to an impassioned moment, an impoverished sense of the future, robbed of possibility till it has siphoned off hope in exchange for despair, a lasting significance leant to the final in a long series of little mistakes, abandonments, soft suicides, witnesses of horror and futility, portions of paychecks spent on little escapes, choices which aren’t choices, society’s ultimatums, manifest destinies of the downtrodden, and all for the crime of a contingent birth, for did he not choose to grow up in a ghetto? Or does it instead lead to a finger on a button, or a checkmark in a box, next to a name that meant nothing but for the party with which it is affiliated, the promises of a speech heard only in soundbites, the inertia of incumbency, or some other random contingent chance that allowed misguided feelings of revenge to attempt to extract an abstract concept, justice, created by human nature for its own sense of completion or fulfillment, to make nature into a system with morality, and then to fail, as humans do, to apply its own concepts to itself, buffered from the ignorance of its failure by concrete walls, iron bars, armed guards, black robes, golden shields of moral certitude? When the path is so uncertain, the charge it carries so lethal, though some actions must be punished, dare we gamble with such thing so precious as life and then hide behind a system to avoid confronting the inevitable mistakes? When even one occurs, where does the blame lie? How far back does it go? All the way to a button or a checkmark ticked on a cold day in a booth in November?