I have been watching the news regarding the upcoming live streamed public execution of Nidal Hasan with a little bit of shock. I don't really understand the purpose or need for this but it does seem to coincide with the long term retrograde motion apparent in our society. He faces the firing squad on December third. I'm not going to watch, he deserves everything he gets but I think I have something else to do that day.
Not my cup of tea.
Of course if they botch it up, like happened with the woman from Tennessee it could turn into a ratings disaster.
I say let her go, third time is not the charm, she deserves a pass. But nobody is asking me.
I assume that kids will be watching too but is it really any worse than a five year old watching ICE shoot his dad in the neck?
Public executions are sort of passe´ globally right now. Amnesty International recorded at least 17 in 2025, including 11 in Iran and six in Taliban-run Afghanistan.
I was thinking of a corollary to this upcoming event.
The last legally sanctioned public execution took place in our country in 1936. The man's name was Rainey Bethea.
At least the Kentuckian found the lord first, no word yet on Hasan's religious inclinations.
Rainey Bethea's last meal consisted of fried chicken, pork chops, mashed potatoes, pickled cucumbers, cornbread, lemon pie, and ice cream, which he ate at 4:00 p.m. on August 13 in Louisville. At about 1:00 a.m., Daviess County deputy sheriffs transported Bethea from Louisville to Owensboro. At the Daviess County Jail, professional hangman Phil Hanna of Epworth, Illinois, visited Bethea and instructed him to stand on the X that would be marked on the trapdoor.
Bethea left the Daviess County Jail at 5:21 a.m. and walked with two deputies to the scaffold. Within two minutes, he was at the base of the scaffold. Removing his shoes, he put on a new pair of socks. He ascended the steps and stood on the large X as instructed. After Bethea made his final confession to Fr Herman J. Lammers of the Cathedral of the Assumption in Louisville, who had also supervised Bethea's conversion to Catholicism during Bethea's incarceration at the Jefferson County Jail two weeks prior to the execution, officers placed a black hood over his head and fastened three large straps around his ankles, thighs, arms, and chest.
Hanna placed the noose around Bethea's neck, adjusted it, and then signaled to Hash to pull the trigger. Instead, Hash, who was drunk, did nothing. Hanna shouted at Hash, "Do it!" A deputy then leaned onto the trigger, which sprang the trap door. Bethea fell 8 feet (2.4 m), and his neck was instantly broken. Afterward, two doctors confirmed he was dead. He wanted his body to be sent to his sister in South Carolina so that she could arrange for him to be interred next to his father, but against these wishes, he was buried in a pauper's grave at Owensboro Cemetery (also known as City Cemetery and "Potter's Field") in Owensboro.
It was estimated that a crowd of about 20,000 people gathered to watch the execution. One man, 36-year-old Leonard A. Peters, was killed in a car accident while driving to Owensboro to witness the hanging. Three others, including his wife, were injured. Afterwards, Hanna complained that Hash should not have been allowed to perform the execution in his drunken condition. Hanna further said it was the worst display he experienced in the 70 hangings he had supervised.
Hasan’s execution would be the first carried out by firing squad by the U.S. military since the 1945 execution of Eddie Slovik, who was convicted of desertion during World War II.
I have written before of Canton's Trade days, the first flea market in America.
When I was doing the show in Santa Barbara last month, my buddy Ted, who is a dealer and a promoter who has been in the business for a long time, was regaling me with stories of one of the most unusual flea markets in America, the First Monday Trade Days in Canton, Texas. This flea market started way back in the 1850's and was evidently originally known as "hoss monday".
The way he told the story is that the old circuit judge only rode through Canton one day a month. He would first adjudicate and then hang any miscreants on Monday.
The townspeople came from miles around to watch the proceedings and catch a few hangings and then the town fathers would raffle off the departed soul's horse and possessions.
In any case, this reminds me a lot of the late Saddam Hussein. He would hold executions and the occasional chopping off of hands in soccer stadiums and require the public to watch.
Still happens all the time in Iran. Not like we are morally superior or anything.
Back in Roman times Caligula did something similar,
Barrett describes some of the supposed equestrian offences punished by Caligula as "decidedly trivial", and their punishments as sensationalist. Dio claims that Caligula had more than 26 equestrians executed in a circus "fracas"; in Suetonius' biography "more than 20" lives were lost in what is almost certainly the same event, described as a violent but accidental crush.Some sources claim that Caligula forced equestrians and senators to fight in the arena as gladiators. Condemnation to the gladiator arena as a combatant was a standard punishment, doubling as public entertainment, for non-citizens found guilty of certain offences. Laws of AD 19 by Augustus and Tiberius banned voluntary participation of the elite in any public spectacles, but the ban was never particularly effective, and was broadly ignored in Caligula's reign. During Caligula's illness two citizens, an equestrian named Atanius Secundus and a plebeian named Publius Afranius Potitus, offered to fight as a gladiator and take their own life if only the gods would spare the emperor's life. The offers were insincere, intended to flatter and invite reward. When Caligula recovered, he insisted that they be taken at face value, to avoid accusations of perjury: "cynical, but not without wit of a kind".
So be it, if this is what Hegseth and Trump want, let the killing begin. Probably have a big hit on their hands, especially in the MAGA circles.
However I must point out that Trump got in hot water with the Pentagon before for taking photographs of soldiers' funerals at Arlington National Cemetery. No matter, the man knows ratings.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s campaign was warned about not taking photographs before an altercation at Arlington National Cemetery during a wreath-laying ceremony earlier this week to honor service members killed in the Afghanistan War withdrawal, a defense official told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter concerning Monday’s events. It came a day after NPR reported, citing a source with knowledge of the incident, that two Trump campaign staff members “verbally abused and pushed” aside a cemetery official who tried to stop them from filming and photographing in Section 60, the burial site for military personnel killed while fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The defense official told the AP that the Trump campaign was warned about not taking photographs in Section 60 before their arrival and the altercation. Trump was at Arlington on Monday at the invitation of some of the families of the 13 service members who were killed in the Kabul airport bombing exactly three years prior.
So where do we stand? Going to fire up the air popper and watch Hasan fry with your family or are you going to sit this one out?
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