But when you talk about destruction,

Don't you know that you can count me out (...in)

The DEATH penalty is a tough issue for me, personally.  I have a duality of spirit when confronted with this notion.  On one side, DEATH as prescribed by a higher office is & always has been an archaic fixation for all too many people of intelligence and perhaps a deep-seeded enmity that is served-up with a heaping helping of vengeance is MINE sayeth the interpreter.  On the other side of the coin, ...my own sense of retaliation suggests that one who puts a gat to the back of a prostrate citizen’s head...and pops that cap...then thrills in the intensity of th’ bloody moment, whether now or 25 measured  years ago...earns perhaps one of two things: 

1:  A heaping helping of tit-for-tat; a well-placed cap to the back of the head after a moment to ponder the coming moment...

Or...

2:   A lengthy uncomfortable stay in an 8X8 concrete box in the mildewed basement of some long abandoned textile mill, with only excellent paintings of her/his victim/victims on the walls to look upon...when there is light...and a rat a day for dinner if one’s hunting prowess remains swift. 

BUT THEN neither of these consequences satisfies me.  Both violate my sense of right and wrong.  On one hand, a cold-blooded act of murder is vile enough to earn a reprisal equal to the act, ...but then...to be kept in a box in banishment from civilization is the more...well, civilized reaction.  Who will pull the trigger?  Certainly it would not be any task to find an executioner of brutal enough bent, ...but what’s the justice in providing some other nutlamp a thrill.  & prisons are like bad places for some and a home away from home to others...so it appears to be the victimless crimes that are most punished....

Here’s a cat who murdered gladly.  No?  Then spent a measured 25 some odd years learning to redirect his energies.  Should he be alive in a cell, moving and shaking what he can?  Yes, I suppose he should.  But if he really DID effect changes...then there are others to carry on with the torch still lit. 

 I neither love to hate nor hate to love.  That gnarly dichotomy bends my response to a cold-blooded murder around “a stick...that’s driven into frozen winter sht....”

If I have to venture a blunt reply:  With my lean tonight, I’d say that sentencing someone to death by fire, or falling/swinging blade, or noose, or keelhauling, or Death Race 2000, or gas chamber, or electric chair, or Logan’s nemesis; or contaminated blankets, or firing squad, or a kind & hygienic needle in an iv...is the self-satisfying act of a deep-seeded but culturally esteemed sadist with control issues & a fanatical sense of righteous ire;

...a big backwards-strutting butt with a Whig and a robe & acute ferocious halitosis.

 [“Sadist” may have been too harsh a word; ...this is tough to define, ...even in fleeting commentary.]

But that’s JMHoipolloiO