Monday
Among the adjectives we could use to summarize Trump’s presidency, I propose “cruel” over, say, “chaotic” or “narcissistic.” Cruelty characterizes far too many of the president’s actions, and pundits have observed that, for Trump, “cruelty is the point,” not a byproduct. Editorial Board’s John Stoehr argues that a sadistic streak within a portion of the American electorate may well account for Trump’s cultic popularity.
Early on we saw Trump encourage supporters to beat up protesters, then allow border enforcers to tear children from their parents, then egg on cops to brutalize suspects, then pardon cold-blooded war criminals and rogue police officers. Now, going out as he came in, he and Attorney General William Barr are engaging in an execution spree. In today’s post I look at how Victor Hugo would respond.
As the Washington Post reports,
Federal authorities have executed ten people since getting started in July, making 2020 the first year ever in which the federal government executed more civilian inmates than the states did. In just five months, Mr. Trump oversaw more civilian executions than any other president in the 20th or 21st century. Three more inmates are scheduled to die in January, in the final weeks of Mr. Trump’s presidency.
Hugo captures the lure of execution for people like Trump and Barr. Reflecting on the guillotine in Les Misérables, he says that it produces hallucination, taking on a kind of “horrible vitality” of its own. Although death penalty advocates want us to regard it as “an inert bit of mechanism constructed of wood, iron and cords”—in other words, as a neutral and impersonal instrument of justice—it is rather “a vision” that induces “the most mysterious of shivers.” Hugo doesn’t describe these shivers but I suspect they range from thrilling to horrifying, depending on the individual:
In fact, when the scaffold is there, all erected and prepared, it has something about it which produces hallucination. One may feel a certain indifference to the death penalty, one may refrain from pronouncing upon it, from saying yes or no, so long as one has not seen a guillotine with one’s own eyes: but if one encounters one of them, the shock is violent; one is forced to decide, and to take part for or against. Some admire it, like de Maistre; others execrate it, like Beccaria. The guillotine is the concretion of the law; it is called “vindicte” [retaliation]; it is not neutral, and it does not permit you to remain neutral. He who sees it shivers with the most mysterious of shivers. All social problems erect their interrogation point around this chopping-knife. The scaffold is a vision. The scaffold is not a piece of carpentry; the scaffold is not a machine; the scaffold is not an inert bit of mechanism constructed of wood, iron and cords.
Trump thrills at having the power to willy-nilly mete out life (pardons) and death. In other words, he is no aloof judge impartially administering justice but rather a man who lives for retaliation. Perhaps the death engines could be seen as impersonal if justice were truly blind, although even here I think Hugo would have his doubts. In any event, with Trump we are witnessing executions where the “scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats flesh, it drinks blood.” The scaffolds erected at Trump’s orders appear to be “possessed of will, … as though taking part in what is going on”:
It seems as though it were a being, possessed of I know not what somber initiative; one would say that this piece of carpenter’s work saw, that this machine heard, that this mechanism understood, that this wood, this iron, and these cords were possessed of will. In the frightful meditation into which its presence casts the soul the scaffold appears in terrible guise, and as though taking part in what is going on. The scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricated by the judge and the carpenter, a spectre which seems to live with a horrible vitality composed of all the death which it has inflicted.
The Biden presidency can’t come soon enough.