Our addled consciousness

One could glimpse the shackles of dogma when an audience cheered Rick Perry for boasting about the capital punishment he has meted out. Perhaps this bloodlust bears the "marks of weakness, marks of woe" that William Blake described in his poem "London." Writer Lee Siegel had Blake in mind as he critiqued "our sick passion for execution." In the Daily Beast, he wrote: "[Troy] Davis’s scheduled execution received more and more attention as its hour approached, but nothing like some previous causes célèbres over the past few months. If Davis’s impending execution had, in the same time period, received half the attention lavished on Anthony Weiner, the earthquake that barely was, the hurricane that wasn’t, and a dozen other subsidiary collective obsessions—e.g., Charlie Sheen’s world-historical roast—the question of capital punishment itself might be at the center of debate, and not only the question of Troy Davis’s innocence. You would think that the possibility of an innocent man murdered by the state would be worth at least one 24-hour news cycle. ... It seems that we will not know how to treat our transgressors humanely until we unlock our addled consciousness. Blake, who referred to 'mind-forged manacles,' would have understood." Siegel, I think, is on to something here. If nothing else, it is a fitting coda to the Troy Davis saga.