If You Could Play God for a Day

[Robert]

The anti-capital punishment films don't play fair, because we see the killers in their last few days, and are told about their childhood memories, their thwarted dreams etc, but we don't see what they actually did.

It's like Wells in The Third Man, talking about the people at the bottom of the tower suddenly dying, like ants. Till the end of the film he exudes a certain charm. But we are not shown what Cotton is shown - the children who suffered as a result of the defective drugs supplied by Wells.

[GUT]

Please, just call me Harry.

When God's in a fun mood he plays at being G.U.T.

[Beowulf]

My feelings are for the families of the victims, but for an additional reason. Ridgeway probably could have cared less about how unhappy he made them. If he enjoyed inflicting horror, terror, pain, death on his victims and admitted never really caring for any of them, he probably got an additional kick at the amount of collateral damage he did to the families of the women he killed.

Despite whatever anti-death penalty feelings one has, the average criminal probably only gets upset when their desires or feelings are injured somehow - then their world is upset, as they are at the center of all their actions.

Somebody, I read, visited John Wayne Gacy in the death house before his execution, and for some reason agreed to see him alone. Gacy immediately revealed how easy it would be to kill this visitor, and it would be only one more victim on his slate. The visitor did end the visit (why he made it I don't recall), but it would have been nice if he whisked out a bottle of acid and flung it into Gacy's face. I'm sure this would have proved troublesome for the visitor with the authorities, but Gacy would have suffered actual agony for awhile.

Jeff

Seriously, I did not know Gacy was executed. Thought he was still lingering around somewhere, painting clowns or whatever.

But I did just read a funny thing, one which will make it easier for some, even, to perhaps want at least the chance to 'play god'.

Regarding Gacy. It is reported that his final spoken words were simply, "Kiss my ass."

[alkuluku]

I'd be a prankster god totally ******* with the minds of religious people.

[alkuluku]

My feelings are for the families of the victims, but for an additional reason. Ridgeway probably could have cared less about how unhappy he made them. If he enjoyed inflicting horror, terror, pain, death on his victims and admitted never really caring for any of them, he probably got an additional kick at the amount of collateral damage he did to the families of the women he killed.

Despite whatever anti-death penalty feelings one has, the average criminal probably only gets upset when their desires or feelings are injured somehow - then their world is upset, as they are at the center of all their actions.

Somebody, I read, visited John Wayne Gacy in the death house before his execution, and for some reason agreed to see him alone. Gacy immediately revealed how easy it would be to kill this visitor, and it would be only one more victim on his slate. The visitor did end the visit (why he made it I don't recall), but it would have been nice if he whisked out a bottle of acid and flung it into Gacy's face. I'm sure this would have proved troublesome for the visitor with the authorities, but Gacy would have suffered actual agony for awhile.

Jeff

Why exactly would that have been nice? To make you feel better? Do you enjoy horror/terror/pain/death of other people?

[Sam Flynn]

I'd be a prankster god totally ******* with the minds of religious people.

The present incumbent seems to have cornered that market.

[alkuluku]

The present incumbent seems to have cornered that market.

Could be.

https://youtu.be/YzKV8oaI9V8

[c.d.]

I did see a really nice thing today on the subway. A man was holding an elderly and frail old man (and obviously not a relation) by his arm and helping him up the steps. What was so nice was that the man helping was also trying to carry a giant suitcase up the stairs. He could very easily have said screw it I have this suitcase to contend with.

On the other hand a few minutes later I saw some parents (and I see this a lot on the subway) who were allowing their small children to lean over the edge of the platform as the train came into the station. I go ballistic every time I see that.

So I was thinking it would be really nice if I somehow had the power to reward the helper man but at the same time I would also like to send a thunderbolt up the butts of the idiot parents. A tough decision.

c.d.

[GUT]

I did see a really nice thing today on the subway. A man was holding an elderly and frail old man (and obviously not a relation) by his arm and helping him up the steps. What was so nice was that the man helping was also trying to carry a giant suitcase up the stairs. He could very easily have said screw it I have this suitcase to contend with.

On the other hand a few minutes later I saw some parents (and I see this a lot on the subway) who were allowing their small children to lean over the edge of the platform as the train came into the station. I go ballistic every time I see that.

So I was thinking it would be really nice if I somehow had the power to reward the helper man but at the same time I would also like to send a thunderbolt up the butts of the idiot parents. A tough decision.

c.d.

If you were God you could do both

[Mayerling]

If I had the powers of the Deity for a day or so - many things I could think of doing. Two come to mind:

1) Effectively shut up Donald Trump by permanently humiliating him.
2) Enslave the members of "ISIS" and force them to rebuild those ruins in Palmyra they've been destroying because of their fanaticism.

Jeff

[Shaggyrand]

24 hours of god hood? There's just so much. I would be more a "mysterious ways" type. A little smiting of select *******s. Put the fear in politicians worldwide. Maybe revive the dodo bird & the Gros Michael banana on a tiny island somewhere. Just enough so people would look back and go "Huh. That was a weird day, wasn't it?"

Edited to add- ok. Total noob and just learned: I can talk about graphic violent events with pictures but I can't call an ******* an *******? ******* hell. That's cool. I'm so very casually vulagr that it just took me by surprise is all.

[RivkahChaya]

Seriously, I did not know Gacy was executed. Thought he was still lingering around somewhere, painting clowns or whatever.

But I did just read a funny thing, one which will make it easier for some, even, to perhaps want at least the chance to 'play god'.

Regarding Gacy. It is reported that his final spoken words were simply, "Kiss my ass."

Actually, Gacy was dragged, pleading and sniveling to the death chamber. It was one of the most cowardly deaths ever.

FWIW, I'm against the death penalty, but one of my main reasons is that I think it punishes the families of the criminal more than the criminal himself. A lesser reason is that the best evidence is that long sentences have a greater deterrent effect than the death penalty. People probably just don't imagine it happening to them, but long sentences they can wrap their brains around, because most people who murder have served time for lesser crimes.

That brings me to "If I were the deity." I'd reward good. *******s who cause themselves problems never see themselves as the cause of their problems. It's always someone else's fault. So I don't think smiting *******s would have any deterrent effect. And I don't want to smite the normally nice people having bad days. Maybe someone didn't help the woman because he had a cold, and didn't want to pass it on, but normally, he would have. He doesn't deserve smiting.

Nice people going the extra mile probably don't need rewards, but seeing other people rewarded would be more likely to influence *******s to change than smiting. So you suddenly have *******s being nice just for the reward? it's better than nothing.

[GUT]

If I had the powers of the Deity for a day or so - many things I could think of doing. Two come to mind:

1) Effectively shut up Donald Trump by permanently humiliating him.
2) Enslave the members of "ISIS" and force them to rebuild those ruins in Palmyra they've been destroying because of their fanaticism.

Jeff

G'day Jeff

No hope in achieving number one, the ego is too big to humiliate.

[Mayerling]

G'day Jeff

No hope in achieving number one, the ego is too big to humiliate.

G'Day GUT,

You're probably right, but it's nice to think of it happening. Such a deserving type for such a fate.

Maybe he's attacked by a mad barber (not Sweeney Todd though), who proves he's wearing a ridiculous hairpiece - and then shows the hairpiece was not born in the United States!

[Mayerling]

Actually, Gacy was dragged, pleading and sniveling to the death chamber. It was one of the most cowardly deaths ever.

Hi Rivkah,

If that is true (nice to think it is true), it is fitting that he did it that way - his fellow monster Ted Bundy was aging before our eyes in the last week of his life as he desperately tried to buy more time by promising to tell where other victims were buried - "to give closure to their families" - and while he swore he turned out this way due to violence in the media and television and due to pornography. It did not work finally - the families whose daughters or sisters were never accounted for physically knew Bundy was as likely as not their murderer, and were getting full closure watching him cringe and die.

I have to admit though that for every monster whose end was bad and showed a failure of nerve (bathtub Bluebeard George Joseph Smith is another example), others made a quietly dignified ending. Dr. Crippen did, although he botched an attempt at suicide by breaking his glasses and trying to cut an artery. So did wife poisoner Carlyle Harris (hanged in New York's Sing Sing Prison in 1893 for killing Helen Potts). Harris's mother, a popular writer and lecturer named Hope Ledyard, led a movement to get a reprieve for her son, and when he died he died with some dignity, although he did deny his guilt to the end in the poisoning of Helen Potts. The Glaswegian sociopath and delinquent, Peter Manuel apparently went to his death with the statement, "Let's get it over with".

Then too there have been those awful judicial blunders, like the execution of Edith Thompson in 1923 for the murder of her husband Percy. The case, a tragic but fascinating one, is the sort that does make people like myself think again of executing killers. Percy Thompson was stabbed by Freddie Bywaters, a ship stewart who had been carrying on a long time puppy-love crush with Edith, and who wrote to her and saved her letters. Edith had been a successful businesswoman, more successful than her husband. There is some possible evidence that Percy could be violent to her on occasion (like the more likely rumors of Florence Maybrick being hit by her husband Jac...err James Maybrick). In the letters to Freddie, Edith talked of books like "Bella Donna" by Robert Hichens, dealing with a wife who poisoned her husband, and said she tried various poisons on Percy without any luck. One night in late 1922, while returning with Percy after a night out, Edith witnessed Freddie attack and stab Percy to death. She did not react as well as she might have, but this could have been due to shock. Later, when the letters were found, the public prosecutor decided Edith had
manipulated Freddie into killing Percy to be rid of him so she and Freddie could be together, and that she purposely did not say enough to enable Freddie to escape.

Problems later arose from the prosecution when Sir Bernard Spilsbury (their resident forensic expert) examined Percy's remains and found no poisons in his systems. Spilsbury was not called as a witness. The letters Edith wrote to Freddie were used in the prosecution. Freddie kept insisting it was his idea, but nobody was heeding him. Edith insisted on giving evidence but turned out to become unable withstand the heavy pressures of such a position. She fell apart in the witness box. The jury found her guilty.

She was in a state of total collapse when she was taken to the gallows, and (on top of everything else) apparently either had a miscarriage on the way to her death or such a total physical failure that her bowels may have fallen out (I'm not making that point up). Her death was so terrible that it claimed another victim - the executioner, John Ellis, was unable to continue in that post and resigned. In 1933 he killed himself, probably over this. His wife said he never got over his memories of Mrs. Thompson.

Bywater, still protesting Thompson's innocence, died quietly.

When you have a situation like Edith's, no matter how much pleasure the collapses of Gacy, Bundy, and "Brides-in-the-Bath" Smith were, the total effect is considerably dampened.

Jeff