As July 4 looms with its flags and its barbecues
and its full-throated patriotism, I find myself mulling over the idea of
American exceptionalism. What, if anything, makes this country different from
other countries, or from the rest of the developed world, in terms of morals or
ideals? In what ways do our distinct values inform how America treats its own
citizens?
اضافة اعلان
I land on a
distinct absence of mercy.
Witness the
ruthless evisceration of Roe vs Wade and the expansion of the right to carry
guns in public in the wake of two horrific mass shootings. Both courtesy of a
US Supreme Court that is supposedly the institution vested with carrying out
the highest standard of justice for its citizens and yet is wholly indifferent
to the lives of America’s women, children and families. Witness the horrors of
January 6, 2021, or our mismanagement of the pandemic. Witness a health care
system that continues to see human beings as walking profit and loss rather
than as people deserving compassion and care.
I cannot help but
see a particular American bent toward cruelty. Especially when it comes to
life-or-death matters, with a merciless streak that dictates not only how we
live, but also the laws around who dies.
Three books I read
over the pandemic brought these issues to the fore for me, offering broader and
deeper context. Two of the books are explicit about the question of mercy in
their titles, both published in 2014: Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy: A Story of
Justice and Redemption” and Anand Giridharadas’ “The True American: Murder and
Mercy in Texas”, each highlighting this country’s penchant for condemning to
death those who might wish to live. The third, published this year, is Amy
Bloom’s “In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss”, which looks at the flip side of
that equation: our heartlessness when someone close to death wishes to die.
When it comes to
someone fighting for his life on death row or someone longing for the right to
die at life’s end, America generally goes with the least empathetic option.
I cannot help but see a particular American bent toward cruelty. Especially when it comes to life-or-death matters, with a merciless streak that dictates not only how we live, but also the laws around who dies.
The laws on both
capital punishment and physician-assisted suicide are clear. Our enthusiasm for
the death penalty puts us in the same camp as China, Iran and 16 other
countries that killed its citizens in 2020; by early June, America had put
seven people to death. As for end-of-life laws, euthanasia — which permits a
doctor to administer, for example, a lethal dose of morphine to a suffering
patient — is illegal across the US. Only 10 states and the District of Columbia
allow for physician-assisted suicide, which generally enables a terminally ill
person strictly within six months of dying to administer the means of his or
her own death.
Stevenson’s “Just
Mercy”, which has spent 281 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, is
probably the best known of the three books. A forceful and persuasive
indictment of our criminal justice system, “Just Mercy” makes alarmingly clear
how stacked it is against those least equipped to push back. It is a system
that has all but abandoned efforts toward rehabilitation and instead continues
to punish former felons long after they leave prison. A system, increasingly
privatized, that is more concerned with maximizing profits than with improving
lives. A system that leaves little room for compassion or redemption.
Among the lines
from the book that stay with me: “Fear and anger can make us vindictive and
abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and
we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others.”
The second book, Giridharadas’ “The True American”,
tells the story of Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladeshi immigrant who in September
2001 was shot in the face by a white supremacist, Mark Stroman, and then
unsuccessfully urged clemency for his would-be assassin. Through the story of
these two men and the skewed morality of the justice system that failed them,
we see how the country squandered its brief moment of post-9/11 cohesion. A
sense of cohesion gave way to “us vs. them”, abetted by easy access to firearms
and hate-mongering.
Among the lines
that stay with me, quoting from Stroman’s legal team: “There is nothing
illogical about a system where society does not always fulfill the victim’s
desire for revenge, but always respects the victim’s desire for mercy.”
Bloom’s memoir may
seem to have little in common with the other two. But America’s indifference
toward those suffering at the end of their lives offers a startling contrast to
those waiting out their attenuated lives on death row.
When it comes to someone fighting for his life on death row or someone longing for the right to die at life’s end, America generally goes with the least empathetic option.
In January 2020,
Bloom accompanied her 66-year-old husband, Brian, recently diagnosed with
Alzheimer’s, to Zurich, the only place in the world where Americans can travel
for a “painless, peaceful and legal suicide”. The few places in the US where
assisted suicide is allowed impose restrictions so exacting they are difficult
for people in state, and often nearly impossible for anyone out of state, to meet.
Brian’s death comes at his own wish and by his own hand, and while marked by
grief, there is nothing unwanted about it. This, I thought while reading, is
how it is done — and yet we cannot do it this way, here in America.
Among the lines
that stay with me, quoting a doctor: “When any kind of right-to-die legislation
is proposed — the opposition shows up with $10 million as soon as it’s about
your right to choose.”
At our worst, we
ourselves display an undeniable strain of mercilessness, in ways that have come
to pervade our culture. Minor mistakes are taken as capital offenses. Apologies
are often forced and true forgiveness, rare. In the push to identify and
condemn an enemy, we fail to allow for people to make amends. The drive toward
justice and accountability too often veers toward blame, retribution and
abnegation.
Well, then I will
not end here with more blame. It would be inaccurate, in any case, to pin these
policies entirely on the American people when polls suggest that most wouldn’t
choose these arrangements. A majority of Americans, 72 percent as of 2018,
support euthanasia, and 65 percent as of 2018 support physician-assisted
suicide. Around 6 in 10 Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or
most cases. A minority — about 39 percent — but still a sizable number of
Americans, oppose the death penalty. Yet majorities concede that innocent
people might be killed and that in practice, the current system is racist.
It is worth asking
ourselves, as a nation, what it is about our political and legal systems that
leads to so many policies that we Americans — even at our worst — don’t
necessarily support.
How do we ask young
people just starting out, or older people who have seen so much progress
reversed, to care about a country that seems so determined to care so little
for them? How do we celebrate on the Fourth of July a country whose laws and
institutions so often fail to bring out the best in us?
I am seeing here
only the worst side of what feels right now like a broken country. Perhaps it is
wise to bear in mind these words from Stevenson’s book: “Each of us is more
than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
I would like to
believe this holds true not only for us individually, but also collectively.
Perhaps even as a nation.
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