Thoughts on turkey and justice

[cyrano]

I have these thoughts every year around this time. This year I decided to share them. Lucky you.

So the PotUS pardons a turkey every year. Presumably it was convicted of the heinous crime of.... being extremely tasty or something. We hope it's learned a valuable lesson and will now re-enter society and not be tasty any more. Otherwise the cops will come to its coop and haul it away again and Obama will make that "I am disappoint" face. And nobody wants that.

But really the meat of this treatise is the aftermath. Because you know that the White House does not go vegetarian tomorrow just because their chosen source of protein got a reprieve. Do they go to the maximum security peniturkey and find some tattooed poultry in a sleeveless orange jumpsuit on death row to replace him? (After a drug test, of course.) Do they go out and arrest a pig on trumped up charges and rush him through trial so they can turn him into 24 hour ham?

And does the President only get to eat animals who have been convicted of a crime that warrants the death penalty? Is this why the courts are so slow and clogged up? Do the yams need to also be convicted murderers? Or maybe they've committed treason? Or is it just the carnivorous factions of the meal? And what about mincemeat? It says it's meat but I don't think there's any animals in there.

And at the heart, why stir up this bullshit political theater about pardoning an animal who hasn't committed a crime, and who you decided to put in the crosshairs just to show your benevolence by *not* eating it after all?

Comments

[scarywhitegirl.livejournal.com]

Huh, and here I was going to go find how it was a historical tradition, and then I find out that it's not. Lame.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

Depends how you define 'historical' and 'tradition' really. (:

[eatsoylentgreen.livejournal.com]

yes, woe to the president who breaks that tradition, he'll be pilloried. Also, hello, I'm a random fan.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

Hello! I suspect you'll find plenty of random here. Although mostly it's snark.

[tersa.livejournal.com]

You make me snicker. Go you. :)

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

And the scary thing is? To some extent I *actually want an answer to these questions*.

[eatsoylentgreen.livejournal.com]

and instead, eat a different turkey. Weird.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

So yeah, the weirdest thing is the idea that this turkey has committed some crime which makes it worth of death *and then being eaten*. But second weirdest is that they probably round up some other feathered schmuck to take his place.

[scarywhitegirl.livejournal.com]

Also, they pardon a turkey AND a backup turkey. Was the backup turkey an accomplice, or is the backup turkey guilty in his/her own right?

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

Now you've done it.
*You're* going to have to rock me to sleep tonight and soothe my fevered brow when I wake up from nightmares about this.

[reluctantgenius.livejournal.com]

I challenge the assumption that death is a penalty for anything. Everything dies. Baby that's a fact. So, by this logic we're all guilty of something horrible.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

True. I should say "Sentenced to the early and deliberate termination of its life experience by an outside authority".

[reluctantgenius.livejournal.com]

I don't see that as being qualitatively different from everybody else, just with a different authority.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

If you believe in God Man, then his termination isn't early. (:
God Man is never early, he is never late. He is always precisely on time.

[reluctantgenius.livejournal.com]

Or one can choose apoptoisis as one's outside authority, the philosophical argument remains congruent. Everything dies because it has to, not because it chooses to.

Also, how many of those First Baptist Church reader board icons do you have? I only recall seeing the one about God was my co-pilot.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

Which is why, in Christianity, suicide is so unforgivable--because you've taken God's power into your own hands. (Well. That and because you can't ask for absolution afterward.)

I only saved the two, and from here on I have to get more blasphemous.

[reluctantgenius.livejournal.com]

I always thought the sin in Christianity was trying to skip some of the suffering. Although I recall learning that the average participant in a crucifixion usually hangs on for a day or two, so I think Jesus cut out early by hauling off to dad's before the day was out.

But back to the subject - I think I would posit that death is only a punishment for those who have enough of a neocortex to anticipate it. I don't think a turkey really knows that it's been pardoned and would only be alarmed if the threat of becoming dinner was apparent to them.

I might even endorse the idea that it's only really a punishment for the sort of narcissist that finds themself incarcerated as a result of their lack of concern with their fellow beings. Too bad Sarbanes–Oxley doesn't include a death penalty. Then again, we aren't using it as is.

[7leaguebootdisk.livejournal.com]

I just figured it was the turkey that had donated the most to his campaign, isn't that how presidential pardons are usually handed out?