|
strange situation.
first, it is indeed good to read that nothing really terrible happened to your mother, hal: and i too wish her a speedy recovery from what did happen to her.
as for mr. alvarez:
first i am surprised that the charge is murder not manslaughter--from the story, it hardly seems plausible that there was premeditation. i assume the charge is a function of the magnitude of the outcome, not his particular relation to it. and i assume that, if he has a decent lawyer, that the charge will be bargained down. it is also pretty clear that the defense is going to hinge on (temporary) insanity---the material about drug usage and hallucination is obviously not arbitrary.
all you actually have detail about in the article is the legal strategies that are going to come into play in court.
as for the cheerleading above for capital punishment in this case: i oppose capital punishment in general. but in a situation where there is obviously questions as to the coherence of motive, i think advocating execution ridiculous. and i do not think it will happen--unless of course mr. alvarez is poor and cant afford an adequately skilled lawyer--given that cash is the index that determines the kind of "justice" you have access to in america (good legal representation, like quality health care, seems to tbe the purview of the wealthy)
second, i cant see from this what kind of judgements folk are able to draw about the suicide attempt itself--you have the outline of a fucked up series of events, but not much of anything about the surrounding circumstances.
so i dont see what basis there is for trotting out general positions vis-a-vis suicide.
what is a suicide in general?
isnt suicide always a deeply particular act?
is there a social obligation to prevent suicide?
i would imagine that a prolife position, in order to be consistent, would be forced to argue that suicide is a priori bad and that every attempts should be made to prolong life, no matter what--but then you see anti-choice positions mixed with support for capital punishment, war, etc...so obviously consistency is not an issue.
i do not have a real position on this--the particularity of the decision to commit suicide would seem to me to abstract it from the social domain.
but should there be free access to psychological services in general?
in a more civilized form of capitalism, this would not even be a question--of course there should be. these services would be indirectly geared toward suicide prevention--but would not in the final analysis do much of anything in to prevent individuals from choosing it as a way out.
i am surprised to see so much in the way of "let em die, who gives a shit?" in this thread. i wonder where this comes from. over the years i have have acquaintances and one firend do themselves in--some quickly (guns) some slowly (rock). on the quck suicides, i was surprised, but did not really know the people...on the slow one, the one frm rock usage, i was closely involved....i let go only very slowly, conceded defeat with great pain and great reluctance. even after i had to let go, could do nothing more than watch how things wound down, there was no point at which i was able to simply say to myself anything like "this guy is fucked, let him die, who cares?"
i loved the guy, it was horrible to be walked into this scenario, to have to watch the denouement without being able to do anything to stop it---social darwinimst arguments--there as here--seemed to me cheap and weak.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|