Lisa Montgomery was murdered in the name of American citizens a day and a half ago for a horrendous murder she committed in 2004. An eye for an eye they say. She was a very damaged and sick individual whose long-term debilitating mental illness went undiagnosed and untreated until the Bureau of Prisons’ own doctors finally did so. Now she’s dead. As is the woman she so tragically killed. And yet . . .

When will the seemingly sane stop killing the obviously insane in the name of sanity (safety — really?) in the name of it’s sane citizens, in the name of federally sanctioned vengeance, as if a supposedly conscionable killing is less morally repugnant than an unconscionable killing. Does the former enliven any more than the latter destroys? Federal and state sanctioned killing heaps tragedy upon tragedy. Almost all other countries have long since figured this out. How is it that as a nation we have not?

There is something so fundamentally indecent, inhumane, malicious, heinous going on here — sickening doesn’t quiet capture it, and I rarely, if ever, use the word evil as an accusation or label for another human being partially because it too easily can be reversed by its designated target in a Flip Wilson “the devil made me do it” kind of way — but what President Trump and his underlings (and recently the overlings on the Supreme Court) have done this past year and especially since his election defeat by accelerating and sanctioning federal executions, consciously and casually discarding people as if they were no more than bruised fruit on an assembly line, is very very disturbing and in its own way as repugnant and depraved as the actions of the mentally disturbed Mrs. Montgomery. These actions, consecrated by the secular powers that be, murdering sick murderers to remind us that murdering has consequences not only break with a 130 year old precedent of halting executions during a Presidential transition, but if and when all scheduled executions are carried out before his last day in office will mean President Trump has signed off on more executions in one year than all the states combined.

What strikes me as so morally distressing is that these consciously and deliberately orchestrated executions tended to by President Trump have been equal to his level of inattention and blatant disregard for the death sentences meted out by the Covid virus on his watch, thousands and thousands of which have been unnecessary and preventable by all professional expert’s accounts. Why?

Just a whim. President Trump reminds me of the spurned husband and father served with divorce papers from a woman he married, terrorized, and abused day-in, day-out for years or the rage-aholic employee who was justifiably terminated and then injects his own poor-me take on life with steroids unconscionably, mercilessly, selfishly, and narcissistically going on a last chance murderous spree and takes out, in the first example, his tormented wife and innocent children, and in the second instance, not just employers or workmates but any other unknown breathing person who appears happy or in his purview the day he decides to get even with the world.

The only difference is that unlike the scorned abusive husband or employee who turns the gun on himself in the end, Trump will never turn the gun on himself. For though he will do almost anything and harm anyone, including his own family, including the country he vowed to lead, govern, and protect, he will not dare to harm himself fatally since he would then no longer be around to bathe in the attention caused by such an event to which he is so completely and devastatingly addicted and which has so severely damaged our country.

Kyrie eleison!