re: #250 GeneJockey

I could be mistaken. It’s an impression I gathered by observation. It’s why Jan Brewer was talking about finding beheaded bodies in the desert, and also why the response to Jihadis beheading a Westerner are more intense than just shooting them. For that matter, the response to Saudi Arabia beheading their criminals, which people in a country that still hangs people call ‘barbaric’. I suspect, but can’t prove, that it’s one of the deep fears shared by many people, like dying in a fire or being eaten, but unlike those, it is not a long, agonizing death.

All your examples are intended to leave a very graphic and public message. Beheading is very conducive to that. The few democracies that still have the death penalty have learned to keep their executions far away from direct view. If we hung corpses in public like Iran does or carried out lethal injections in soccer stadiums they’d be seen by far more people as intended to generate fear of the government.