• the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
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      17 days ago

      It wasinvented to make executions more merciful as doing it “manually” came with many mishaps and iirc being the dude with the axe was not something many could stomach for long

      • Dasus@lemmy.world
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        18 days ago

        We don’t actually want to kill billionaires.

        We joke about it because we want them to stop slowly killing us.

      • Saint_La_Croix_Crosse@midwest.social
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        18 days ago

        “THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.” - Mark Twain

      • Cataphract@lemmy.ml
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        18 days ago

        Do you really read that and not conclude that we’ve been living in a perpetual Reign of Terror for the past few decades (or at least since the civil rights era)? This was a response during the beginning of the French Revolution, if we’re following historical playbooks than the revolution needs to be concluded.

        edit: meant civil rights, not civil war.