Get Me A Rope

So I made the mistake today of reading through the comments section of this article on ABCnews.com about the SCOTUS decision regarding the execution of child rapists.

What I read was...disturbing, to say the least. Please heed this warning: you might not want to read the comments on the article if you have a weak stomach or a fully-functioning empathy gland. I would think that even a person with an iron stomach would be nauseated by such a display of blind hatred, mob-mentality, and double-think.

Fully 90% of the responses included at least one of the following arguments (and I use the word "arguments" very, very loosely here), summarized and only mildly characterized for your convenience:

1. Criminal child rapists, and people who enjoy bestiality, are similar (if not identical) to law-abiding homosexuals.
2. All inmates are career criminals bent on being even worse when they are paroled.
3. Sexual violence is terrible, sick, and wrong; therefore, those who commit it should be repeatedly subjected to brutal sexual violence.
4. Victim's rights are protected only if the state engages in the barbaric practice of execution.
   
5. Some people are sick and disgusting and inhuman; however those of us who are clamoring like a lynch-mob for punitive sexual mutilation and state-sanctioned murder are life-loving, kind, humane people.
6. If it happened to somebody in your family, you too would lose your mind, forget ideas like the rule of law and the Constitution, and yell and scream just like us about how life and justice are best respected by descending into the insane barbaric behavior of the dark ages. After all, everybody who knows someone who has been sexually abused is in favor of slaughtering the offenders.
7. God (which god is being spoken for is not made clear) can be counted on to console the victims and eternally torture the perpetrators, but cannot be expected to prevent such things from happening in the first place.
   
8. Even though it costs more tax payer dollars to execute somebody, let's complain like blinkered idiots about how much money it costs to send them to prison for life instead.
   
9. Life is sacred and violence is wrong, therefore I would subject such perpetrators to the following list of brutalities... [I'll not repeat the insanely disgusting things I read here or in any other forum.]
10. The SCOTUS is wrong any time they hand down a decision that's "out of touch with majority public opinion," such as when they ruled against racism and sexism in the 50's and 60's, because the majority is always right -- Constitutionality, morality, and humanity be damned.
11. Superstitious beliefs about "souls" and the ability of god (again, which one?) to console and care for us in the afterlife should dictate our secular, civil laws.
    
12. Eye-for-an-eye! What was good enough in 1,000 B.C. is good enough for me.
    
13. The US would do well to "get back to the basics" and "the good old days." You know, back when racism was even more rampant within the justice system, and when even more innocent people were executed because of emotional hysteria and fear-mongering.
    

It's stuff like this that makes me terribly worried for our country. It would be one thing if I'd read these things on a fringe website like FreeRepublic, or in the comments section of some extremist's blog, but this is an ABCnews article linked from the main Google News page. Hundreds and hundreds of comments literally foaming at the mouth with so much blood-lust and unreason, it makes me wonder how the people typing such things are able to avoid suffering strokes induced by cognitive dissonance.