But in this case, the closure dynamic is playing for the executioner's team. America was built on the idea of closure, back in the days before closure became merely another tool of self-indulgence. Close down the old life in the Old World and make a new one in the New World. Closure is essential for a mobile society, just as divorce is. But I'd say there has gotten to be a little too much closure in American life.
Closure becomes thoughtlessness, anesthesia, the shutdown of a necessary struggle.
The creature that is happy as a clam remains a clam. If an animal is comfortable, it feels no need to learn. Surely the tragedy is compounded if the point, after all, is merely something as unimportant and meaningless as McVeigh, something as unworthy as the question of how and when the nonentity is to die. It dishonors the suffering by parading it in a stupid and cheap arena. Capital punishment itself becomes a form of indiscipline.