With regard to cultural issues like those discussed by @theunitofcaring here –

– which I am not reblogging, because I’m quite sure that no one would benefit from my thoughts being incorporated into that thread –

– and with the explicit proviso that this is just vague emotional from-the-gut what-feels-right talk, not any kind of argument for any cohesive position on anything –

– is it just me, or is there something really creepy and wrong about the idea that someone might find valuable soul-affirming “closure” in an act of punishment undertaken by the administrative state?

Leaving aside any abstract question of whether vengefulness is good, bad, potentially-justified, whatever: if you have a need for vengeance, and you’re willing to stand by it, go take vengeance.  Yourself.  Like a man, as they say, even if you’re not in fact a man, because that’s not even slightly the relevant part. 

Or don’t, because you value the rule of law and you have wise concerns about the merits and the consequences of vigilante justice.  Then you live with the outcome that society deems best, because that’s the most important thing.  That works too. 

But there’s something very childish, very whiny and entitled, about expecting the Authorities to salve the wounds of your heart.  Why the hell should that be their job?  What could possibly make them qualified to do it?  How could that mandate not warp their universal priorities beyond recognition?

And that’s not even the worst of it, or so says my gut.  The worst of it is the idea that – to call on @bambamramfan‘s Lacanian vocabulary for a moment – you accept the administrators as a legitimate mouthpiece for the Big Other.  That you believe in your soul that an administrative state decision can actually communicate anything about whether or not the offense really was serious, or about whether some important abstract entity like Society or God regards it as such.  Your soul should really not give a shit what the administrative state thinks about anything.  The administrative state can’t possibly be worthy of that.