Anyone who knows me well, knows that I’m pretty vile and tasteless, and will crack jokes about even the most morbid of topics with seemingly no sensitivity or remorse. In other words, I’m pretty hard to disgust, at least by thoughts engendered by my own, twisted mind. Today, as I was driving from work, I heard some news on the radio that enraged me, and made me absolutely sick to my stomach.
Two-year-old survives almost three weeks alone in a house
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — A 2-year-old left alone for nearly three weeks while her mother was behind bars survived by eating mustard, ketchup, rice and raw pasta, police said. […]
I can’t exactly put to words the extent to which I was disgusted by hearing about this happening. I’ll give it my best shot, though.
I think the only punishment suitable for this crime is slow starvation. The kind where you fully restrain the person permanently so they can’t injure or otherwise kill themselves. Then, continue to provide fluids so the person doesn’t die of dehydration, but continues to starve to death over the course of several weeks. Being fully restrained, the body will begin to atrophy from being fully immobilized, and cannibalize itself as the starvation continues. Organs and bodily functions fail, dementia sets in, and eventually death.
Incarceration is way too gentle and kind of a punishment for a person who knowingly allows her child to slowly starve, all alone, without informing anyone who could have gone and helped the child. I think the public ought to demand an eye for an eye, here. What this animal who claims to be this little girl’s mother has done is absolutely inexcusable. If she gets out of jail, if there is a God in Heaven, I hope an angry mob stones her to within an inch of her life, then breaks her arms and legs, then ties her up and leaves her to starve to death somewhere where she’ll never be found.
Programmer, husband, father, singer, guitarist, tinkerer, reverse engineer, strange, and living in New Jersey. 
You sound like the guy in “Seven”.
I know what you mean, though. I don’t really agree with “an eye for an eye”, however. The idea may make people feel better, but it may not turn out such a good thing when everybody in the world is blind. And besides, I doubt that this woman would understand the lesson she was being taught, so what’s the point in useless suffering? Just give the kid a real mom and get on with it, I say.
Of course, you’re probably right. The point isn’t to teach her a lesson, it’s to demonstrate to others what the consequences are for her kind of action, or inaction, as the case may be. If it prevents atrocities like this from happening again, the suffering isn’t useless.
Oh, and I definitely agree with you: get that kid a real mom. I just can’t understand how those slackers at Child Welfare can harrass parents who are earnestly trying to do right by their kids, while gross neglect goes on for three weeks and they have no clue it’s going on.
The world is a disaster. We need a reboot and a fresh start. Several billion years of nuclear winter sounds like a good plan, right about now …