Execution TV? Pete Hegseth has taken the once ‘greatest democracy’ to a horrific new low

‘The world has become inured to Donald Trump’s monstrous narcissism and maladministration,’ writes Paul Daley Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreen‘The world has become inured to Donald Trump’s monstrous narcissism and maladministration,’ writes Paul Daley Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty ImagesExecution TV? Pete Hegseth has taken the once ‘greatest democracy’ to a horrific new lowPaul DaleyA proposal to livestream the killing of Nidal Hasan by firing squad opens a window ever wider to the Trump administration’s complete moral vacuity

More fool me! Here I was thinking nothing that America’s Trump administration could do or say, no matter how politically and morally bankrupt, no matter how venal or violent, was capable of shocking me any longer.

Then I woke to today’s news that one of the Trump cabinet’s bigger boofheads – the uber Christian nationalist, crusader-fantasist and “secretary of war” Pete Hegseth had announced that America would have a public firing squad execution of murderer Nidal Hasan.

Reckless global militarisation including a threat at the UN to annihilate Iran, a litany of sexual misconduct allegations against the commander in chief, claims of blatant presidential corruption … they have all ceased to surprise and shock us, so inured has the world become to Donald Trump’s monstrous narcissism and maladministration.

But now we have execution TV. Tune in to the livestream on Thursday 3 December to watch a military firing squad shoot the life out of Hasan, the former army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at a US army base in 2009.

Read moreState-sanctioned killing as entertainment! Yes, the world’s supposedly greatest (or formerly greatest) democracy has arrived at an horrific new moral nadir.

The fact that America remains Australia and the west’s most relied-upon and trusted ally despite the global wrecking ball the second Trump administration has proved to be, was already cause for deep concern.

But being so closely allied to a country that now wants to turn the execution of a human being – no matter what their crimes – into a live entertainment event, promises to redefine depravity.

Given that American states continue to execute so many convicted criminals, where might the United States ultimately draw the line? No doubt the ilk of Hegseth in American society – and elsewhere – will count down the days until they can tune in to the live coverage of Hasan’s execution in droves. Might the audience cry out for more – for livestream cameras in the death chambers across the land of the free?

How would this populist administration respond? If you think it’s a fanciful question, consider how far American governance and presidential values have slid in the moral murk in the past two years alone.

Meanwhile, it’s hard to contemplate a more audacious appeal to American society’s darker angels than this looming entertainment event.

It would be heartening today to hear political leaders the world over condemn Hegseth and Trump’s planned introduction of Ghoul TV.

But let’s please start in Australia, where federal governments have for a long time opposed capital punishment – let alone turning it into a public spectacle. Will the prime minister and his senior ministers stand up and condemn without qualification this depraved plan for America to livestream an execution? What about the leaders of other political parties here, some of whom have, after all, supported capital punishment?

Meanwhile, how much further into the moral quagmire must America wallow before Australia rethinks its craven military dependence on Washington – not least via the reckless shackling of our strategic reliance to the US via the $368bn (and counting) Aukus submarine deal?

Announcing America’s decision to turn killing into a form of entertainment, Hegseth said: “It was a radical Islamist attack in uniform inside the ranks, and so he’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be, and we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”

America’s defense department later confirmed the execution would be livestreamed.

This represents a significant lurch in the US from civilisation towards savagery.

You can’t choose your family. But you can choose your friends and allies. And you can also tell them firmly when they’ve careened off the ethical rails.

And this planned livestreamed execution says it all about what is happening in America today, opening the window ever wider on the Trump administration’s moral vacuity and its paucity of human decency.

Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist