Childhood’s End is one of the most disgusting articles I have ever read on Salon.com. Gary Kamiya declares that Friday was a day of shame in America. A child was sentenced to life in prison. That child was Lionel Tate, a 14 year old boy who viciously slammed 6 year old Tiffany Eunick into a wall and stomped and beat her until she died. He beat her until her ribs were broken, her abdomen was stomped so hard that it ripped a part of her liver off, and her head was split open, and he didn’t stop until she lay dead in pools of blood. But Kamiya thinks that in the face of this kind of utter depravity we need understanding that childhood, with its infinite complexities and sadnesses, is a universe that can’t always be described with words like coward and right and wrong.

Well, gee, bucko, I don’t give a good God damn about the infinite complexity or the sadness of childhood when it comes down to beating a little girl into a bloody pulp. And to describe his being led away to prison as a Taliban moment designed at gratifying the all-American imams in our midst is absolutely enraging. Look, I don’t believe in blood-punishment. I want humane sentencing and humane conditions in prison. And I find it incredibly offensive to imply that my motives are ugly vengeance simply because I recognize the fact Tate’s acts were shockingly, brutally, horrifyingly vicious, and invoking childhood is not any excuse for not protecting the rest of society from someone who would commit them. Tate has every right to humane conditions, psychiatric help and rehabilitation, a good education, and a safe space apart from adult offenders. In prison. For the rest of his natural life. You can sob all you want for the end of childhood in America, but you can NEVER put breaking the cookie jar and breaking a skull under the same exoneration of Childhood.