Of all the people who should be executed, few would defend Nidal Malik Hasan. But regardless of your views on capital punishment, which seemed on the verge of being mercifully ended a decade ago, turning his execution into a public spectacle as one would find in Iran, North Korea or Afghanistan, presents a turning point in the nature of the American psyche.

There is an argument that executions should be public so that those people who still feel the lust for violence and death can see the horrors of the act. If the government is going to kill people in our name, we should be able to see just how horrible it is to watch someone being executed. There is some merit to this argument, but only if the execution is seen and understood to be horrific. The problem, as is becoming pathetically clear, is that there is a cohort in America that not only won’t find executions horrible, but will also delight in them, cheer for the death of a human being, no matter how evil his act.

The plan horrified many senior military officers as well. Adm. James G. Stavridis, a retired Navy officer and former NATO supreme commander, agreed that Mr. Hasan deserved the death penalty, but said doing so in public was the kind of thing that “terrible regimes” did, not the United States. “It is not who we are as a military or a nation,” he said.

I would like to agree with Admiral Stavridis, but I fear he’s wrong. This is who we are, at least some of us, “as a military or a nation.” They cheer as ICE murders civilians and immigrants, clutching the lies that justify death to their fetid breasts. These are the same people who cheered when cops killed without justification, whether humans or puppies. And one of them is now the Secretary of a department whose name has been changed to the negative because he adores lethality and the feeling of childish machismo that goes with it.

“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,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an interview with a conservative news outlet.

Does the pissant show pony think that people did not understand that committing mass murder has serious consequences? Not even Hegseth is that much of a blithering idiot. Nor is his master, whose performative masculinity has become the joke of legends.

Mr. Trump said he signed off on it. “Did I approve?” he said. “Absolutely I did.”

Never one to pass up the opportunity to ooze the appearance of manliness that he never earned by his choices in life, Trump boldly asserted his approval of the performance. Trump loves a performance.

President Trump loves a public spectacle. After 14 years on reality television, he has brought one show after another to his presidency — a military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, the biggest fireworks display ever, even a cage match on the White House’s South Lawn.

Now his administration is planning another unprecedented public exhibition, but one with a macabre twist: livestreaming a firing squad execution.

Will it be carried live on Fox, or at least Newsmax? Well, it is newsworthy, and there will almost certainly be an audience desiring to watch it happening “live.” After all, it’s been 90 years since the last public execution in the United States, and who knows when the next chance to sit on the La-Z-Boy, bud in hand, and cheer for the bullet to bust open his chest, if not his face.

When Al-Qaeda put its next beheading on the interwebs, can we complain? After all, the only difference is the weapon of execution, and death is death, which is what people will come to watch. Of course, no one who thrills at the vision will agree that it’s the same, because when we do it, it’s virtuous, and when they do it, it’s evil. No argument suggesting otherwise will be tolerated, because, dammit, we’re Americans and executing Hasan is making us great again.

As the reaction to this travesty, one I might call a nadir except for the fact that Trump keeps finding a lower point of indulgence to make a liar of me, hasn’t gone as well as he hoped, there remains a possibility that the livestream of the execution won’t ultimately happen. Trump might back off. Trump might claim he never approved it. He doesn’t seem to have any problem pretending the words he definitely said were never said. Indeed, he doesn’t seem to have any problem doing so in the same sentence, a by-product of his ability to speak incoherently, yet shamelessly.

But even if the execution doesn’t ultimately show up on your screens, the damage has been done. We are one of those countries that would publicly air an execution. We didn’t think this was who we were, but yet again, Trump has proved us wrong.