Truth, Justice and the American Way

Just when you think people like Beck, Bachmann, O'Reilly, Rove and associates have reached the nadir of human intelligence, something comes along to show that their stupidity and immorality know no bounds.

The idea that "Arabs" developed the swine flu and deliberately introduced it in Mexico to destroy the United States is so far out there that psychological exams. Hopefully that whacko idea is merely sensationalism for ratings and exposure.

No, the latest nadir that I want to talk about is much more mainstream and apparently widely accepted: the response to the administration's release of four torture memos.

vjack did his normal, excellent job of blogging about this earlier today http://www.atheistrev.com/2009/04/real-torture-debate.html , but I've been running a few ideas around in my head for several days now and want to get them out.

I sort of understand the "look forward" argument. I don't agree with it, but I can understand what assumptions might lead someone to think it is a legitimate and correct position. Which is why I was totally blown away by the indecent garbage that the pundits and right-wing politicos began spewing when the memos came out. In retrospect, I should have remembered better, I wouldn't have been so surprised.

Back in the early to mid 90's, when I was teaching college freshman, I taught a few semesters where torture would be examined as part of the curriculum. Two things from that time are pertinent: first, 25% of my classes, year after year, defined "integrity" as "doing whatever is necessary to win." The second pertinent fact is that around 75% of each class was fine with torture as long as they themselves didn't actually have to do the torturing.

So let's hit the responses:

Waterboarding, walling, sleep deprivation and so on aren't "torture." Wrong. Waterboarding has been internationally defined as torture for decades. We did, in fact, execute war criminals for waterboarding Americans. Throwing someone against a wall (even if you give them a collar that will prevent whiplash) is assault and battery, even if the wall is flimsy.

These aren't Americans, we're not obliged to give them any rights or to follow the Geneva convention if we don't want to do so. Bollocks. Think you can go down to Florida and start killing Canadian tourists because they aren't Americans? The Geneva convention might not, in fact, apply to many of the detainees, because we aren't at war with Al'Queda because they aren't a nation state upon which we can declare war. The only other option for dealing with them, outside the Geneva convention, is to treat them like the common criminals they are. There is no third horn for our government to pursue: they are either POWs or criminals, there is no special category of "people with whom we can do whatever we like."

Torture works. Almost certainly wrong. Most of the world literature on the subject, plus professionals that I know (such as Air Force SERE instructors) say this isn't true. But as vjack pointed out, this doesn't matter. I DON'T GIVE A SHIT IF TORTURE PREVENTS ANOTHER 9/11!

This seems harsh. And obviously, if time was running out for someone that I cared about I'd probably be willing to grasp at any straw I could find. As a personal, emotional response that's understandable. On the personal, emotional side I want to do what I want. I want to be able to kill anyone who, in my personal opinion, threatens me or my family or friends. If personal, emotional justifications make things right and should be implemented by one of the most powerful nations on earth then we're in for a severe population drop.

More than 10 times as many people were killed in auto accidents during the year of 9/11. Why did we not torture the auto makers to determine if there were any additional Pinto-like situations on the horizon (or perhaps ongoing)?

Killing every single suspected criminal that is arrested will eliminate recidivism in this country and save billions in penal costs. That doesn't mean it is a good idea that should be pursued by the government.

Releasing what we do to people will render torture ineffective. Bullshit, Rove. Since it is illegal for Americans to torture others, and since we shouldn't be doing it, this is moot. Just stop torturing people!

Airing our dirty torture laundry will cause Arabs to hate us and make terrorists. Do you think that the kind of people who become terrorists are just on the border, and one more wafer thin mint of injustice is going to open the floodgates to jet setting terrorists? If we apply transparency to the problem then there is at least a PR angle to pursue to demonstrate American resolve in the pursuit of justice. Pursue Osama? By all means. Invade a country with no ties to Osama? Stupid. Arabs who are disposed to become terrorists don't have to read confidential memos to know that people are being tortured by the US, the whole frickin' globe knows that by now.

Democrats are going to get splashed, too! Excuse, me, but so fucking what? This isn't a partisan issue. Should a special victims unit not pursue rapists because a mayor is a Republican and the rapist might be one too?

Truth, justice and the American way. The pundits have ruined this phrase for me. Once I thought that truth and justice, while not exclusively American concepts, were part and parcel of the American way. Between the Republicans and Fox News, and after 8 years of Bush, I have to wonder if we've seen a final divorce between the American way on one hand and truth and justice on the other. The rampant immorality of the GOP leadership and the conservative news organs is so completely un-American that I want to vomit. Every male member of my family (in the patrilineal line back to the Civil War, and including me) has served in the armed forces of the United States. We all took on oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. But when people lack the ability to discern reality, when the vice-president of the US says that breaking the law is ok as long as some good comes out of it, then what have we become? Rove, Chaney, Hannity, these people spit on the people of the United States and the principles upon which our country was formed.

So they can stick it up their ass with a red hot poker, except that's torture. So let's investigate instead, and bring the truth out into the light and achieve justice for as many as possible.

Growing apart

Nine months ago I retired to follow my wife's job to Mississippi. And while my personal life is wonderful, my mental health is good and my emotions are generally upbeat, I am constantly bombarded with negatives from my environment.

For example, the person or persons who installed a red top on the hot water pipe behind the washer. And the person or persons who installed a red top on the cold water pipe behind the washer. Everywhere I turn in Mississippi I see incompetence and stupidity acted out in front of me. So much so that my normally seemingly inexhaustible rage seems to be... exhausted.

Being retired leaves me more time on line. Previous virtually all of my online reading was technical in nature, keeping up in my profession and the technologies in use in my profession. Slashdot was pretty much the only news-oriented type site which I read and mostly because Slashdot is a good site to keep a general eye on the type of technology with which I worked. For the last nine months I've read much more widely than that, and I have to tell you, a few hours following links on the internet and reading post and comments and even the most jaded stupidity hater will end up slack jawed in disbelief at the level of stupidity expressed in the opinions and ramblings stored on the servers of the world. I've read rants so ridiculous and delirious that the poster thinking they were the Emperor Napoleon would be one step closer to reality for them. People that make even my old college buddy, the one who thought he had a magical high school ring, seem sane.

There are some exceptions. I've found the world of atheist blogging, where the majority of posters are sane and reasonable and intelligent. Recently on alternet.org I read the following article http://tinyurl.com/dy53hj If "mainstream" religious nuts are dropping out, either turning more to the rational or the more extreme evangelical nuts, then there is a widening gap between those choosing to live in reality as much as possible and those choosing to live in fantasy as much as possible.

In Mississippi you still see, in the general population, the vast difference between rich and poor that dates all the back to the Civil war, and the US history of favoring large accumulations of capital (and how the oligarchs who make decisions of those accumulations of capital take advantage of the US political system) means that the huge socioeconomic gap in Mississippi is being mirrored all over the country.

Our current President is articulate, and this gets him charged as "elitist." Is stupidity now a goal? Are we headed for the society at the opening of Kornbluth's "March of the Morons?"

We are not melting anymore. We are separating. One of Heinlein's characters once opined that whatever particular government you instituted didn't really matter as long as there were sufficient avenues for advancement by merit. "Merit" is now not only running behind wealth and connections (which it pretty much always has), but it is now under attack by "spin" and "image" (again, backed by money). When attempts to correct information in the public sphere only end up serving to reinforce the original false claims, where are we as a society?

The fact of the matter is, most people cannot handle facts. (Consider the creationists flopping all across the public sphere, pretending that they are scientists.) If more people are working with fantasy rather than reality, then more than the US banking and mortgage industry is due to be reacquainted with Kipling's "Gods of the Copybook Headings":

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!