"Democracy Dies on Torture's Rack"
Lest swine flu, the 100-day media mania, or abysmally-handled NYC flyover distract us, I am intent on keeping the truly-critical issue of our government's adoption of torture and the essential investigation of same high on our priority list, as far more consequential in the long run. Okay, that is admittedly assuming pandemic does not fulfill the worst forecasts.
Is torture effective? Irrelevant - it's illegal. By our laws and international regulations we are party to. As I understand it, we have no choice without further law-breaking to do other than thoroughly investigate and prosecute abuses if the findings so justify.
And it is a matter for the judicial branch of our government. Ahem.
That ought to make it easy. But not in Washington, DC. Lawless-ville, East.
Back when they lacked swine flu or some other shiny object to play with, the corporate media were totally neurotic over the idea that even a conscientious investigation (i.e., vs. a cover-up, a la Warren Commission, a la Watergate, and a la 9/11) of the USA's use of Torture would mean the End of the World as We Know It.
They're horrified at the idea we would probe their incestuous, guilt-ridden cabal. Which likely includes a number of Democrats. And absolutely incriminates almost every mainstream "journalist" in operation during the bush era. They are all complicit. Hell, we are on a lessor level almost all complicit too for continuing to pay our taxes and not throwing ourselves in front of the juggernaut.
We don't do nearly enough of that anymore here. Not to go all libertarian or anything - dissent and skepticism are the Grails I have in mind.
Here are two of the clearest explanations I have recently come across explaining the imperative of dealing with this torture business properly. I apologize for abbreviating these great posts - you owe it yourself to follow links to full deal.
First up I have Glenn Smith, reminding us of the heartbreaking story of Alyssa Peterson:
I can sympathize with Montesquieu, who said in 1748, "So many men of learning and genius have written against the custom of torturing criminals, that after them I dare not presume to meddle with the subject." Horrifyingly enough, the debate over torture is now timely in America. Much has been told, but more needs telling.
What I want to say is this: Democracy dies on torture's rack. We can't be democratic citizens and torturers too.
The tragedy of Alyssa Peterson is revelatory. Peterson was one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq. She was a 27-year-old from Flagstaff, Arizona. She spoke Arabic, and as an interrogator was assigned to a military prison. After objecting to the torture she was asked to participate in, she was reprimanded for showing too much "empathy" and reassigned. Not long after, she was killed by a gunshot. Her death was ruled a suicide. According to the official report, "She said that she did not know how to be two people; she ... could not be one person in the cage and another outside the wire."
We are all Alyssa Petersons. We cannot be in the torture cage and out of it at the same time. Torture is about extinguishing what is unique and human in the victim. Franz Kafka got it right. In his parable, "In the Penal Colony," the torturer is killed by the horrible device he once used on others. The uniqueness we extinguish in others we also extinguish in ourselves. When we torture, we erase democracy's very being.
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I believe that unless we hold those who authorized torture accountable before the law, torture in America will be both alive and dead, and that is dangerous. When Karl Rove reduces the question of torture to "policy differences" between administrations, he is arguing the case for torture, not just the case against prosecution of his cronies. If we do not enforce the laws against torture, then some of us will torture and some of us won't. Just depends who's president.
I understand the potential cost of investigation and prosecution, and I believe such costs are real. For instance, the chances of real health care reform might be diminished if the nation is absorbed and polarized by a criminal investigation of Bush Administration torturers. And the denial of health care to millions of Americans is torture, too. If we are to live fully human, democratic lives outside the cage, we will have to do both.
George Lakoff has for me the definitive piece on the absolute necessity of prosecuting torture and anything in the general category to the ends of the earth. It is imperative that the concept of empathy for others be renewed as one of the basic tenets of our form of governance and community. Frankly, I find it shocking that the concept of empathy is so clearly here for the plucking as a progressive credo. What if indeed we cared about each other? Just imagine. Our wake-up radio this AM had the temerity to play the Youngblood's "Get Together!" I can hear rush and all of fox hooting from here.
Clearly, the deplorable lack of empathetic feelings for real people in America, not to mention in any other country, in the previous administration was essential to their ability to seemingly without guilt commit repeated despicable acts to the point of war crimes. "Like a corkscrew down my heart," to quote Zimmermann.
Lakoff schools us that the willingness (or, in this case, apparently, eagerness) to torture is more or less the definition of absence of empathetic feelings. I.e., full-on rejection of one of the most basic principles of our country's founders. I have always despised the "traitor," "unpatriotic"-type name-calling slurs so frequently used by the cowardly McCarthy/red-baiter/Limbaugh brain-dead sorts when they have no real argument to make but must resort to name-calling. But this purposeful Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush/etc. program of manufacturing criminally "legalese" justifications for torturing (after the fact, at that) appears to be the most traitorous, anti-patriotic, and unAmerican conspiracy to have occurred in my lifetime:
Should there be a commission to publicly investigate the use of torture by the Bush administration?
Pragmatic Democrats argue no, that it will divert our attention from all the other, positive things that have to be done.
I disagree. But not for the usual reasons, all of which are good reasons: Maintaining the rule of law. Punishing the criminal activities of the Bush administration. Beginning to reclaim our moral stature in the world. Refusing to accept the we-were-just-following-orders defense that must never again be tolerated. All good reasons. But there is one overriding reason behind all of the others.
It is crucial to understand why torture is so overpowering an issue. Not killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in the shock-and-awe approach to Iraq. Not ignoring the horrors of Darfur. Not the thousands of gun deaths and maimings in America each year. Not all the deaths and illnesses that come from the denial of care by a private health care system that cares about profits over people. There are plenty of things to be outraged about. What is it about torture?
The clearest clue comes from Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher in his piece at Huffington Post, retelling the story of a female American G.I., Alyssa Peterson, who committed suicide after refusing to participate in the torture of Iraqi prisoners.
-clip-
We now know from the study of mirror neuron systems in the brain that empathy is physical, a capacity built into our very bodies. It is what allows us to feel what others feel and appears to be the basis for human connection and the capacity to care about others. Our native neural capacities for empathy can be strengthened by how we are raised, or it can decay when empathy is not experienced — or we can be trained to develop neural circuitry to bypass natural empathy.
President Obama has argued that empathy is the basis of our democracy. It is because we care about others, he has argued, that we have principles like freedom and fairness, not just for ourselves but for everyone. I have found, in studies of largely unconscious political conceptual systems, that empathy is the basis of progressive political thought, and the basis for the very idea of social, not just individual, responsibility. Conservative political thought is otherwise structured, based on authority, discipline, and responsibility for oneself but not others. The major moral, social, and political divide in America centers around empathy.
Alyssa Peterson “did not know how to be two people..." But many of us do. Our brains permit circuitry for what is called ‘mutual inhibition,” in which the activity of one of two circuits inhibits the other. That’s why it’s possible to have two opposing moral systems operating in your brain – one for Saturday night and one for Sunday morning. Many of us can be one person Saturday night and another Sunday morning. Or a progressive on the environment and a conservative on the freedom of gays to marry. Or a torturer in Iraq and a loving dad at home … maybe.
To understand the importance of torture as issue, it helps to know the basics of how mirror neuron systems work in the brain. The same neurons that fire when you move your muscles in performing an action also fire when you see someone else moving the same muscles. The emotional regions of the brain are linked to muscle movement: you smile in joy and writhe in extreme pain. Your mirror neuron system picks up their muscle movements, activating the same part of the brain in you, which is linked to your emotional system. Thus, when you see someone jumping for joy or writhing in pain, you can sense their joy or feel their pain. That is, if your empathy system is working normally—if it has not decayed in your upbringing and if you have not acquired other circuitry to inhibit or bypass it, or in other words, if, like Alyssa Peterson, you have not learned to be two different people.
Alyssa Peterson was a religious Mormon, apparently in the tradition of the true Christian, who sees Christ as preaching and living empathy. She was one person with one identity, not two. She was in Iraq to serve her country as an Arabic interpreter. She understood, as Barack Obama told Anderson Cooper on 360 (March 19, 2008), “…what I think is the core of patriotism, which is, you know, are we caring for each other? Are we upholding the values of our founders?” In short, patriotism begins with empathy, with people caring about each other. Alyssa Peterson could not turn off her empathy or the patriotism based on her empathy. She could not live with a patriotism that precluded her deepest sense of identity.
Torture violates empathy in the most direct way. The very neural system we use in creating inhuman, unbearable pain in someone you are looking at, hearing, and touching is the same neural system that equips us to feel the pain we are creating. It is the same neural system that creates human connections with others. And the same neural system that lies at the heart of political democracy. Turning it off is turning off humanity, and with it democracy.
That is why torture is THE issue that we cannot ignore.
-clip-
Is torture effective? Irrelevant - it's illegal. By our laws and international regulations we are party to. As I understand it, we have no choice without further law-breaking to do other than thoroughly investigate and prosecute abuses if the findings so justify.
And it is a matter for the judicial branch of our government. Ahem.
That ought to make it easy. But not in Washington, DC. Lawless-ville, East.
Back when they lacked swine flu or some other shiny object to play with, the corporate media were totally neurotic over the idea that even a conscientious investigation (i.e., vs. a cover-up, a la Warren Commission, a la Watergate, and a la 9/11) of the USA's use of Torture would mean the End of the World as We Know It.
They're horrified at the idea we would probe their incestuous, guilt-ridden cabal. Which likely includes a number of Democrats. And absolutely incriminates almost every mainstream "journalist" in operation during the bush era. They are all complicit. Hell, we are on a lessor level almost all complicit too for continuing to pay our taxes and not throwing ourselves in front of the juggernaut.
We don't do nearly enough of that anymore here. Not to go all libertarian or anything - dissent and skepticism are the Grails I have in mind.
Here are two of the clearest explanations I have recently come across explaining the imperative of dealing with this torture business properly. I apologize for abbreviating these great posts - you owe it yourself to follow links to full deal.
First up I have Glenn Smith, reminding us of the heartbreaking story of Alyssa Peterson:
I can sympathize with Montesquieu, who said in 1748, "So many men of learning and genius have written against the custom of torturing criminals, that after them I dare not presume to meddle with the subject." Horrifyingly enough, the debate over torture is now timely in America. Much has been told, but more needs telling.
What I want to say is this: Democracy dies on torture's rack. We can't be democratic citizens and torturers too.
The tragedy of Alyssa Peterson is revelatory. Peterson was one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq. She was a 27-year-old from Flagstaff, Arizona. She spoke Arabic, and as an interrogator was assigned to a military prison. After objecting to the torture she was asked to participate in, she was reprimanded for showing too much "empathy" and reassigned. Not long after, she was killed by a gunshot. Her death was ruled a suicide. According to the official report, "She said that she did not know how to be two people; she ... could not be one person in the cage and another outside the wire."
We are all Alyssa Petersons. We cannot be in the torture cage and out of it at the same time. Torture is about extinguishing what is unique and human in the victim. Franz Kafka got it right. In his parable, "In the Penal Colony," the torturer is killed by the horrible device he once used on others. The uniqueness we extinguish in others we also extinguish in ourselves. When we torture, we erase democracy's very being.
-clip-
I believe that unless we hold those who authorized torture accountable before the law, torture in America will be both alive and dead, and that is dangerous. When Karl Rove reduces the question of torture to "policy differences" between administrations, he is arguing the case for torture, not just the case against prosecution of his cronies. If we do not enforce the laws against torture, then some of us will torture and some of us won't. Just depends who's president.
I understand the potential cost of investigation and prosecution, and I believe such costs are real. For instance, the chances of real health care reform might be diminished if the nation is absorbed and polarized by a criminal investigation of Bush Administration torturers. And the denial of health care to millions of Americans is torture, too. If we are to live fully human, democratic lives outside the cage, we will have to do both.
George Lakoff has for me the definitive piece on the absolute necessity of prosecuting torture and anything in the general category to the ends of the earth. It is imperative that the concept of empathy for others be renewed as one of the basic tenets of our form of governance and community. Frankly, I find it shocking that the concept of empathy is so clearly here for the plucking as a progressive credo. What if indeed we cared about each other? Just imagine. Our wake-up radio this AM had the temerity to play the Youngblood's "Get Together!" I can hear rush and all of fox hooting from here.
Clearly, the deplorable lack of empathetic feelings for real people in America, not to mention in any other country, in the previous administration was essential to their ability to seemingly without guilt commit repeated despicable acts to the point of war crimes. "Like a corkscrew down my heart," to quote Zimmermann.
Lakoff schools us that the willingness (or, in this case, apparently, eagerness) to torture is more or less the definition of absence of empathetic feelings. I.e., full-on rejection of one of the most basic principles of our country's founders. I have always despised the "traitor," "unpatriotic"-type name-calling slurs so frequently used by the cowardly McCarthy/red-baiter/Limbaugh brain-dead sorts when they have no real argument to make but must resort to name-calling. But this purposeful Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush/etc. program of manufacturing criminally "legalese" justifications for torturing (after the fact, at that) appears to be the most traitorous, anti-patriotic, and unAmerican conspiracy to have occurred in my lifetime:
Should there be a commission to publicly investigate the use of torture by the Bush administration?
Pragmatic Democrats argue no, that it will divert our attention from all the other, positive things that have to be done.
I disagree. But not for the usual reasons, all of which are good reasons: Maintaining the rule of law. Punishing the criminal activities of the Bush administration. Beginning to reclaim our moral stature in the world. Refusing to accept the we-were-just-following-orders defense that must never again be tolerated. All good reasons. But there is one overriding reason behind all of the others.
It is crucial to understand why torture is so overpowering an issue. Not killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in the shock-and-awe approach to Iraq. Not ignoring the horrors of Darfur. Not the thousands of gun deaths and maimings in America each year. Not all the deaths and illnesses that come from the denial of care by a private health care system that cares about profits over people. There are plenty of things to be outraged about. What is it about torture?
The clearest clue comes from Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher in his piece at Huffington Post, retelling the story of a female American G.I., Alyssa Peterson, who committed suicide after refusing to participate in the torture of Iraqi prisoners.
-clip-
We now know from the study of mirror neuron systems in the brain that empathy is physical, a capacity built into our very bodies. It is what allows us to feel what others feel and appears to be the basis for human connection and the capacity to care about others. Our native neural capacities for empathy can be strengthened by how we are raised, or it can decay when empathy is not experienced — or we can be trained to develop neural circuitry to bypass natural empathy.
President Obama has argued that empathy is the basis of our democracy. It is because we care about others, he has argued, that we have principles like freedom and fairness, not just for ourselves but for everyone. I have found, in studies of largely unconscious political conceptual systems, that empathy is the basis of progressive political thought, and the basis for the very idea of social, not just individual, responsibility. Conservative political thought is otherwise structured, based on authority, discipline, and responsibility for oneself but not others. The major moral, social, and political divide in America centers around empathy.
Alyssa Peterson “did not know how to be two people..." But many of us do. Our brains permit circuitry for what is called ‘mutual inhibition,” in which the activity of one of two circuits inhibits the other. That’s why it’s possible to have two opposing moral systems operating in your brain – one for Saturday night and one for Sunday morning. Many of us can be one person Saturday night and another Sunday morning. Or a progressive on the environment and a conservative on the freedom of gays to marry. Or a torturer in Iraq and a loving dad at home … maybe.
To understand the importance of torture as issue, it helps to know the basics of how mirror neuron systems work in the brain. The same neurons that fire when you move your muscles in performing an action also fire when you see someone else moving the same muscles. The emotional regions of the brain are linked to muscle movement: you smile in joy and writhe in extreme pain. Your mirror neuron system picks up their muscle movements, activating the same part of the brain in you, which is linked to your emotional system. Thus, when you see someone jumping for joy or writhing in pain, you can sense their joy or feel their pain. That is, if your empathy system is working normally—if it has not decayed in your upbringing and if you have not acquired other circuitry to inhibit or bypass it, or in other words, if, like Alyssa Peterson, you have not learned to be two different people.
Alyssa Peterson was a religious Mormon, apparently in the tradition of the true Christian, who sees Christ as preaching and living empathy. She was one person with one identity, not two. She was in Iraq to serve her country as an Arabic interpreter. She understood, as Barack Obama told Anderson Cooper on 360 (March 19, 2008), “…what I think is the core of patriotism, which is, you know, are we caring for each other? Are we upholding the values of our founders?” In short, patriotism begins with empathy, with people caring about each other. Alyssa Peterson could not turn off her empathy or the patriotism based on her empathy. She could not live with a patriotism that precluded her deepest sense of identity.
Torture violates empathy in the most direct way. The very neural system we use in creating inhuman, unbearable pain in someone you are looking at, hearing, and touching is the same neural system that equips us to feel the pain we are creating. It is the same neural system that creates human connections with others. And the same neural system that lies at the heart of political democracy. Turning it off is turning off humanity, and with it democracy.
That is why torture is THE issue that we cannot ignore.
-clip-
posted by Sir Gumbo at 9:35 PM
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