Psyche, Science, and Society

Torture and the American public

January 13th, 2007

Daily Kos diarist fbb reminds us of the sad moral state of our country:

To be tortured is almost by definition the worst fate that can befall a person. This view permeates literature: look at Dante’s circles of hell in the Inferno, where spirits are given infinitely creative tortures to suffer. It also permeates the popular imagination in America, where serial killers are looked upon with a mixture of awe and revulsion, and the more disgusting their methods of torture or depravity, the more popular their stories become. The last decade has seen a rise in movies depicting gruesome scenes of torture, from Pulp Fiction to Sin City to Saw. It seems safe to say that America views torture with a mixture of revulsion and fascination….

Yet our government tortures people, and the American public accepts it. Torture has even made its way as an acceptable practice into mainstream television and cinema. Witness the television show 24, in which, in the first season, the hero Jack Bauer threatens to torture a suspect by shoving a towel down his throat. He also handcuffs a double agent to a desk, and while threatening to hurt her, threatens to bring her young son in….

That this worst of all actions, this most Satanic of all deeds, can be official American government policy is, to me, the worst atrocity in our nation’s history. While our country has lived through many dark hours, through many horrible, seemingly endless misdeeds, from the extermination of the Native Americans to slavery to lynching and persecution, at least through the 230 years of our nation’s existence we have held up human rights — the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — as our creed, our motto, our reason for being. The right to habeus corpus, in existence since at least 1215, is now gone. The right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, if that phrase has any meaning, is now gone as well. Our government openly practices torture, and the American public supports it.

Quoting the great American Henry David Thoreau, fbb calls for resistance, including civil disobedience, to the torture regime

Let us act, then, in civil disobedience; let us not fear prison; let us wake our country to the evil it has become.

Entry Filed under: Guantanamo, Radical Politics, Rights and Liberties, Torture