Read this. Go ahead and read it. It's the transcript from Meet the Press on Sunday, with *special guest star*, Dick Cheney. Yes, it's about torture, specifically about the United States of America using torture, or not since "real torture" is talking to your kids before you die horribly (not an outcome guarenteed, except the death part) when you are an American attacked by ... THEM. Waterboarding? Not torture. Ramming a tube up somebody's ass, and pumping goo into their colon? Not torture. Forced sleep deprevation? Not torture. Chained by the wrists such that you can't stand or actually sit in a room at sub-50 degrees and forgotten for days until you die of hypothermia? Not torture. According to Cheney, REAL TORTURE is being an American afraid of the other. Read it. That is his very message. In the Home of Brave, real torture is being afraid of those others.
As goofy as it sounds, that's a powerful message, and a complete fricking lie. There have been many posts around the Intertubes on them nancy wimp librul sites, dissecting Dick's arguments, rating which are the worst, or attempting to generate horror at the obviously deranged and inhuman sociopath, the Beast that Came from Wyoming. All of it, for the most part, is quality writing and instills the proper degree of horror. But what struck me was the obvious: Dick.don't.care. He knows he's lying, and he knows that anyone paying attention will know he's lying. He is reducing the most heinous abuses that can be perpetrated on a human being to just a lie told to an audience. It's an offering, a taste of impotent superiority. "I know that Dick is lying", we cry. "We tortured and that's wrong", people will say. "His arguments don't make sense", we will ponder and assert.
But I have to ask, why would a guy who is worth more than all readers here and Daily Kos and Pumadog Lake put together put himself in front of a camera to defend torture with obvious lies? He has his millions, his retirement and he has thrown his 'boss' and compatriots under the bus already. He has as much as admitted to war crimes, but isn't afraid of that at all (a lesson I fear he learned from Kissinger.) That might be the very key. Cheney is being honest with his lies. Not honest about the US using torture or it's effectiveness, mind you. He's being honest that we can't do one single thing to stop any of it. That was his message. Regardless of whether we are afraid of losing the moral high-ground, regardless of whether we are afraid of the Muslamic Terrists, we need to be afraid of each other because people like him run the show, and they can and will decide who gets tortured and how.
That's actually rather brilliant on his part. People are distrusting the authority of the banks as they pass their liabilities onto us. They don't trust the police who murder young black men for no reason other than that they will get away with it. They certainly don't trust Congress or that 'man' in the White House (pick which side of the prism you wish to view that distortion from.) We don't trust each other, at all. Fear is all we have and Cheney is the sysmbol of that fear which doesn't fear us, or much of anything, the sociopath which brings order through obvious lies. Dick didn't need to go on MTP to defend himself. He needed to go on the network to prove that we can't do one singl;e thing to stop him, or even slow him and his down. While defending a practice we find intolerable, he quite clearly made the statement that we will tolerate what 'they' tell us to tolerate and we can't do shit about it. Admit it, that's kind of brilliant.
Cheney is aware of how he is perceived and who his audience is. If his words are for effect, as words of politicians usually are, then what is the effect? It doubles down. Anyone who is wavering is reassured.
And anyway, I've spent the last 25 years reading about US postwar history. Torture went on before, during and after the ascent of Cheney. It's going on now. I cannot pretend to understand it's full dynamic, but know it intimidates (word gets around), destroys people, creates psychotics, infuses anger, and is probably far more sophisticated than I know. What we saw at Abu Ghraib was very sophisticated stuff, designed to induce psychosis. To what end?
One thing I knw they are not after: information. Torture does not work in that arena.
Posted by: Mark Tokarski | December 17, 2014 at 12:31 PM
And anyone who is afraid is now *more* afraid. And (the JC rule) anyone who has given up will now be more willing to encourage others to give up. It's the only way to be certain. It's the only way to take control of one's feelings.
Posted by: Wulfgar | December 17, 2014 at 04:10 PM