“We don’t torture people in America and people who say we do simply know nothing about our country.”
– George W. Bush [Interview with Australian TV – 10/18/03]
At the recent GOP Presidential candidate debate on Fox, the five participants were asked to raise their hands if they could support the use of torture – specifically waterboarding. Three raised their hands. The two that didn’t were Ron Paul and Gary Johnson, and those are the ones who support ending the drug war.
Coincidence? I think not.
I believe that this is just one more example that illustrates a frightening trend in the political arena today that tends to reward:
- A pathologically disturbed psychological profile,
- A lack of knowledge or interest in how the world actually works,
- A willingness to sacrifice any principles related to morality or liberty in order to toss out red meat to stir up the masses, or
- Some combination of the above.
I torture people. There are a lot of techniques that I use to disorient my victims, but then comes my favorite. I drown them. Slowly. Painfully. Make no mistake about it, they are drowning. They are suffocating and would die if I didn’t stop at just the right moment. This isn’t merely temporary pain like cutting off a finger or taking a drill to their teeth without novocaine. No, this is a slow and agonizing death. And then I bring them back and kill them again. I am aware that this is illegal under both U.S. and International law. |
I grow plants. After germinating and creating seedlings, I make sure I’ve got good pH-balanced soil, warm temperatures, lots of light, and just the right amount of water and nutrients. I do some topping and pinching to encourage growth and then remove the male plants to insure maximum value of remaining plants. These plants are useful in thousands of ways and also provide a pleasant and safe recreational value. I share some of them with my adult friends at their request. I am aware that this is illegal under both U.S. and International law. |
In a country that prides itself on liberty, justice, and the rule of law, which person is more likely to be sent to prison?
Which one should be more likely to be sent to prison?
Pete, I love your work but this is not a “trend”. How many decades has this mentality been going on?
You may be right, but I think it’s gotten worse in the last 10 years.
.
.
There’s no doubt that the authoritarian agenda got a significant boost when the towers fell. Frankly the capture/elimination of Mr. bin Laden has me very worried in an out of the frying pan, into the fire way.
I still haven’t seen any mention of Mr. bin Laden’s money future earnings. Without those billions Mr. bin Laden would have been nothing more than a kook on a street corner soap box. Well, there’s plenty of kooks that could take his place if they had his resources.
Look forward not backward.
Answer C, with out a doubt.
Pete… I think your verb tense is off:
I think the past tense is needed here:
All that freedom, liberty and justice stuff has gone the way of Hopalong Cassidy lunchboxes… cute but not fitting in the new world. Today’s US relishes the failure-is-success, if-there’s-not-enough-money-we’ll-print-more model of governance. Gluttony is celebratory, independence mindedness is shunned (anarchists ya know)… and the we’ll-microscopically-examine-your-urine-for-traces-of-altered-consciousness -because-we-want-to-keep-you-safe-even-from-yourself sado-moralist school of nannyism wants to optimize our experience here on earth.
I used to know what folks meant when they said “safety meeting!” These days I’m not so sure it’s such a common context for the phrase…
I worked at Conde’s (google hemp conde) lumber for about 6 years and we smoked herb every day, not a single injury or safety violation incident (except of course the everyday beating hands take in the timber/lumber biz). We were good, skilled workers, attentive to one another and extremely safe (see Dreher’s Jamaica Study)
I was there for the Barter Fair in 91…
I think… Rush, Oregon?
allan, “microscopically-examine-your-urine-for-traces-of-altered-consciousness”, I don’t know why, but I feel that is such a good way of putting it!! Maybe because it demonstrates the absurdity of the whole regime so succinctly..
If you don’t look backward first, before looking forward, you’re setting yourself up to make the same mistakes you or others have in the past.
One had to understand what “was, and is” before considering “what will be.”
The three fit like a glove.
Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum and Herman Cain.
First off, who is Herman Cain? Apparently the former CEO of Godfather’s pizza, hahaha.
In an objective world, those guys would be seen as far more fringe considering how statist they are.
ya know ez… I really don’t get how people can miss the point that the “Land of the Free” ain’t – it’s ‘spensive and we all be locked up. How can folks miss that the “sweet land of liberty” I remember us hearing about as kids thrilled me with the things I learned (less so as an adult when I learned the deeper stories behind the sanitized history kids pick up) about how we came to be as a country… ideals seemed to mean something. But that a simple connection between that epic “land of the free” and the very real “land of the most locked up” can’t be grasped is shocking to my mind. It has been for years, decades even…
And politicians that think waterboarding isn’t torture? Let them experience it… millionaire asshats in ties disconnected from real life riding the gravy train. At minimum a public exposition of real waterboarding, in the US House of Representatives and Senate chambers, all members present, vid live to any news network, public or private seems to me to be appropriate…
And while we are at it let’s ask why some things are verboten to be mentioned by defendants in US fed courts… we still deserve an answer as to why Peter McWilliams died and Todd McCormick had to spend years in Terminal Island.
The truth is ugly and the damage the drug war has wrought on our social/civil landscape is an abomination.
As a soldier in West Germany during the period before the wall fell, it was understood that only the Soviet Union used torture and psy-ops against its own citizens. We were an ostensibly “free country” standing up to the “evil empire”. (How little did I know, ah youth)
Now it is clear to me that the country I volunteered to defend has become the very thing we despise as a free people.
The sad part is how desperately people still cling to the notion that we still have the most moral country in the world.
Yeah, as bad as the press tries to make Mexico sound, I find it better living than up topside. The US today is not the country I put my life on the line for any longer. I simply refuse to live under the heavy hand of the government.
Notice that the Bush Comment only speaks to “in America.” The government thinks it’s ok to perform said actions on foreign soil, though.
As an old saying goes, “We are the people our parents warned us against!” I didn’t like the “fit” and left. Nothing more, nothing less.
Pingback: Panic Street Lawyer: Raiders for a Lost Narc, Part I » Mary Jane's List Az
Pingback: Panic Street Lawyer: Raiders for a Lost Narc, Part I | AZ Green Medication