Rhinocrisy

I just got home from the victory party of one of the few true liberals who took or kept office tonight. This was Chris Daly, a supervisor here in San Francisco, who uses hardball methods to keep business in check to labor and developers in check to those they could displace. He’s a capitalist who applies basic humanism to the process of wealth creation — something that has been lacking on the national stage for decades.

Meanwhile, on the cable teevee, liberals across the country are dancing to “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones, blogging furiously and generally over-enthusing for the marginal victory by the less reactionary party in our national electoral contests.

Personally, I am thrilled to see that dirty tricks and November surprises didn’t break up all the Democrats’ momentum (though they might have wiped out a few house and senate seats). I am a partisan for fair play. But I’m not going to wet myself over the success of a bunch of imperialists over the more-ignorant-and rapacious imperialists to their right. Hell, I’m not even wetting myself over the victory of an avowed leftist just to the south. (You don’t think that’s close? Don’t forget that Nicaragua is closer to Texas than Texas is to Washington, DC.)

The thing is, revolution doesn’t happen because a few new faces sit in leather chairs in Washington. Revolution is inside each of us. And as long as 100 to 200 million people in the world’s richest nation think that money is the ultimate goal in life, that force solves problems and that the eternal salvation awaits those who impose the “Good” Book on others, I don’t think this country has much chance of becoming a force for good.

And changing those attitudes requires going out and talking — and more importantly, listening — to people. Something that the Democrats, to their credit, did some of in this campaign. I would like to be able to say the same of us bloggers.

update after a bit of sleep: Does this election validate the Naderite line from 2000, that having George Bush in office will take down the U.S. empire? Latin America, the Arab world and BRIC are all rebelling, and now there’s a Socialist in the Senate. Interesting.

More proof that the Internet is awesome can be found on this site. Also I didn’t realize that Jesus looks like the lead singer for Celtic Frost.

Check out this bizarre segment on Fox News, where a reporter has himself waterboarded in order to, essentially, redeem the technique. His report concludes that, since he was “feeling fine” moments after his “torture”, waterboarding was really “an efficient mechanism to get someone to talk and still have them alive and healthy”.

This should go without saying, but judging from the comments on the linked thread, it needs to be said: this is deeply fucked up. Let’s first briefly mention the fact that there really is no way to properly simulate torture in this situation - the victim is a volunteer, his interrogators^* are merely demonstrating, and he is free to tap out if he feels uncomfortable. Needless to say, this bears little resemblance to actual torture. Other accounts of waterboarding I have read emphasize that the purpose is to convince the subject that they are going to die; that this is an execution.

Now, what is apparently being proposed is that torture (as the reporter candidly calls it) is fine so long as it doesn’t do physical damage to the subject, or cause excrutiating pain. I’m appalled that this is being discussed. We are not seeking the most efficient and least physically invasive mechanism of information-extraction, here. The reason torture is unacceptable is not because it merely leaves scars on the victims (although, obviously, mental scars do not fade as quickly as physical ones), but because it makes a beast of both the torturer and the tortured, both of whom must lose a part of their humanity in the process.^† Cruelty should not be held as a virtue by civilized people. And I think civilization (in the sense of civility) is something we should still be aspiring towards.

But it seems I am wrong. I simply don’t comprehend how we’ve lost our way so thoroughly. This flies in the face of the most basic principles of freedom,^‡ which we allegedly prize so highly that we fight and die in wars around the world to preserve. We’re off the slippery slope. We’re in freefall down a sheer rock face. And there’s broken glass at the bottom.

^* Who are apparently active duty soldiers, and quite gleeful that they know not only how to perform these torture techniques, but lots more. Presumably this story was reported with the eager cooperation of the Pentagon. I don’t know what to make of their desire to advertise their prowess in this odious field, especially since the “reporter” neglected to clarify where or whence this training came from.

^‡ E.g., due process, presumption of innocence, and the basic right not to be subjected to barbaric punishments.

You should all check out what Razib the AtheistYazd Ibn Hanaf has been up to over at his blog gnxp; apparently he’s given up his ridda and returned to a righteous path. Funny stuff.

Someone on Wikipedia kicked my memory on this: last we heard, back in 2003, the CIA had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s kids in custody, and according to this article in The Age were using them to gain leverage on their father. There’s mention of the ambiguity of their status in this Amnesty International letter to Pervez Musharraf, but there’s nothing since then in LexisNexis. One assumes they remain in custody.

Hooray.