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pecuniumThe New York Times published an article today about torture.
Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations I duoubt anyone was really surprised.
There's lots of hand-wringing, of people pretending outrage. Why do I say pretending? Because this isn't news. For it to be news it would have to be new, unexpected.
It's not. It's, at most, a variation on a theme. I know this because I've been bitching about this theme for a long time.
Raise your hand if this isn't something you didn't already believe was happening.
And that's the crime here. No one seems to give a shit. The rah-rah crowd are happy. They believe in torture, and, so far as I can tell they support all the rest of the authoritarian trappings. The silence is resounding.
The silence from the rest of the nation; that's damning.
In any state with a functioning electorate there would have been an uproar years ago. There would have been investigations, hearings; and I like to think, impeachements.
Maybe not of the president, but of the AG, the SecDef, the head of the CIA. People other than Libby would be in jail.
But no, this is just one more straw, one more thing piled on the back of a camel who seems to have the strength of Atlas, able to hold the sky suspended.
Where's the fire? We fought a rebellion because we didn't think we were getting a fair shake. Because the King was doing things like holding prisoners incommunicado, haling them across the sea to face a picked jury, issuing general warrants, refusing to hear our pleas for redress.
Now?
We shrug our shoulders and let our employees ask limp-dicked questions to witnessess they don't swear in; because the President would take offense.
Good. The Congress, in it's role as overseer ought to be offending the president, esp. when he's pulling bait and switch operations. The politicians in this country work for us. We ought to be clogging the lines, filling the inboxes, standing in line to talk to them in their offices; queueing up to leave messages with their hometown aides.
To go with that we need to copy the e-mails to the leadership (both general, and committee).
Because if we don't get off our asses now, someone is going to hand them to us later, and our kids (or grandkids, or God forbid, our great-grandkids) are going to be taking the streets in arms.
Hyperbolic? I don't know anymore. Mercernaries are being contracted to fight drug war. The FBI has issued unknown numbers ofgeneral warrants NSLs, performed unknown secret searches.
The President has admitted to an ongoing practice of breaking the law. He boasts that he won't stop. To add insults to his injuries Congress seems to be planning to immunize the telcoms who made his trammelling of the law possible.
At which point; what point laws? Why not just make it official... the president gets to do what he wants, and the people can just suck it up.
I'm tired of people pointing at what I write and praising it. So fucking what?
I'm not so tired I'll stop. I'm not so fed up I'll no longer write my congressman, my senators, etc., but it sure seems pointless.
Because being told we have a president who is lying to everyone, and doing whatever he pleases, and the law be damned is just one more petty scandal to mention at the water cooler today, and worry about whether the damned Yankees will make the world series, or the Steelers will beat the spread will be the topic tomorrow.
Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, and all those guys who pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honors in the protest of what they saw as tyranny ought to be spinning in their graves.
Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations I duoubt anyone was really surprised.
There's lots of hand-wringing, of people pretending outrage. Why do I say pretending? Because this isn't news. For it to be news it would have to be new, unexpected.
It's not. It's, at most, a variation on a theme. I know this because I've been bitching about this theme for a long time.
Raise your hand if this isn't something you didn't already believe was happening.
And that's the crime here. No one seems to give a shit. The rah-rah crowd are happy. They believe in torture, and, so far as I can tell they support all the rest of the authoritarian trappings. The silence is resounding.
The silence from the rest of the nation; that's damning.
In any state with a functioning electorate there would have been an uproar years ago. There would have been investigations, hearings; and I like to think, impeachements.
Maybe not of the president, but of the AG, the SecDef, the head of the CIA. People other than Libby would be in jail.
But no, this is just one more straw, one more thing piled on the back of a camel who seems to have the strength of Atlas, able to hold the sky suspended.
Where's the fire? We fought a rebellion because we didn't think we were getting a fair shake. Because the King was doing things like holding prisoners incommunicado, haling them across the sea to face a picked jury, issuing general warrants, refusing to hear our pleas for redress.
Now?
We shrug our shoulders and let our employees ask limp-dicked questions to witnessess they don't swear in; because the President would take offense.
Good. The Congress, in it's role as overseer ought to be offending the president, esp. when he's pulling bait and switch operations. The politicians in this country work for us. We ought to be clogging the lines, filling the inboxes, standing in line to talk to them in their offices; queueing up to leave messages with their hometown aides.
To go with that we need to copy the e-mails to the leadership (both general, and committee).
Because if we don't get off our asses now, someone is going to hand them to us later, and our kids (or grandkids, or God forbid, our great-grandkids) are going to be taking the streets in arms.
Hyperbolic? I don't know anymore. Mercernaries are being contracted to fight drug war. The FBI has issued unknown numbers of
The President has admitted to an ongoing practice of breaking the law. He boasts that he won't stop. To add insults to his injuries Congress seems to be planning to immunize the telcoms who made his trammelling of the law possible.
At which point; what point laws? Why not just make it official... the president gets to do what he wants, and the people can just suck it up.
I'm tired of people pointing at what I write and praising it. So fucking what?
I'm not so tired I'll stop. I'm not so fed up I'll no longer write my congressman, my senators, etc., but it sure seems pointless.
Because being told we have a president who is lying to everyone, and doing whatever he pleases, and the law be damned is just one more petty scandal to mention at the water cooler today, and worry about whether the damned Yankees will make the world series, or the Steelers will beat the spread will be the topic tomorrow.
Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, and all those guys who pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honors in the protest of what they saw as tyranny ought to be spinning in their graves.
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no subject
Date: 2007-10-04 09:28 pm (UTC)Which I've done, and did just now...sorry about that. Your remarks were still more meaningful than anything I can produce right now. I try and I just sputter with rage and harbor the kinds of thoughts that would likely get me a visit from men in black suits and sunglasses if I ever printed them. I hate it.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-04 09:34 pm (UTC)It's just that lots of the time it seems that's all that happens.
I don't think about the men in black suits. If I did that, I'd never write anything. I just hope, should they ever come for me, that a big ruckus comes of it.
TK
no subject
Date: 2007-10-04 09:47 pm (UTC)>no longer write my congressman, my senators, etc.,
>but it sure seems pointless.
A good part of public apathy is that the extent of the destruction of our democracy is continuously covered up by the corporate media. Web junkies know the truth; people who get their news from Fox, CNN, and the New York Times get a comic book view of the world.
It does seem hopeless and pointless, but we have no choice but to try and get the word out, bit by bit, blog by blog.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-05 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-05 02:09 am (UTC)"First they came for...."
"You can fool all of the people some of the time...."
"FYJIGM" (Writing this out in full, as "Fuck you, Jack, I've got mine" is difficult because I'm of a generation & social class in which [sexual] obscenities have always been prohibited in civil conversation -- though males may be permitted an occasional bit of [religious/blasphemous] profanity.)
"One of the glories of being human is that we can learn from the mistakes of others. One of the tragedies of it is that we so rarely do that."
"The American People are remarkably undemonstrative, and sometimes so slow on the up-take that they're an election or two behind in expressing their feelings, but so far they've generally done a pretty good job."
Okay, I made the last two up myself (I think, though certainly out of cloth woven by others) and the last one definitely Needs Work because "...so far..." doesn't adequately convey my growing doubts and fears.
By Nature, I'm an optimistic kind of person (even though, since the end of childhood -- which I pinpoint as some instant while walking alone in the rain in the neighborhood of our apartment in Detroit on the evening of December 7th, 1941 (12-year-olds tend to be a bit Dramatic, you know/,/ /a/n/d/ /s/o/m/e/ /o/f/ /u/s/ /n/e/v/e/r/ /g/r/o/w/ /o/u/t/ /o/f/ /i/t/) -- I've cultivated a veneer of Pessimism, on the theory that it's better to be pleasantly surprised by the way things actually turn out than to be disappointed.
I'd almost like to think that my present feelings and attitudes are the result of that pseudo-pessimism or the kind of senile paranoia that so often afflicts people approaching old age -- that would be a personal tragedy, but not a National one -- but the facts are too clear, and have been pointed out by too many younger and not-irrationally-paranoid observers. My country has, in the past ten years, taken at least four major steps along the path towards Authoritarianism, the same path followed by Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, and Maoist China in (fairly) recent years. The general long-term failure of Authoritarianism in the modern world suggests to me that our "let's try it again; maybe it'll work this time" approach is highly unwise, even though something like half of the American populace seems to have been persuaded to accept it, and almost a third actively support it.
And regrettably, very few of our Legislators -- of _any_ political party -- (you know, the people we hire to keep track of stuff like that) have taken serious steps to oppose (or even call attention to) these radical changes in the American system of Governance.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-05 02:15 am (UTC)A whole lot of people I can't name who've not done more than talk about it.
Is there a lot of real outrage out there. Yeah, but where is the translation to action? The newspapers; weak as they have been, have been putting this out. It can't all be the Feinstein's of the world denying anyone has talked to them.
Which makes me think the outrage has been kept home.
And I'm probably over-reacting. Years of bitching about it, and seeing nothing happen, or worse, seeing people praise things which make it worse.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-05 02:21 am (UTC)It sounded briefly like you were deploying the "foolish effete liberals are irresolute, but I'm an authentic hard-core tough guy" meme. I apologize for thinking so. I was unfair.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-05 02:46 am (UTC)It's good to keep each other honest.
TK
no subject
Date: 2007-10-05 04:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-05 04:47 pm (UTC)And here I thought part of solving a problem was admitting/identifying that there is one.
She then went on about liberals bitching and moaning and not offering up real solutions, while true patriots were doing something, like her child, who had just enlisted in the Navy.
In my defense, she played the military service card first. So I played mine. And it isn’t often I play the female combat vet card.
She stopped “speaking” to me. It’s not like she went offline. She responded to posts around mine, threads that went on for quite a while, but me: nothing. I suddenly didn’t exist.
But you’re right, Terry. The other night I was talking to my son about the Jena Six (they’re reading about it in social studies). We covered a lot of territory, the KKK, lynching, and so on. My son has an innate sense of fairness. For the longest time, he couldn’t understand why there hadn’t been a woman president or an African American president.
We talked about racism and why it just doesn't go away when you pass laws, how hard it is to change deep-seated beliefs, and why sometimes good people stay silent out of fear.
That silence from the rest of the nation--I sometimes feel it’s us, holding our collective breath, waiting, hoping, wishing, for the remaining days of this administration to pass with the least amount of harm. Just wait for Bush and his cronies to leave office, and then everything will be okay.
But I’m not sure it will be. Waiting, hoping, wishing isn’t enough.
Thank you, Terry. I sometimes think, eh, another form response from Norm Coleman (they’re so wishy-washy)--what good does it do? But if nothing else, it’s something I can show my son, that his mom doesn’t stay silent out of fear.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-05 05:29 pm (UTC)I used to. I refrained from the use of impeach for a long time. And I saw that restraint used to make things worse. Silence = Death. I remember when that came out; it was simple, and true.
At present, I think it's the same problem. A linger death of the nation's soul. The folks running the Republican Party today, are a cancer. They have a vision for the future which I no longer thing merely ill-thought, and short-sighted. I've come to the conclusion they know what they want, and are working to get it.
They have the bully-pulpit. They have the advantage of being the top-crust in a system which pretends we don't have class. The opinion makers, are convinced they know more than the little people. It's what justifies their paychecks, and the perks of place.
So those of us in the trenches, fighting to make the rest of the public care as much as we do; trying to sway the minds of those who are (God knows why) afraid to stand up to the bullies of the right (I say God knows why, because all they have to do it look at the polls and ignore the pundits; but they do exactly the opposite).
Which, added to the false balance of the present press, makes it possible for the great body of the people to think these questions are ones where there are two sides.
That FISA being violated is a difficult question. It isn't, it's specifically prohibits what was done.
That torture is a valid, useful; and acceptable means of getting information.
That "we are fighting them there, so we won't have to fight them here."
And all the other lies, obfuscations and bullshit we've been handed.
Feinstien says she's "heard nothing from her constituents". Which her staffers deny. So I had to send copies to the leadership.
The Democratic Party refused to, fully, support their candidate in Conneticut, so they are now a majority held hostage.
McCain didn't have the moral courage to abstain from supporting either Kerry or Bush. This after the Bush campaign smeared his service in one election, and was doing the same to Kerry. No, because he thought knuckling under would keep/get him favor he kissed Bush onstage. Had he supported Kerry; odds are Kerry would have won, but that would have prevented him from running (he'd probably have to waitfor eight years to run, and "the base" wouldn't vote for him after that).
Did he use the brownie points that should have garnered him? No. He worked to make the "anti-torture" amendment with his name on it more toothless than it was at first. His position with, "the base" shot. They don't like 'wimps" and he caved to Bush.
That's the part which gets me. Why is Bush so damned sacred? How is it this guy, with an approval rating in the gutter can get away with telling congress to pound sand. His only vetoes have been on things the country, as a whole wants; but the Senate lets his cronies stop everything from moving forward, and doesn't even make them do it in public.
I'll stop now. I'm just ranting.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-05 06:56 pm (UTC)The problem is...
Date: 2007-10-06 06:46 am (UTC)I've tried to get you to refine your argument, and you prefer to call names and bask in moral superiority.
So for those who are willing to think, I lay out my side of the argument here (http://karl-lembke.livejournal.com/159576.html).