Fury, wrath... urge to destroy.
Aug. 26th, 2004 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI travel to and fro in the Internet.
Sometimes I find things which irritate, some with anger, and occaisonally things which make me angry.
Yesterday I was at Washington Monthly and found
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_08/004572.php
It was in the irritation category. The topic started with the Schlessinger Report and moved to torture as a way to get information. You all know how I feel on that one.
Today I went back, to see what reply my comments had gotten.
Anger wasn't the half of it. I am coming down now, starting to lose the twitchy fingers and heaving stomach of adrenaline. I still want to smash things, to vent all the pent up energy of my fight response, but I'll get better. I'll drink some more coffee, eat some yogurt, maybe some chocolate pudding (breakfast of champions) and wish I could go out and work on the garden.
But I'm pissed.
Yes, I'm pissed at "Charlie" who got me worked up (but I told him off, go and read it. ctrl f and Terry K will get you in the neighborhood, if you don't want to read the first 130 odd posts, before I get involved. If you do that, scan up, a bit).
But I am more pissed off that such attitudes are so prevalent.
Saddened too. Not to hurt anyone's feelings, but Abu Ghraib was hard, because people I knew (well, with whom I felt the level of knowledge correspondence gives) said, mostly unknowing, that they thought me a monster, because interrogation must require torture.
And to have someone accuse me of being somehow lax, because I won't practice torture, well lets just say it's a good thing it was said at a remove.
Sometimes I find things which irritate, some with anger, and occaisonally things which make me angry.
Yesterday I was at Washington Monthly and found
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_08/004572.php
It was in the irritation category. The topic started with the Schlessinger Report and moved to torture as a way to get information. You all know how I feel on that one.
Today I went back, to see what reply my comments had gotten.
Anger wasn't the half of it. I am coming down now, starting to lose the twitchy fingers and heaving stomach of adrenaline. I still want to smash things, to vent all the pent up energy of my fight response, but I'll get better. I'll drink some more coffee, eat some yogurt, maybe some chocolate pudding (breakfast of champions) and wish I could go out and work on the garden.
But I'm pissed.
Yes, I'm pissed at "Charlie" who got me worked up (but I told him off, go and read it. ctrl f and Terry K will get you in the neighborhood, if you don't want to read the first 130 odd posts, before I get involved. If you do that, scan up, a bit).
But I am more pissed off that such attitudes are so prevalent.
Saddened too. Not to hurt anyone's feelings, but Abu Ghraib was hard, because people I knew (well, with whom I felt the level of knowledge correspondence gives) said, mostly unknowing, that they thought me a monster, because interrogation must require torture.
And to have someone accuse me of being somehow lax, because I won't practice torture, well lets just say it's a good thing it was said at a remove.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-27 12:59 am (UTC)Case in point: the movie Mississippi Burning, where a black FBI agent gets a Klan-affiated sherriff to cough up by threatening to castrate him. In the real story that the movie is based on, the FBI paid a few kilobucks to an informant to get the same information.
What? You want Hollywood movies to portray military interrogations (or whatever you call the situation where Angel beats up Merl to learn more about the Force Of Darkness Of The Week) more realistically? From the way you've described it on the Electrolite threads, it can take many hours or days for a man's desire as a soldier to keep military secrets to give way to his desire as a human being to talk to whoever is available to speak with. How are you going to show that process in a 42-minute TV show without making the target of interrogation look like a complete pushover?
PS: The people who hang out in the comment threads in the Washington Monthly blog are, shall we say, not like the people who hang out in the comment threads in Electrolite.