Torture and profiling in this doomed age of idiocy

emilyk said:
September 29th, 2006 at 1:38 pm e

Are you being sarcastic or are you really saying torture doesn’t bother you until it happens to you? I say until, not unless, because as long as it is allowed to happen to anyone the chances of it happening to you go up, I believe. [...]

The existence of torture - the act itself - doesn’t bother me. In the bigger view, with babies in trash cans, women and children being sold into sexual slavery, planes flying into buildings, women’s clitorises being forcibly removed… torture falls right in line with all of humanities other fun past times.

I do not endorse torture. It’s brutal, inhumane and not particularly effective. You put electrodes on my scrotum and I’ll tell you everything you want to hear. Just don’t flip that switch.

I’m not surprised, but fully disappointed by the lack of a nationwide primal scream against this legislation and behavior. The same population turned into rabid monkeys, hurling shit at our leaders when they tried to eliminate social security… but eh. What’s a little torture?

Also, remember that an act of torture has inspired over 2000 years of glorification of the act. Jesus was tortured (or murdered very very very slowly) and Christians of all manner gather world wide every Sunday to say “Jesus was crucified, died and was buried… then rose again.” It’s this Messianic understanding of torture that I think makes some (very dense) people ok with it.

“What? So what if we are torturing? My Lord and Savior was tortured to DEATH! A little simulated drowning never hurt anyone.”

inre: me being tortured… doesn’t concern me. Especially when requirement #1 to get into these torture centers is to be a Muslim. Or at least be easily confused with one. Though it does make me think twice about this beard I’m growing…

But I did get a mass email that caused me to almost snap my laptop in half over my knee. I’ll give you a little cut and paste job of it…

Do you remember?

-1968 Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by
a. Superman
b. Jay Leno
c. Harry Potter
d.Muslim male extremist between the ages of 17 and 40

1. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics , athletes were kidnapped and massacred by
a. Olga Corbett
b. Sitting Bull
c. Arnold Schwarzenegger
d.Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

2. In 1979,the US embassy in Iran was taken over by:
a. Lost Norwegians
b. Elvis
c. A tour bus full of 80-year-old women
d.Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

You get the idea. It goes on for 13 more points, including stuff like the USS Cole, the London and Madrid attacks, etc. It was a pro-profiling chain-letter. Sign on, make a wish and pass along to eight of your friends in five seconds or else your going to die of a horrible case of the coodies.

This shows me how little our government has done to articulate (to us, and itself) exactly who we and what we fight for. It leads to people like Cat Stevens getting blocked out of the US. Even worse, it sets us back and disengenders another slew of Muslims within the population… thus making more terrorists.

Anti-Islamic sentiment makes Osama happy. So does torture. We’re proving him right in the eyes of Muslims around the world. Molding ourselves into the imperialistic, insensitive, Muhammad hating bully bin Laden said we were.

We’re not fighting for the end of days or the preservation of civilization. That’s comic-book bullshit the White House tries to peddle to the same people that signed on to the above email. How gung-ho and how wrong. We’re fighting for the common sense of moderate Muslims to come through, and to encourage them to stand up and shun the extremists among them.

Torture and profiling don’t help. It only adds to the army that’s determined to destroy us.

Evil Genius & Five Years Later

This is beyond me.

The Republican Party is displaying a fearless killer instinct that borders on the inhumane. No, not even rabid monkeys treat their own this poorly.

In an extraordinary pre-emptive announcement, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has said it will concede Rhode Island to the Democrats should Stephen Laffey, the mayor of Cranston, defeat Mr. Chafee in the primary. Citing poll data, Republican leaders said they saw no way someone as conservative as Mr. Laffey could win in a state as Democratic as this; as it is, they are increasingly worried about Mr. Chafee’s hopes in a general election.

We’re back to the money of politics, and how damn well the Elephants can send greenbacks to the right state. But to be willing to withdraw support from a hard-right candidate? That’s disingenuous and robs the people of a fair election. Give me a break

—

I’d be ill advised to set this day’s blog aside for politics alone. No links for this one.

Five years ago, with a mono-induced 102 fever and a fair dose of Vicodin, I swore I was watching a bad movie. That was the only conclusion I could reach from staring at my TV. “This isn’t real.”

And it wasn’t real. Even when my mom told me she heard the planes fly overhead at the bagel shop and then calmly went to work - it wasn’t real. The panic I felt until she came home, that wasn’t real. Even when I smelled it the next morning, and all the cars had a shade of gray on top, it wasn’t real.

My brain functions on logic, and I can’t find a reason… I’m waiting for the curtains to come up and the show to be over, and we can all go back to home as we knew it. That massive tomb, the shell of what used to be, I’ll visit it today. And on my way there, I’ll hope to get off the R train and find the towers standing like they were on September 10th, 2001.

During my summer abroad, people brought up this day many times, and got no more than three words from me. I wish I could find a way to express to them what these past five years have been like. The feeling has faded, sure. But when the train makes an unexpected stop, when you hear a plane fly too close… it’s there. It’ll never leave, no matter where I am.

And the one thing that might give peace to those we lost, and closure to their families, has not come. For all the talk of being the party of security, bin Laden is still out there. For that, anger is expected - no matter what your political loyalties may be.

Especially after this horse shit.

I taste bile.