So, as you may have heard, we tortured upwards of 100 people to death in what appears to have turned out to be an effort to get someone to confess that al-Quiada was linked to Saddam Hussein, so that our leaders could channel our righteous anger over 9/11 into their clusterfuck. And many folks I read on these here internets are all, “This isn’t America. Why aren’t people outraged?”
Also, this past weekend, cops went into a Texas gay bar and put a guy in the hospital. The police expect us to believe that, in a gay bar in Texas, gay men were not terrified of them, but instead, ran up to them and started grabbing at them and groping them. In other words, it’s an obvious lie on its face. But even if it weren’t a lie, there’s no “it’s okay to try to kill a dude who playfully tries to grab your crotch” law.
To me, those seem like incidents that come from the same mind-set–that people in authority can do whatever the hell they want and the rest of us either take it or take their side.
And that’s American.
It’s not the American way, but it’s sure as hell an American way.
Because of that, I can’t feel that shocked outrage that may seem like a necessary response to this kind of stuff. What is there left to be shocked about?
I don’t know. It’s hard for me to even force myself to look at this nonsense long enough to say anything about it. I start to write and then I erase it and contemplate weeding my herbs, wondering when we’re going to get rain.
Some days I think our problems are so big and so soul deep that anyone who tries to figure out solutions to them is deluding herself.
You just have to stand against the stuff you can stand against as best as you are able.
What else can one person do in the face of that?
Filed under: America how can I write a holy litany in your silly moo
mind-set–that people in authority can do whatever the hell they want and the rest of us either take it or take their side
That’s not American. That’s human. Until bridgett and nm correct me I’m going to claim that “might makes right” is a quality present in most every human culture.
You should post links to this stuff.
It saves time.
I’m having a hard time finding a news source for your latest, crazy, unsubstantiated rumor.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/07/a-photo-from-the-fort-worth-police-attack.html
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/looking-in-rearview-mirror-by-digby.html
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=texas+gay+bar+police
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=torture+100+close+to+death
Yeah, that’s kinda what I figured. The Texas bar thing does look pretty crooked. We’ll see where the investigation goes, but to say he “fell down” is as cliche’d as it gets.
The 100 torture deaths had all the hallmarks of your usual hyperbole and half-truths.
Granted that the original source for all this is less-than objective. But even from them, the listing is of prisoners who have died while in custody. That includes those that died of natural causes, those that died as a result of injuries they incurred before arriving, those who died in accidents.
Hell, even one of the “Homicides” was because the guy died from head injury while escaping.
Some of them look shady and should be investigated.
So go with your axe-to-grind source, but at least don’t embelish what they say.
Aw, sweetie, I think that’s as close as you’ve ever come to saying I’m right. See? And didn’t it feel nice?
[...] Cat Pants » But We Are This WayPosted 8 hours [...]
So far, I’ve looked at the Army autopsy reports up to 2006 and the Navy to 2004. I don’t find 100 official homicide findings (more in the 40 or so range — but I haven’t reviewed the last 3-5 years of reports), but I do find an astonishing number of otherwise healthy Iraqi guys in their 20s and 30s who just up and die of previously undisclosed arteriosclerosis, tachycardia, and cardiomegaly that culminated in cardiac arrest. A statistically unlikely number, now that I think about it. I’m just saying. And so many of the “cause of death undetermined” cadavers have deep tissue trauma, scalp wounds, black eyes, and dislocated shoulders. I don’t know…I’m just wondering if maybe, just maybe, the Army coroner is reluctant to find death by homicide for anything short of a crushed trachea or shotgun blast to the chest.
I mean, I look at a lot of these kinds of records as a part of the research I do. These bodies are not just guys who have had a little oopsie on the way to the morgue. Even the ones who have died of so-called “natural causes” have bodies that have the marks of suffering on them. It doesn’t take a damn genius to figure out how they were treated before they died.
This is one of your best posts. You describe a Christian approach to politics – namely, that the problems are too much for us to control or solve, but we should still put our faith and our hands to work.
Furthermore, the ability to claim these sins as our own (“It’s not the American way, but it’s sure as hell an American way”) is the precedent to a corporate confession that would otherwise die under a “we-do-no-evil” brand of nationalism.