Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by taxwonk

I'm not so much pushing back on your view that we can and should be better than that, as I am arguing that right now, that view is losing and too many of the people we count on to support it are willing to throw it away in the name of security.

And what, pray tell, makes us better than any totalitarian state the minute we start setting our values aside? If we adopt the tactics of the evildoers, we cease to be different in the one way that matters to the person on the other end of the wire. The jolt doesn't hurt any less. It doesn't leave you any less scared every day that it might happen again. It does still leave you doing little else but figuring out to keep it from happening again. Because you really don't want it to happen again.

As long as we have one single sanctioned act of that kind of conduct, how are we better? Isn't America's true exceptionalism the fact that we alone view our rights to due process and fair play as organic to us as individuals? And if that is the touchstone of what makes us "different," what happens when we cease to be different?

In a sense, it isn't a fair comparison. Al Qaeda isn't a country and those who are part of it self-select for that, so there is a far less broad range of views, and a far more coherent ideology.

And that ideology is evil incarnate. I truly, seriously, mean that. Routine, intentional slaughter of civilians, for the purpose of slaughtering civilians. A medieval treatment of women. Torture and beheading of people simply for being westerners.

I will maintain that we as a nation are better than they, in part simply because we aspire to more. I say this without having any illusion as to the evil that has been done by and at the direction of Americans for many, many years.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Well, we are better than them, but in two senses. We are better morally, but we are also better in the sense of being more capable and having better tools and technology, so when we do have a moral screw up, we can screw up on a scale they, today, can only imagine.

This is true -- it is far more important that we actually be better.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Also, freedom comes from those who serve in our military, and the rest of us don't appreciate that.

I really wish someone would explain this mindset, because it applies to cops as well as soldiers. The willingness to completely overlook lots of awful, terrible shit because people who take these jobs do so knowing they are dangerous jobs just makes absolutely no sense to me.

TM

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I had the opportunity to learn how to do self-enemas with various substances.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

This is a pretty powerful piece.

https://paw.princeton.edu/issues/201...dex.xml?page=2

TM

I think a version of this ran in the WaPo recently as well.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

I really wish someone would explain this mindset, because it applies to cops as well as soldiers. The willingness to completely overlook lots of awful, terrible shit because people who take these jobs do so knowing they are dangerous jobs just makes absolutely no sense to me.

Many soldiers and veterans feel that that they have made huge sacrifices for which they were not adequately recognized or appreciated by the country. They also feel that they represented the country and lived a patriotism which other people have forgotten. Some of them take pride in the discipline and training they had, and contrast that to a civilian population which has gone soft and is incapable of rigor and commitment.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

In a sense, it isn't a fair comparison. Al Qaeda isn't a country and those who are part of it self-select for that, so there is a far less broad range of views, and a far more coherent ideology.

And that ideology is evil incarnate. I truly, seriously, mean that. Routine, intentional slaughter of civilians, for the purpose of slaughtering civilians. A medieval treatment of women. Torture and beheading of people simply for being westerners.

I will maintain that we as a nation are better than they, in part simply because we aspire to more. I say this without having any illusion as to the evil that has been done by and at the direction of Americans for many, many years.

We are better. So if we have to shock a dude's nuts to keep us all safe, no biggie.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

This.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Many soldiers and veterans feel that that they have made huge sacrifices for which they were not adequately recognized or appreciated by the country. They also feel that they represented the country and lived a patriotism which other people have forgotten. Some of them take pride in the discipline and training they had, and contrast that to a civilian population which has gone soft and is incapable of rigor and commitment.

This is part of our national hangover from Vietnam. Soldiers were blamed for policies that they did not create and crimes they did not commit.

During and after that, "Support Our Troops" became the rallying cry for many -- but was also used as a surrogate for "how dare you criticize the war?" This is one of many ways in which dissent was treated as anti-patriotic.

Bush, Rove, and Cheney advanced this to an art form. Criticize the war, criticize one soldier, and you are attacking all soldiers because you are a terror-loving blah blah blah. And they have pushed that into the mindset of many.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by taxwonk

To be brutally graphic, which for present purposes I choose to be. The means by which one can be anally fed and/or hydrated is fairly simple. Imagine a colonoscopy that goes even further. Since we are using "enhanced" medical techniques, the "doctor" who administers the procedure probably doesn't employ any anesthetic.

See. It's all really rather simple. Much more so than say, restraining someone for several hours a day while you feed them intravenously, in a freshly inserted line because, when you are trying to starve yourself, the fact that removing the line yourself might cause excess bleeding may not even bother you.

Forced feeding in the other direction can be pretty brutal too, and gets to the stomach through a much shorter route.

Oh, and if you're doing it for nutritional reasons, you probably don't use a blender to puree hummus, nuts and whatever else it was.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

We are better. So if we have to shock a dude's nuts to keep us all safe, no biggie.

Well, some of us are better.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

This.

This is a superb line:

"To Cruz and other Republicans still in office, the allegation that the Bush administration used torture had gone from outrageous smear to tired news without ever having passed through the stage of acceptable topic of discussion."

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

You guys can push back on my "we are better than they are" view all you want, but if you really challenge that view if the "they" we are talking about is al Qaeda (which is the genesis of the discussion, given the photo Icky posted), I'd be surprised.

Beinart was pushing back on both "better than them" and "better than that."

Clearly we're not better than that, even if we're better than them.

[taxwonk]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

In a sense, it isn't a fair comparison. Al Qaeda isn't a country and those who are part of it self-select for that, so there is a far less broad range of views, and a far more coherent ideology.

And that ideology is evil incarnate. I truly, seriously, mean that. Routine, intentional slaughter of civilians, for the purpose of slaughtering civilians. A medieval treatment of women. Torture and beheading of people simply for being westerners.

I will maintain that we as a nation are better than they, in part simply because we aspire to more. I say this without having any illusion as to the evil that has been done by and at the direction of Americans for many, many years.

That dog won't hunt.

While al-Qaeda is not a nation, it is a group that aspires to a national identity, a homeland, a society. What's more, the fact that they do not represent a particular nation is utterly irrelevant.

What's more, aspiration means nothing to a person being tortured. Some goals are not reachable. They can be an aspiration and claim legitimacy. Other goals, like, don't torture people, are easily changed behaviors. Aspiration is worth shit.

I'm not trying to draw a moral equivalence between the US and al-Qaeda or IS. I believe we are an inherently safer, less revisionist society. I am completely opposed to the very notion of a law based on the foundational tenets of any faith; God is for after, consensus, compromise, and sometimes, just backing down are for here.

But, we're still killing and raping people and shoving things up their ass.

[taxwonk]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

I really wish someone would explain this mindset, because it applies to cops as well as soldiers. The willingness to completely overlook lots of awful, terrible shit because people who take these jobs do so knowing they are dangerous jobs just makes absolutely no sense to me.

TM

That's because you're black and don't realize that the military and police are the only things standing between us and a world full of non-white people ready to tie us in painful positions for hours, waterboard us, rape our women, and worst of all, take our shit. I'll explain in more detail at the next Black Guys Who Are Okay Because They Are More Like Us meeting.