The Torture Report Has Motivated a Few Insights — Take William Rivers Pitts — on Our Shared Ability to Nourish the Paranoia of American Cowardice

12 December 2014

For the idealistic cynics among us, the reaction to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s torture report has been occasionally uplifting

Apparently a handful of Americans recognize that being viciously yellow-bellied is not what we thought the nation stood for.

Take William Rivers Pitt:

Back in August, President Obama - who saw this report and all of its grisly details coming a mile away - let drop the least anonymous penny in history: "We tortured some folks."

"And, you know, it's important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. A lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots, but having said all that, we did some things that were wrong."

Those who tortured are patriots. Those who call it wrong are sanctimonious.

That, right there, is why this whole nightmare came to be.

Not because of President Obama, but because of the soft-pedal smooshy attitude he so clearly expressed.

This level of institutionalized cowardice and knee-jerk ass-covering is exactly and precisely what allows sociopaths in positions of unimaginable power to run wild and bathe in the tears, blood and viscera of their victims.

Professor-Colonel Andrew Bacevich and I agree with Mr. Pitt.

America, for the most part, is run by sociopaths and people with pronounced tendencies in that direction

Sociopathic, in this political instance, is loosely another name for aggressively oriented, power-seeking narcissism.

These physically embodied perversions of soul are frequently people, who have invented some diseased social model — and imagined existential threats to it — to lend themselves a theatrical stage upon which to cavort in naked self-illumination. Parading the stiffened weenie, so to speak.

You know, the Dick Cheney type. Who — in addition to speaking interminably from his grousing professional grave — seems to have planted his metaphorical deadly sperm up the ruminating intestinal tract of virtually everyone in elitely powerful positions of American national government.

If I have to name names, you have not been paying attention to their ejaculating torture report blowback.

In fairness to the former Vice President, he is merely one manifestation of a longer-standing stream of American behavior.

I use him as symbolizing caricature because he is such an unabashed embodiment of the imperialistic totalitarian principle. Virtually alone among his innumerable ilk, he does not hide behind misleading camouflage. There is integrity in that.

The moral? — Too few genuine American patriots and too many pretend ones

Embarrassingly, our squishily quaking public seems to agree with America’s war criminals that torture is good. A sad state of affairs for a once justifiably proud nation.

Wang Shang, writing for the People’s Republic of China’s Xinhua News Agency, drily noted that:

The hegemony it has exercised, the inquisition by torture it has practised, and the profound racial inequalities all point to the sheer hypocrisy of the United States as a defender of human rights.

On too many occasions, U.S. troops, upholding their proud American flags, invaded countries which stood no chance against their cutting-edge weapons, just in order to shed "the light of civilization" to every corner of the world.

It does not even need a discerning eye to see through that camouflage and realize that hegemony, instead of defending human rights, is the U.S. operating code.

[R]acial disparity still remains a major issue un-stabilizing the structure of American society.

[T]he American people are also distinctly divided by their bank balances, as the poor get poorer, the rich richer.

It irks me to be forced to concede that (totalitarian and equally hypocritical) China is correct on these points.

We long ago voluntarily ceded domestic manufacturing power to the PRC. After 9/11, we abandoned the moral high ground. What’s left?

Paranoia-inculcating leaders, and the quivering public that supports them, have damaged us. Perhaps beyond repair.

A short while from now, when torture report emissions have dwindled into dribbles, everything will go back to normal. We will resume unselfconsciously spreading our allegedly noble brilliance around the world with bullets, missiles and bombs — or whatever else is necessary to persuade other people of our superior status as messengers from an enlightened Heaven.

And — if you don’t agree with our raping advances — our governing Elite will kill, maim, imprison or (very likely) secretly torture you, until you pretend you do.

Business as “US dollars usual” is enough to make historically genuine American patriots puke.

That is both the power and weakness of the torture report. On the one hand, it shows us our potential for evil, thereby discouraging hubris. On the other, the recognition further encourages us to conceal our shortcomings from ourselves.

Guess which impulse is predictably going to win. Our adversaries are banking on it. Pun intended.

PeteFree.com

The Torture Report Has Motivated a Few Insights — Take William Rivers Pitts — on Our Shared Ability to Nourish the Paranoia of American Cowardice