SAVAGERY and the Immoral right

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S

Sun, 20 Mar 2005 12:55:06 -0800 (PST)

Re: [GranniesAgainstGeorge] SAVAGERY and the Immoral right

 

 

d <d.... wrote:

 

The words " bitter " , " disappointed " and mean spirited are just a few

adjectives that can hardly describe her meaness. Hilter would've loved

her!

 

 

 

> http://makethemaccountable.com/podvin/more/050314_Savagery.htm

 

 

 

 

> SAVAGERY

>

> By David Podvin

>

> Ann Coulter is not merely eighty pounds of toxic sewage

wrapped in six feet of reptile skin - she is the vicious ghoul that

remains after conservatism has been scrubbed of its camouflage.

Satan's concubine has been vocal in her belief that torturing anyone

identified as the enemy is good, and that torturing them using the

most excruciating techniques is better. Coulter is not alone in the

desire to feast on human suffering. Although she is considerably less

circumspect than other right wingers, it is instructive that not one

prominent conservative has repudiated her.

>

> Invoking God and country, the Confederates who currently run

the United States are striving to make Andersonville a global

phenomenon. Since 9/11, Republicans have dispatched domestic agents

and foreign surrogates to torture countless people on various

continents. Unsurprisingly, the reprobates have not been content to

torment their prey physically. Conservatives are implementing a policy

to humiliate other human beings, shaming their victims in the vilest

ways imaginable, apparently oblivious that the true shame of this

outrage is being inflicted upon the United States. Our own pious

moralists have disgraced America in the eyes of everyone who does not

view savagery as a virtue.

>

> Republicans say that world opinion is irrelevant, and to

this limited extent they are correct: if every other nation approved

of torture, it would still be totally indefensible. Even when

operating under the diminished ethical standards of a conservative

administration, simple decency dictates that torture must be

repudiated. Sometimes killing people is unavoidable, but attaching

electrical wires to their testicles is always avoidable. Such behavior

is perverse and craven, as are those who authorize it.

>

> America's current policymaker was a prodigy at pain

implementation. George W. Bush began his highly successful career in

sadism by exploding frogs with firecrackers.[1] He soon advanced to

shooting his siblings with bb guns,[2] evolved to tormenting

fraternity pledges at Yale,[3] and then progressed to taunting

prisoners[4] as they were being lethally injected. The former Texas

governor has now graduated to terrorizing civilians from Port au

Prince to Baghdad and beyond. Mr. Bush has always delighted in

imposing despair, and as the Leader Of The Free World he possesses

carte blanche to satisfy his voracious hunger for harming others.

>

> Bush's appetite for destruction has earned him the abiding

respect of motorcycle gangs and religious conservatives alike. There

is no discernible outrage from William Bennett when civilians are

kidnapped and subjected to grotesque forms of persecution. There is no

indignation from Jerry Falwell when children are raped as an incentive

for their parents to become more cooperative. There is no call for

impeachment from Henry Hyde when the commander-in-chief violates the

Constitution by sanctioning behavior that replicates the worst of

Joseph Mengele. And when innocent people who have been abused are

finally freed from their nightmare, there is no demand for a special

prosecutor from Tom DeLay.

>

> The entire scenario reeks of iniquity, especially the

connivance of farming out torture victims to Third World regimes for

the purposes of skirting American law and creating plausible

deniability. In at least one case the revealing result was the

resurrection of auto-da-fé, the Inquisitional custom of disciplining

interrogation subjects who provide disappointing answers by burning

them at the stake. Five centuries have passed since the evangelistic

ministry of Tomás de Torquemada, but his spirit still infuses

fundamentalists everywhere.

>

> Regardless of the religion, those who discern the voice of

God have always been crazier than Limbaugh rats. Osama bin Laden hears

Allah telling him to torture and kill. George W. Bush hears Jesus

Christ telling him to do the same. Their personal rivalry is not good

versus evil - it is debauched versus depraved.

>

> In theory, torture is the kind of issue that religion exists

to confront rather than promulgate, man's inhumanity to man being a

recurring gripe among theologians. Scriptural scholars will aver that

the Sermon on the Mount contains relatively few positive references to

barbecuing thy tethered foe. Alas, the clerics of America are so busy

combating simulated immorality on television that they have no time

left to oppose the real thing.

>

> The Bush administration has provided an abundance of actual

villainy that merits condemnation. Using electronic rib-spreaders to

collapse human chests may seem like reasonable conduct to Nazis or

Klingons, but Americans really should adhere to a higher standard of

conduct, and when doing so we must not congratulate ourselves for

lacking malevolence. Absence of malice is not something about which

civilized people feel compelled to gloat.

>

> Terrorist degenerates represent a real threat to the United

States, but the more imminent danger is posed by conservative

degenerates who believe that vanquishing bin Laden requires emulating

him. When Joe Lieberman insisted that the abominations perpetrated by

Americans at Abu Ghraib did not require an apology because the other

side never apologized for 9/11, he was expressing the right wing

fondness for embracing the lowest ethical denominator. Left to their

own designs, Republicans and their fellow travelers would have America

oppose al Qaida by becoming just like al Qaida.

>

> Tragically, conservatives have been left to their own

designs. Long ago, Democrats excoriated Richard Nixon about the

unplanned atrocity at My Lai. Now, George W. Bush routinely commits

premeditated atrocities while the opposition party cowers. The issue

of torture is one on which liberal leaders should be pressured to take

a confrontational stand.

>

> It is not such an intrepid stand: Democratic politicians

should simply say that torture is intolerable and therefore they will

not tolerate it. On the bravery scale of one to ten (one being Alan

Colmes, ten being Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) that stance rates about

a two. Since the Democrats aren't winning anyway, they might as well

take the plunge and belatedly feign decency. Acting moral might even

yield political dividends. Being gutless certainly hasn't.

>

> And if after hearing a vigorous debate the American people

opt to support the Republican policy of behaving as marauders, so be

it. The United States is a struggling experiment in democracy, not a

utopian paradise populated by moral titans. All that people of good

will can do is make a sincere effort to stop the insanity.

>

> Meanwhile, people of bad will are continuing to torture

humans while brandishing Old Glory. This macabre version of patriotism

is an approach that conservatives apparently believe honors the

Founding Fathers' original intent. The right wing is errant yet again,

but being delusional is a way of life for these guys.

>

> When Coulter recently received a standing ovation from the

Conservative Political Action Committee, it reaffirmed that those who

attended - Bush administration big shots, congressional leaders, media

elitists, and right wing activists - enthusiastically embrace her

moonstruck worldview. Like her, they consider liberals to be enemies

of the state. Like her, they believe that it is virtuous to torture

enemies of the state.

>

> Liberal opposition to torture is therefore not entirely

altruistic. The great unspoken question involves chronology rather

than morality: given that conservatives believe torture is justified

abroad, when will they institutionalize its use at home? Supreme Court

Justice Antonin Scalia has already endorsed the constitutionality of

executing innocent people to eliminate time-consuming appeals that are

preventing the judiciary from functioning smoothly. How great a leap

is it to endorse the constitutionality of torturing American

dissidents whom right wingers perceive are preventing society from

functioning smoothly? Is it a leap at all?

>

> Thus far, foreign nationals are the enemies who have been

systematically tortured by conservatives, but it would be recklessly

naïve to assume that Republican depravity honors the water's edge.

Those liberals who continue to inhale the intoxicant of bipartisanship

had best sober up because Guantanamo beckons.

>

> http://makethemaccountable.com/podvin/more/050314_Savagery.htm

>

>