Bush and Cheney are wildly successful...because Americans now think torture is OK

Khmer Rouge waterboarding equipment (Wiki Commons)

Much has been written lately about the high degree of correlation between pro-fetus advocates and those in favor of capital punishment. One rather wry--and totally frightening--humorist recently wrote quite a lengthy piece on the subject. He noted that, among conservatives, it’s supposed to be murder to end a pregnancy, preventing--for example--a future juvenile delinquent from having a chance at life. But the same people think it's totally OK to put a juvenile delinquent to death after he has committed murder. One has to wonder how they decide which killings are murder and which are...hmmm....justice?

1) End pregnancy: Murder.

2) Kill neighbor: Murder. 

3) Kill human who killed neighbor: Not murder.

And yet, in cases two and three, an adult is dead. One could argue case one--and we do--but the fact is, there is a quantitative difference between ending a pregnancy (particularly in the first term, when many pregnancies end themselves) and putting a sentient human being to death for crimes our very fallible legal system says he or she probably committed.  Emphasis on probably; in jurisprudence, there are no certainties. None. Not even with a confession; many of those have been proven bogus--extracted by torture or given due to mental incapacity or instability.

The humorist was right on target; no matter the outcome, it is ludicrous and completely senseless to simultaneously believe that it is murder to end a pregnancy involving a potential human being but not murder to end the life of a human being who is a lot more than a potential human being; who IS a human being, and not an embryo or a fetus. It’s nuts. Either condone both pregnancy termination and capital punishment, or neither, or your inconsistencies will reveal your inability to think, not to mention your inability to empathize with other living, breathing humans. Nor to understand that institutions invented by humans--such as the court system and--gasp!--even churches are fallible.

On the heels of our national debate about life and when it starts and what is and is not murder, occasioned most recently by the murder of Dr. Tiller, comes the news that we are a bloodthirsty and callous nation at heart.

This morning's news revealed that our national love of the dark side has expanded beyond the approximately 45 percent of the population that could logically be called conservatives (Republicans, pro-fetus advocates and so on.) The numbers in a recent Associated Press-GfK survey contend that 52 percent of people in the U.S. say “torture can be at least sometimes justified to obtain information about terrorist activities from suspects, an increase from 38 percent in 2005 when the AP last asked the question.”

Bush and Cheney were successful. They turned the United States from being a compassionate, law-abiding, spiritually expansive nation into one that is inhumane more than it is humane and spiritually bankrupt. It took them eight years, but by gum, they did it! If they hadn’t stolen the 2004 election, maybe the 2005 number would have been lower than 38 percent, or at least, one might think so. It is clear that even some formerly sensible liberals, who would logically never have condoned torture for any reason, have joined this despicable, traitorous group.

Asking any ethical question in the face of such information is daunting, and very probably an exercise in futility. I know I’m going to wonder, at every gathering I attend, whether more than half the people surrounding me are no better than Dick Cheney wannabes, and what it would take for them to torture someone…or run over my cat for fun.

I don’t know how to ask any ethical questions in the hour after reading that horrific statistic.

But I do know a few other things.

• First, I know that if you are among that 52 percent, perhaps you’d like to move to Mali, or some other backwater where your inhumanity may go unnoticed.
• Second, I know that there is no excuse whatsoever for the remaining 48 percent of decent, thoughtful, compassionate, humane and sensible human beings to stop discussing the perfidy of George Bush and Dick Cheney every chance they get.

Indeed, an AHA moment! I have found an ethical question to ask: Is it ethical for any of that 48 percent of decent Americans to allow the discussion concerning the disaster that was the Bush administration to cease?

You know my answer.

Regarding the photo above:

The vicious Khmer Rouge in Cambodia used this apparatus in which prisoners' legs were shackled to a bar and wrists to brackets, keeping them in place while water from the blue can was poured over their faces in a simulated--or occasionally real--drowning.