The Torture Culture

Gadzooks, another excellent analysis. You’re really resonating with me, and yes, I am a NO ONE and proud of it. Blessed are the NO ONES, for they shall…….hmmmm, shall what? I got it, they shall inherit scorn, indifference, ridicule, loneliness, despair and their reward for enduring all of this, when the SOMEONES are raptured from this rock, will be an unemployable, gene-altering toxic wasteland.

They call those TORTurous corporate lawsuits, SLAPPs, and they are diabolical, but what do we expect from such a diabolical system besides this?

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/petition/topic.aspx?topic=slapp

You know, if you look at the entirety of the ascent of Western Civilization, you can’t help but grok what this nut job recites in Shutter Island.

http://www.sodahead.com/living/god-loves-violence-why-else-would-there-be-so-much-of-it/question-890317/

God’s gift…His violence…God loves violence…Why else would there be so much of it? It’s in us. It comes out of us. It is what we do more naturally than we breathe. We wage war. We burn sacrifices. We pillage and tear at the flesh of our brothers. We fill great fields with our stinking dead. And why? To show Him that we’ve learned from His example…God gives us earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes. He gives us mountains that spew fire onto our heads. Oceans that swallow ships. He gives us nature, and nature is a smiling killer. He gives us disease so that in our death we believe He gave us orifices only so that we could feel our life bleed out of them. He gave us lust and fury and greed and our filthy hearts. So that we could wage violence in His honor. There is no moral order as pure as this storm we’ve just seen. There is no moral order at all. There is only this – can my violence conquer yours?

By the way, I’m a strong agnostic, so this is not an endorsement for the existence of God…it’s just some intellectual food for thought, is all.

I give Digby a lot of shit about the relentless and redundant re-hashing of Republican deconstruction – increasingly awkward after 2006, unjustifiable after Jan 20, 2009 – but the same persistence of hers is applied to a worthy cause in chronicling the US affinity to Tasers.

Torture and authoritarianism go together like iron glove and iron fist.

Greenwald is exactly right on the US obsessions with “HyperSuperMAXMore” torture-prisons. The permissiveness and not-really-unspoken encouragement to break the laws and strictures of custody to abuse inmates existed before Abu Ghraib, it was just exported. In an nation proud to enjoy pervasive Saturday Night show and Hollywood jokes about equally pervasive prison rape, it is pretty obvious that the sickness is neither recent nor an abberation.

Torture R’ US.

Hey Michele Reagan: Welcome to the Party.

Feel free to go here:

http://www.tfaforms.com/186974

And everyone else is encouraged to pay a visit, too.

Yep, as we have been saying for awhile, Welcome to the New Amerika.

Everything is on schedule, please move along.

It gets better.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/12/16/929377/-Geithner-Blocking-Legal-Help-For-Foreclosure-Victims

key paragraph from piece linked above –

“–In fact, the Treasury Secretary approved $7.6 billion in outlays to help states prevent foreclosures and modify mortgages, too. However, “…the rules dictate that funding cannot be used for legal aid, dramatically blunting the impact of the program.” ”

On an unrelated topic – I’ve been sharing Ian’s advice about getting out of the U.S. with some of the 20-somethings at my side job. I snapped out of my selfishness long enough to realize that someone young who will have children some day REALLY needs to leave even more than a geezer like me does. Good news is that they are listening.

Just wanted to let Ian know that the truth-talking you keep doing is helping people – probably more people than you will ever hear from.

I would never advocate violence, unless it was against defenseless Iraqis or Afghanis, for having terrorists in their wedding or funeral parties, of course. In that case, it’s ok, kill as many kids as you like, they’re terrorist sympathizers, after all.

Don’t forget Yemenis or young Afghani boys.

We were sued for asking too many questions,” said Reagan.

Suing someone who has done nothing wrong, putting them through all that, isn’t about stopping them from defaulting, it’s about sending a message: “this is what we do to people who dare to challenge us in even the smallest way.”

No, I think that the bank is suing the Reagans because the bank doesn’t have a good, non-self-incriminating answer. Because the Reagans are in Obama’s socioeconomic class, they can get some attention (oops!) but the bank doesn’t want this publicized. They would prefer the “rocket docket,” where they screw homeowners quickly and without any questions.

Welcome to the New Amerika……same as the Old Amerika, but now with new packaging and a regiment of steroids.

Just a few reminders of that glorious past.

http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/question/jan04.htm

This one is telling since it was perpetrated by two later esteemed WWII Generals, Eisenhower and MacArthur. In fact, MacArthur refused Hoovers’ orders to discontinue the campaign, and instead burned the Bonus Army camp to the ground. Nice touch.

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/snprelief4.htm

I could go on and on, the list of injustices and atrocities are seemingly endless, but it does go to show, the game plan is still the same, even though it’s got a new bob and a new weave.

Anon 525 –

It seems clear that Bradley Manning is being punished for daring to challenge the PTB. That’s the message they’re sending. They’re not torturing him for information, they’re just showing what happens to people who screw with the oligarchy/patriarchy. The next person who thinks about facilitating leaks will think about Manning in prison under horrible circumstances. It’s an effective bullying tactic.

Also, a lot of the “war on terror” is not just about attacking civil liberties, but about money. The people behind the full-body scanners are making a fortune – one of whom, not so coincidentally, is Michael Chertoff. Meanwhile, real security measures, such as scanning the containers that come into our ports, or using scanners that can “sniff” explosive residue, are not being discussed. Obviously there are no Obama/Bush cronies pushing these machines, or they’d be in every port and airport, respectively.

The “war on terror” has also given an excuse for the continuation of the military-industrial complex, again shoveling trillions of dollars into its maw.

It really is an amazing thing, this culture of fear, which allows the government to perpetrate torture and violence everywhere without much questioning by its citizens. No wonder after 9/11, Bush said he “hit the trifecta.”

It seems clear that Bradley Manning is being punished for daring to challenge the PTB. That’s the message they’re sending.

It’s not clear to me. Besides Greenwald, where is there any mention or description of what is being done to Manning? If the gov’t. is “sending a message,” they’re doing a really bad job of it because nobody is being told the message. The gov’t.’s message will be told when the prosecution makes its recommendation for sentencing, or when the judge(s) announces the sentence. “Life imprisonment without parole,” or some thing like that.

Nothing new to see here. In order to exploit “the labor factor,” political elites alternately appease the masses with some co-optation and intimidate them with punishment. It is simple stimulus response theory that is characteristic of behaviorism — bread and circuses” as positive reinforcement and pain infliction as negative reinforcement.

Political liberalism was supposed to tone this down, but never to replace it. Trotsky got it right. Until the workers take charge of their lives by taking charge, they will be at the mercy of the ruling elite because liberal bourgeoisie are never going to to more than talk about liberal ideals.

Liberal democracy the way it is configured is a co-optation device that encourages workers to think that they are in charge through the ballot box while it manipulates them with propaganda and actively discourages significant dissent through intimidation. The Freedom of Information Act has provided ample evidence that the authorities closely monitor dissent. There is also good reason to think that they act against those deemed dangerous, both to remove the perceived threat and to send a message, as Daniel Ellsberg has explained about his own case and others, and John Dean set forth in his book on the authoritarianism.

It’s totalitarianism lite.

The “war on terror” has also given an excuse for the continuation of the military-industrial complex, again shoveling trillions of dollars into its maw.

Business As Usual since the end of WWII, when the MICC* was originally set up — Private profits at Public expense.

*When Eisenhower was planning on giving his farewell address, he was going to call the military-industrial complex the military-industrial-congressional complex in order to point out congress’s role in keeping the money flowing to congressional districts for jobs from gov’t. contracts. His brother, Milton, is said to have talked him out of the ‘congressional’ part to make it more politically palatable. link

In this case, the message is not torture, but power.

Sounds like we’re in agreement (but in disagreement with Ian Welsh’s point), that Manning is not being tortured to send a message. As far as arresting and imprisoning him to send a message, um, yeah, the “message” is that it is illegal to break the law (leak classified gov’t. documents).

Ian Welsh’s post does not mention (overlooks?) the quite substantial message that is being sent to people in the gov’t.:

It is OK to commit crimes such as killing innocent civilians or aiding in the prostitution of young boys and then hiding that through the use of document classification — we will not investigate and you will not be prosecuted for these crimes, even if the documents become known to the public.

There is also good reason to think that they act against those deemed dangerous, both to remove the perceived threat and to send a message, as Daniel Ellsberg has explained about his own case and others

In a well-functioning judicial system both Ellsberg and Manning should be arrested and put on trial. There are laws against leaking classified documents. But in a well-functioning citizenry, the juries in those trials should find both leakers innocent by reason of civic whistle-blowing. Both men have made public crimes and gov’t. lying that would otherwise have remained hidden. The citizenry, in which the legitimate power of gov’t. resides, needs to send a message to those in government.

Spot on, Ian, and I have to agree also with many of the commenters here. I would add only one element, besides the aforementioned power and determination to wield that power for its own sake, and that is sadism. Torture is also about letting sadists run free, with the imprimatur of state authority to bolster them. All these elements of intimidation are on a continuum (as I’ve been saying for ages at the Cogblog, much to the chagrin of several of my fellow Cogbloggers). The Patriot Act loosed the hounds, the over-hyped “war on terror” keeps expanding their territory.

But in a well-functioning citizenry, the juries in those trials should find both leakers innocent by reason of civic whistle-blowing. Both men have made public crimes and gov’t. lying that would otherwise have remained hidden.

Earlier, I could not understand what it was that the torture of Manning could possibly extract from him. Now, there is a report that some people hope to show a conspiracy between Manning and Assange (h/t David Dayen at FDL):

Justice Department officials are trying to find out whether Mr. Assange encouraged or even helped the analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, to extract classified military and State Department files from a government computer system. If he did so, they believe they could charge him as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them.

“trying to find out” equals “put into restricted solitary confinement until Manning ‘confesses’ to the ‘conspiracy’,” apparently.

This shows where the laws on whistle-blowing need to be changed. Not only should the whistle-blowers not be charged (or charged and found innocent, if the prosecutors won’t listen), but also the people who classify the documented crimes should be charged with conspiracy to cover up the crimes.

Little correction of social injustices has ever been accomplished … especially in this country … without violence. And that’s the truth … and you don’t have to advocate it to recognize it. And I’ll also make the point that people who supposedly are “fighting” for positive change against the repressive plutocratic forces that be shouldn’t reflexively look down their noses at those who take violent shots back at these scumbag plutocrats that cowardly hide behind the system that they created while posturing as innocent bystanders as they wage war on the middle class and poor in this country by systematically culling our ranks so that they can buy their 3rd yacht and 5th vacation home. The folks that actually fight back have a fuck of a lot more courage than the plutocrats and a lot of these fucking morons who supposedly are “fighting” for change but spout such nonsensical bullshit such as “if you use violence to fight back against those that are violent to you, you become them”. No, you advocate immorality when you allow innocent people to be harmed for immoral means.

The unfortunate fact of the matter is … due to their system … there is damn near no other way to effectively make the plutocrats pay a price other than violence. They own the court system, the government, the wealth, and they don’t give a fuck about strikes becoz they’re not dependent upon our work anymore. Even in Europe, the huge strikes didn’t prevent the plutocrats from administering austerity measures on them thru their governmental puppets … and now we’ll find out if a few busted heads will. Becoz until they feel physically endangered, the sociopaths will keep immorally impoverishing people so that they can HAVE MORE. Their greed is insatiable, their “morality” malleable and, despite their impressive table manners and politeness, these are not decent people coz if they were they would have shown some empathy by now. There is no other way to stop them but to exact a price from them … and, unfortunately, there is little alternative but violence to extract that price. That’s just the way it is … and they’ve made it that way.

Z

This is an interesting review on the failure of Socialism to take root and flourish in the U.S. It indicts FDR, and rightfully so.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=specters_of_socialism

Had America’s socialist movement not been crushed between 1917 and 1920, what might have happened when the Depression galvanized the working class in the 1930s? We’ll never know. But Lipset and Marks are content to analyze the 1930s by stressing, correctly, the brilliant emasculation of the left by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Seducing labor leaders–including many of the more militant leaders of the brand-new Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)–and scrambling to co-opt socialists by propounding left-sounding programs, FDR prevented organized labor from linking up with the Socialist and Communist parties in the early 1930s. By 1936 the Socialist Party was all but dead, and the Communist Party was one of Roosevelt’s loudest supporters. (The authors quote CIO President John L. Lewis complaining that FDR was “carefully selecting my key lieutenants and appointing them to honorary posts… . He has his lackeys fawning upon and wining and dining many of my people. At proper intervals he has unveiled to them the glory of admission to the White House and permitted them to bask in his presence.”) Roosevelt, they write, used “conscious efforts to undercut left-wing radicals, to preserve capitalism.”

I watched “V for Vendetta” again last evening. The movie was made in 2006 and very much addresses today and this conversation by bringing Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 into the 21st century. 401 years have passed: Remember, remember the 5th of November…

i feel compelled to remind folks, and i’m sure most here know it; but the “torture culture” has been in full effect in this country. for decades. ask any young brown or black man in an urban neighborhood. ask any DFH pot dealer busted for moving a couple of ounces. “no one” cared that institutionalized rape, beatings, and torture have been part of our prisons for all the long length of the history of the War on (some) Drugs, and then some. because most of the people locked up and tortured in them were poor, not-white, and/or hippies.

all this attention to the fact that our government and leadership enjoys and relishes torture and sadism is the result of well-to-do white progressives suddenly realizing that they too are now targets. witness all the excitement that Assange has been “house arrested” and is spending his in-house arrest time on a fabulous resort estate, while the poor, enlisted guy who made Assange famous rots, for months on end, in solitary in a military prison in quantico, with no relief in sight. if our government and military had restrained itself, and only added foreigners and american muslims to this list of people being sadistically and needless tortured without purpose, i’m sure very few “important” and “serious” writers would’ve noticed. (ian is not in that group and has noticed for a long time, let me boilerplate that now)

the entire MIC of this country is headed by a bunch of sadists. theocratic, uneducated, willfully apocalyptic torturers who made Abu G and wedding bombings and Gitmo not only possible, but standard. and as was always predictable, the money is running out and now those techniques are beginning to be applied to comfortable, domestic white liberals in the american middle class. oh well, this is where “identity” politics always failed. now is when the privileged identities who believed if they just compromised enough on some issues (but not their own, gosh no!), and were civil enough with torturers at Village cocktail parties, finally realize that they can be tossed in the camps just like everybody else.

the nazis killed a bunch of german aryan liberals. the romans slaughtered plenty of roman citizens on the ‘wrong’ side of various civil wars. the chinese had a nice time eliminating “good” chinese citizens in the wake of that nation’s post colonial upheavals. this country? not special or different. hell, look to Mexico, right now. it’s not just “illegals” and “drug runners” getting cut down, as that experiment in democracy fails and gangsters take over that nation. it’s happening here, as well.

all this attention to the fact that our government and leadership enjoys and relishes torture and sadism is the result of well-to-do white progressives suddenly realizing that they too are now targets. witness all the excitement that Assange has been “house arrested” and is spending his in-house arrest time on a fabulous resort estate, while the poor, enlisted guy who made Assange famous rots, for months on end, in solitary in a military prison in quantico, with no relief in sight.

Excerpt of Assange’s (brief) public statement when he was released on bail:

During my time in solitary confinement in the bottom of a Victorian prison, I had time to reflect on the conditions of those people around the world also in solitary confinement, also on remand, in conditions that are more difficult than those faced by me. Those people also need your attention and support.

And your point is, anon2525? Your quoting Assange about his concern for other’s held against their will doesn’t undermine chicago dyke’s points, in the least.

That he is not self-obsessed, which appears to be the point that CD is making — that people are only concerned about people like themselves. “Speak for yourself and stop trying to tell me what I think,” is my reply. So, yes, it does undermine CD’s point. You have made a mistake in your reasoning and reading. If you find that CD’s point applies to you, then that is your self-determination.

Seven years and one day ago; it’s worse now.

Tony, fixing yourself works great, until you’re overpowered.

Some context for this post. It was written about the time Obama was signaling that he wanted to look forward, i.e. not prosecute Bush era torturers. This was in keeping with his earlier reneging on a promise to hold telecoms responsible for their part in illegal surveillance for six years after 9/11.

America had solid property law since the 1600s before there was an America. Almost every mortgage since about 2000 would fail any serious legal scrutiny. Post the bursting of the property bubble in August 2007, mortgage originating companies went bankrupt destroying or losing their paperwork, including deeds. Mortgages were traded multiple times between banks using a private electronic system called MERS which was set up to avoid fees to Property Registry Offices but which had not legal standing. This was important because these mortgages were bundled together into trusts. These trusts had time limits on their formation and once these deadlines passed they could not be modified, i.e. the mortgages inside could not be updated if they were defective (and almost all of them were). A mortgage comes basically in two parts: a deed and a promissory note. Iterations of CDO were written on the mortgages in these trusts. The CDO represented a scission or splitting of the deed from the promissory note. This created an unprecedented legal situation where investors had no legal standing with regard to the deed. Indeed they had only a splintered interest in the promissory note. At the same time, the holders of the deed had no legal standing with regard to the promissory note. The amount of ignoring black letter law during this period of foreclosure mania was simply astounding. What it showed was that the rich and corporations had one legal standard which was marked by impunity. And the rest of us had a legal standard out of Dickens.

Re the lambert/Ian exchange, I agree with z. The profound and pervasive violence that our ruling class of the rich and elites does to us is never called violence, and is almost always depicted as agentless: markets, natural law, etc., while any opposition to them is described as evil, unnatural and violent. Again this brings up the reality that revolutions are a response to violence and are principally violent because those in power will do almost anything to stay in power and keep their wealth and privileges.

Peter

The challenge from this old post is to show Ian that torture does work. A couple of sessions on the water-board should be enough to convince him to name his fellow travelers and answer any other questions truthfully that his interrogators might ask.

Yeah, just like torture broke all the resistance of all those accused of witchcraft in the 16th century to reveal the names all the demons that they had been copulating with.

Except that observing pathologies like Trump obviously has may be where myths of demonic possession originally came from.

I wonder how George Will’s doing these days.

Agree with Name Withheld above. Ian you are propagating utter nonsense and you loose your credibility with propaganda like this.

While reading through fake opinions with no links to any peer-reviewed empirical research may be considered torture, the opinions remain about as reliable as waterboarding for veracity.

Maybe if it’s repeated 180 times it’ll work.

Peter

The more mundane use of torture is and always has been effective.

No it hasn’t. Torture only gets you to get the person being tortured to say what you want them to say. It does NOT get you the truth, and never it did. Torture only has gotten its reputation for effectiveness because those in power love hearing what they already believed true confirmed, just like those investigating witchcraft wanted to hear confessions of copulation with demons. People who recanted their testimony “freely made under torture” were sent back for….more torture until they recanted their recantation.

Once more, you resist simple facts.

@Bruce

I and everyone else reading your comment now know what torturing an idea means along with the suffering and pain from reading your tortured prose.

Please stop it’s unbearable and I will do anything you demand to make it stop.

FYI, the torturer doesn’t need to value or recognise truth because it can be verified with investigation and the victim praised or punished depending on the outcome. In the old days a quick death was a reward for collaboration and a slow painful death was punishment for resistance.

Gee, Mommy, look! It’s a perfect storm of virtue-signaling. 🙂

I love that everyone can visualize what their perfect world would be like.

Everybody here would torture if they saw n other way to save their own child. Stop bullshitting yourselves.

It’s an ugly world, and you live in it.

Mr. Welsh keeps such nice company these days. 😛

Willy, you are the most relentless fool imaginable. It’s endlessly amusing to see you continue to embarrass yourself by your inability to comprehend anything I say.

Class clowns should at least be able to display some wit on occasion.

rc, the world is made ugly by the majority’s inability to understand, then control, the influences of minority sociopathy. Shouldn’t sociopathy be the target?

By first, educating them? Honestly, I don’t have that answer.

I am a former conservative from a conservative family who worked in a notoriously conservative business for a company packed with conservatives. I was physically made to compete and succeed. But because I couldn’t play the corporate game with all the corrupt unspoken rules, I lost. And painfully so (was slandered as a whistleblower, then workplace mobbed, if you need details. And no less than five others, very different from myself in personality and style, got theirs too. The one thing we all had in common – integrity).

I eventually came to learn, that hard way, that very few of my conservative cohorts actually believed what they were so loudly marching in step for. In hindsight, they all seemed to need some kind of corrupt authority to get behind, or more accurately, hide behind. Apparently, mediocrity knows well its place in a Darwinian social order, and will adapt itself well to cheating. If they cannot outthink or outwork their competition, cheating is the only avenue they have left for them to get ahead, for themselves and their families.

Sure, I could’ve “tortured” the leadership, tried to cut the head off that snake, so to speak. But as long as that culture was so totally fucked up, the “whacked” leader would have likely been replaced by somebody else just like them, another corrupt power player.

I’m here because I see the parallels between that world and the whole world as described here. And yes, I understand many of the ways that “liberal” or “progressive” cultures can themselves, become corrupt. I don’t have answers for that.

How does an experienced rational thinker (you?) combat a corrupt culture?

I have to go work now. Be back later.

@Willy

You say:

“By first, educating them? Honestly, I don’t have that answer.”

and

“And yes, I understand many of the ways that “liberal” or “progressive” cultures can themselves, become corrupt. I don’t have answers for that.”

So, clearly, you haven’t thought very deeply about any of this society-fixing stuff.

Could it be possible that you are too accustomed to aligning yourself with people who unrealistically virtue-bleat about how they would NEVER do anything violent (or even insensitive) to a bad guy?

Could it be that we are more animalistic as a species than you choose to believe?

Could it be that punishment might be the essential ingredient for controlling really bad guys?

Could it be that maybe you should spend less energy mocking those who ask you to address these very basic issues with a little honesty, a little realism, before posturing as some kind of lazy savant, and more energy trying to refine your plans for the future of mankind in a way that reflects a deeper understanding than is revealed by your quotes above?

You are a waste of time for me, Willy, because you are intellectually lazy and more interested in being the class clown than in actually advancing your very limited understanding of the world.

Socrates himself couldn’t bring you along with your attitude. I gave up on you a long time ago.

@realitychecker:

But what, specifically, should happen to you in that case? Should you be punished? If so, how, and how much?

And since saving your loved ones is the most important thing to you and justifies anything in your eyes, here’s another hypothetical. The life of someone you care deeply about is at stake. The clock is ticking and you have the bad guy in custody. He can tell you where your loved one is but he isn’t talking. This time he’s really a bad guy. He’s been trained to resist all forms of torture, but you also have his son in custody, an eight year-old boy who he loves dearly. You’ve made plenty of threats, but he doesn’t believe you’ll follow through on them and still isn’t talking.

Do you torture the boy, and if so, how much?

@realitychecker:

You ducked the question. Both questions, actually. What should happen to you for torturing the innocent man? And in the second situation, do you torture the boy, and if so, how much?

Caoimhin Laochdha PERMALINK
December 18, 2017

Given ..to a point.

But this part

“…Whether torture generates information is an academic exercise (not to mention the empirical facts demonstrating its overall worthlessness as an intelligence tool)…”

is incorrect. As someone said above this is all an academic discussion. And those emotionally invested in some way can marshal some way of arriving at the conclusion they desire. As who ever made that statement was doing.

It is not being a troll to point out an obvious error. Like I said there is no discussion to have on the moral and ethical validity. There is none. But this does not mean it does not work.

Again. Without going into ugly details I can state from ‘direct’ knowledge that it does work given the caveats I mentioned above.

And it can certainly be used in all the other ways mentioned. I certainly am not advocating it in any of its forms or for any of its uses. But reality is what it is. And it is not going away.

Name Withheld,

Since you’re claiming to be our resident torture expert, I have a question.

Commander rc here has suggested that we should resort to torturing kleptocrats so that they will then stop being kleptocrats, especially for the children. What do you think the odds of success would be?

There’s a lot of pathetic on the thread right now.

NR thinks he has the right to assign me unlimited homework assignments based on every half-assed hypothetical he can think of, none of which address the issue here.

Willy thinks he can impress in much the same way as the feces-flinging monkeys one sees at zoos.

Smells real bad to be around these mental midgets.

StewM–you are smarter than what your last comment would suggest. One can use the confessed info to find corroborating evidence. Duh.

But the real question was about the morality of hurting someone to try and avoid a greater evil. A question most here are afraid to confront in an honest way, because they insist on pretending that in the real world, every life is precious.

Gimme a fucking break already. We probably have similar visions of what a perfect world would/should look like, but y’all seem to be deluded into thinking that we are already living in one.

Reality check. Stat.

rc, you’ve topped us all.

You voted for Trump!

@RC

No matter how unlikely the child kidnap scenario you used may be it is possible. More important than that small possibility is that you would take personal responsibility for your actions and suffer the consequences.

Government sanctioned torture is another story especially what happened after 9/11 when the torturers and their enablers became sadistic.

Trump’s statement about torture was mistranslated and warped by the MSM. I heard him say he wanted protection for the interrogators who were ordered to torture someone in a ticking time-bomb scenario and only under this scenario. It is also extremely unlikely to happen but is possible.

All the real torturing in the world takes place in the countries where you morons want to have unlimited immigration from. Also, the subjugation of women is worst in those same regions.

Yet you claim to support the women. Never mind who cuts their clitoris’ off to keep them from being unfaithful. Never mind who does all the honor killings, who you also support. You see what has happened to Europe, also California, but you insist on remaining blind to it.

You also claim anyone is a bigot who worries about allowing unlimited immigration from those countries. But that is where all the real savagery between humans is happening, and it is part of those cultures. Oh, and btw, a lot of that currently is because of what Saints Obama and Hillary did in Libya.

But these contradictions are comfortable for you to live with. Year after year, decade after decade, while the corporatocracy steals the future from all of us, right in front of your eyes.

If you can’t see the contradictions you live with, that is both tragic and hilarious to me, in equal parts. Why would anyone ever give a damn what thoughts come out of such obviously defective minds?

For you guys, it is only and all about falsely posturing a supposedly superior moral position. Nobody with a brain is fooled by you any longer.

And Trump deserves all the credit for that, regardless of what else he might do that favors people like him.

People like you are breaking yourselves upon the rocks of your mindless ‘Resistance.’ Best result from that is watching all your Dem donors being taken down by sex accusations.

I love your distress. 🙂 LOLOLOLOL

NR,

Did rc just try to neatly categorize all of us together into one single category he’s carefully prepared for us, after telling us not too long ago that our views were so disparate we’d never agree?

I’d always suspected rc as a dissembler. Now, it’s pretty obvious. And a stupid one at that. It’s always the simple minded who project their flaws onto disparately-minded groups, out of frustrated desperation.

From now on rc, it’s feces for you.

Was that a joke? The little face is not smiling.

@Willy:

“I’d always suspected rc as a dissembler. Now, it’s pretty obvious. And a stupid one at that. It’s always the simple minded who project their flaws onto disparately-minded groups, out pposed frustrated desperation.”

That pretty much sums him up. He claims to have the morally superior position, and enjoys looking down on the rest of us from his supposed moral high ground, and yet he can’t answer simple moral questions posed to him about his allegedly superior position.

It’s sad. As I’ve said before, he is a poster child for the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.

@realitychecker

And here you are trying to deflect and distract once again. The subject here is torture, and yes, you have claimed to have a morally superior position on that. You have claimed in this very post that your willingness to torture makes you morally superior to people who oppose torture. And yet you cannot answer simple moral questions posed to you about your allegedly morally superior position.

You love to talk down to others, but the reality is that your position is so weak that it can’t stand up to scrutiny. It’s sad.

@ DMC

Great virtue signal!

Let’s see you live it.

You wouldn’t.

It’s the hypocrisy I object to.

@ NR

I think Hugh had the best response to you, from Dec 4:

“I get you are a Democratic apologist and so reality compromised. But unless you are getting paid by them or are very rich, your interests and theirs do not align, and all you are doing is cheering on those who are screwing you over. Republican voters, of course, face the same reality disconnect, but as you engage in the same senseless tribalism, it destroys your credibility arguing that your tribalism is somehow better, and smarter, than theirs.”

Let’s see, who has better judgment and insight, NR or Hugh?

Everybody can vote on this.

@ NR

I think it would be interesting to see what others think of you.

Probably as little as I do.

BTW, your ‘questions’ miss the point I was making. Completely. Which you would know if you could read carefully. BTW, where’s that quote I challenged you to show? You’re just full of crap, a classic Dem-slave. That’s why I waste no time responding to you and your convoluted hypotheticals. They mix up the moral issue, they don’t clarify it in any way. Others will see that, I’m confident.

Have you done the experiment with your wife and/or kids yet? What are you waiting for?

@ NR

That’s the quote???????

Thanks for revealing the true quality of your mental functioning. Each can judge for himself.

Thanks for the entertainment, clown.

And the fact that that’s your response proves once again the value your positions hold, i.e. none.

@ DMC

My argument is that it’s easy to claim moral purity and virtue for oneself if one has never been tested.

But folks like to pretend that they would definitely pass the test if they ever were tested.

Then they like to use that claim to pose as great paragons of virtue.

I say folks who do that are lacking in self-awareness, at best, or are total hypocrites, at worst.

I stand by that argument.

It’s not my fault that all these morons are mucking up the discussion with their loony inferences and outrageously off-the-mark paraphrasings.

Note that none will say, “I would let my child die rather than torture somebody who could help me save him.”

That’s all you need to see, really.

Get a room, guys. The stench in here is torture .

No need to torture the sumbitch. Just gutshoot him.

Yeah, but the discussion was about torture as government policy, not whether anyone would torture anyone with sufficient provocation. So this started with a red herring and went from there. The cult of expedience is nearly as deadly as the cult of money, and expedience is what torture is all about. We don’t want to wait around and do proper interrogation, so we just start shocking the guy.
Maybe you should ask some Argentinians or Chileans how they feel about torture as government policy. Accuse them of being hypocrites until they tell you about being on the receiving end of torture. Hell, ask John McCain his opinion. I’m sure he’d be delighted to give you an earful.

I sometimes wonder what rc-coyote thinks about Republicans. Then I come to my senses.

Willy, you just can’t quit me.

Take your hand off your penis!

No commenter here has even dared risk his/her supposed/alleged ‘moral purity’ by openly and unequivocally declaring, “I would choose to let my own child die rather than torture a bad guy who could save it, if that issue was squarely presented to me.” (If anyone did declare that, I would ask when they were going to tell their child lol.)

Absent that, I submit that nobody here is really showing any willingness to grapple with the issue at the most basic level, which is, in fact, the only level where we as individuals could ever conceivably have direct control over the outcome.

Why try to build a moral position on such a conflicted base?

Maybe we should just get real about that conflict, instead, before we move on to gasbag and virtue-signal the topic to death?

We do this kind of moral leap-frog thing on so many issues. It leads to contradictions. Contradictions mean that we are, at least in part, lying to ourselves and/or others.

Think about if for a moment.

Willy raises an interesting point. And following on that I would add that I would hope that I would not torture in RCs hypothetical but if I failed to live up to my own moral standards in that situation i would hope that I would be judged somewhat less harshly for my weakness. I would certainly judge others less harshly in that situation. My son and wife already know and understand. They know that I would never hesitate to risk my own self for their protection.

“I would choose to let my own child die rather than torture a bad guy who could save it, if that issue was squarely presented to me.”

Nobody here would choose to let their own child die. Everybody here would torture the bad guy who could save it. But only if the situation was so clear and obvious with enough corroborating witnesses that no sane lawyer would try to put their credibility at risk by mucking up the issue.

OK, you guys are unwilling or unable to deal with the very basic issue I present.

That’s the problem.

And too many of us have gotten used to making the very same mistake you guys are making, i.e., putting the moral cart before the moral horse, to reach a feel-good conclusion without doing the underlying work.

The underlying work would make clear the limitations of your feel-good solution, so you won’t go there.

Got it.

And, of course, it must mean that I am the obtuse one . . .that is really pathetic.

Gee, Willy, if only you could devote a few IQ points to thinking.

Ian is great, maybe the very best around, but not God, so we will disagree on some points. You are incoherent, as is your wont. I kiss his ass so he’ll let me stay, so why am I disagreeing with his take on this topic? That’s what puzzles you. Check your fucking premises, lazy brain. You got one wrong.

I don’t accept anyone else as having the right to substitute his thought process for my own. I know how to test arguments, so I do it. I’m very good at it, but you have no clue.

Would an original thought kill you?

@ Hvd

Don’t pretend ignorance when you are showing you are perfectly capable of providing the real thing. 🙂

If you can’t understand that there is some kind of problem to explore when one urges for a govt policy that differs from what any reasonable person would do, if you, as a fucking lawyer can’t get that dimension of the topic, then you really are a moron.

I’ve had the job of critiquing the work of many lawyers when I worked for a high level appeals court, so finding idiocy in the thoughts of a lawyer never surprises me anymore.

Covering up your limitations with clumsy sarcasm doesn’t make you look any better, counselor.

@ Hvd

Respect is a two way street; re-read your prior comment lol. I am a straight-up reciprocity guy. No surprises. Don’t play personal, and then clutch your pearls, OK?

To the point: This is a moral question I am trying to explore, not a legal one. Although not a perfect correlation, the moral should always underlie and be consonant with the legal, would you not agree?

The smartest judge I ever worked for told me, “Never make the quantum leap,” meaning make sure your underlying fact/premise firmly supports the one you are trying to build on top of it, because weak foundations are where the vulnerabilities of the argument show up and prove fatal.

I think most are making the quantum leap when it comes to honestly grappling with the underlying moral question I posed very carefully and precisely in my hypothetical.

Can you deal with that?

Btw, the procedural-substantive dimension was always a key criterion in doing a conflict of laws analysis.

I was trying to introduce a powerful new tool, i.e. interest analysis, for use in any complex analytical challenge, to folks who never went to law school, not trying to deliver a lecture on current law in any particular jurisdiction.

I hope you appreciate the distinction.

I value the knowledge-sharing function of places like this. It’s interesting to see how much resentment that brings out lol.

As to your last comment I believe that weighing culpabiliy against justification represents exactly the sort of interest analysis that is involved in the choice of law decision. Here it weighing the interest of society in preventing the morally repugnant act of torture with little or no justification against the interest of an individual who genuinely believes that the life of his child is in jeopardy and that torture can save his child’s life . In the criminal law we normally ask if this mans belief is what a reasonable person would believe ( here with respect to the torture part) under the circumstances. Unfortunately I am in agreement with Ian and don’t really think that it is reasonable to believe that torture will bring about the desired result but certainly understand a person who is willing to hold onto such a thin reed in such traumatic circumstances. I’m not willing to extend that thin reed to people not facing so explicitly dire an immediate threat. Which brings us to the cusp of broader questions with respect to the imminence of the threat that terror in the name of Islam poses to the west but will not go there because I don’t want to sidetrack this discussion. I will note however that within the context of this discussion those who engage in such morally and legally criminal acts as murdering civilians believe they are justified because of the existential threat they believe the west poses to their families.

@ Hvd

With respect, posing precise hypotheticals in order to precisely present an issue has been an accepted practice in Western civilization at least since Socrates. It’s how we train lawyers now.

My hypo removes all the uncertainties and ambiguities you address, which complicate the basic underlying issue and takes us away from the purely moral focus I am trying to maintain.

You must understand that morality underlies the criminal law. I got an A in a course called Morality and the Law, with a highly decorated professor. So I’m not a newbie to these discussions.

It is strange to see people urging their govt to do the exact opposite of what each would do in their own lives in the analogous situation. Maybe we need to think more about all of this stuff, is my point.

Why am I getting attacked for that, one might wonder. 🙂

@ Hvd

I am sincerely trying to engage with you on this, but I am seeing basic assumptions that are so different, we may be condemned to stay in disagreement.

But I will try one more time.

When you say, “murder in self-defense,” we are immediately at odds, because that is not “murder.” And it is not immoral to self-preserve against a deadly threat. You are revealing a major disconnect between us right at the beginning.

I don’t know where you got that idea (certainly not from a defense attorney lol), but that does not even meet the legal definition of “murder.”

More to the point, you are already concluding the act to be immoral at the point when you move to the consideration of punishment. Without immorality, you have no fundamental basis to want to punish, or any justification for doing so..

I want to explore the morality or immorality of the initial act, you are starting from the point where we have all already AGREED that it is immoral.

I think there is an intriguing discussion to be had about that initial act–i.e., how can we deem it to be so immoral as to call it “evil” if the govt does it in special circumstances, when it is only the same moral calculation as we all would make, and choose to act on, in analogous circumstances?

Don’t you detect even a whiff of hypocrisy embedded somewhere in that? Shouldn’t we want to better ourselves by honestly addressing it?

Sure, torture scenarios like I pose are rare, but they do happen, and the moral issue is validly examined, IMO. Because we build a lot of other reasoning on our concepts of morality. And, frankly, that sloppy process, as practiced, is just the tip of the iceberg. We are fucked up in so many areas now, for very similar reasons, IMO.

You are right that we disagree on fundamental concepts but I can assure you that under the MPC adopted by many if not most states justifications (defenses) only provide as the very name makes clear, justification for the commission does not negative the offense only the punishment and ultimately our disapprobation. After all “thou shalt not murder” remains the injunction to which we mortals may but in this case I was justified. I see no hypocrisy in this. Just a warning that you better be damned sure before you pull the trigger.

Further to that it is well understood that the torture of even insects and other small creature by children is an early sign of likely psychosis. That is because it is obvious even to a child that causing unnecessary suffering to any sentient creature is wrong, immoral. Might it be justifiable under certain circumstances – maybe but you better be damned sure both that you’ve got the guy who has the information, that your child is really in danger and that torture will save your child’s life. You probably could morally get away with the first two out of these three but the point of Ian’s post and a point that most of us agree on is that there is little or no proof that the third is even possible and if it is possible whether it would be necessary to get the desired result. The fact is that the proofs that do exist seem to point in the opposite direction putting the reasonable person formulation in doubt. Thus a civilian might get away with a real though unreasonable belief defense which would not be available to a professional or government official both of whom are charged with knowing better. What about the terrorist who, in his culture has a reasonable belief in the necessity of his action.

Finally I have to add two very important words to this discussion – due process: which is hard enough to achieve under even the very best of circumstances.

FYI, this is the legal definition of “murder.” (Scroll to the bottom, I suck at copy/paste lol.)
FYI, self-defense equals justification.
FYI, if it’s justified , it is not a crime, nor a moral offense. No liability, no punishment.

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murder
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Medical, Acronyms, Idioms, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
Related to murder: Serial killers
Murder

The unlawful killing of another human being without justification or excuse.

Re: RC’s question: “Why are we asking the gov’t to behave differently than the way we would in our private life?”

1. You don’t torture prisoners as a state entity, aside from moral grounds, due to the purely pragmatic reason that there is an expectation of reciprocity–i.e. “you don’t torture our guys if you catch them, we won’t torture yours if we catch them.”

2. The government rarely, if ever, is going to have the exact sort of incentive RC was hypothesizing.

3. To the extent it might, everyone raise your hands if you trust most governments to reliably, or even more than half the time, make the right call on this sort of thing, that is, when torturing might be both justifiable and useful . ::waits:: I am assuming no one is so stupid to have just raised your hand. If you don’t trust most, or the opposition party, given that you can’t count on people you do trust being in power all the time, you shouldn’t ever want to give any of them that power. I think our own government (and many others are actually worse, some much worse historically, though some are better and many are better now) has proven that giving them or allowing them to take this power is a bad idea.

4. For those rare situations where it is deemed to be a good idea, that’s why you have off the books operations. Or, you can have people decide to sacrifice (or at least risk) their own career/future-outside-of-jail because they think it is worth it. If SEVERE punishment is near-certain for the guilty parties, then you could maybe more likely trust them to make the right call (AND if you can trust higher ups not to order someone to do it under threat of worse or lying to them that they would keep them out of trouble, tho most likely what you will always run risk of is people trying to do it and get away with it; to prevent this, I understand the desire to spread the idea that it can never ever work. I also understand the pushback, as this can lead to things like the idea in some modern theories of politics, law or what have you that “the narrative is more important than the facts” so that people think it’s perfectly okay to select the narrative that they think will best lead to the ultimate outcome they want, regardless of whether this narrative accords w/facts. Again, as w/torture, their may be times where this is justifiable but as a matter of policy, never ever (and in the case of torture, assuming you believe it can/does sometimes work to extract information, you have the two goods pushing against each other, as to whether to acknowledge this, since you don’t want people actually doing it and you don’t want to lie and you don’t trust your fellow humans who would be in the position to make these decisions, for the most part)(there are also all sorts of other arguments against torture, but I’m not about to reread this entire thread to see if anyone has made them; I’m pretty sure they’ve been made here somewhere in the past).

Waaaaay off topic, from previous comment, the whole idea of “self defense against future harm, no matter how likely, is never an excuse for “x”” as stated in the code above is truly problematic imo (tho again, I understand where it comes from, as making this definitionally acceptable would certainly result in some people just making up shit and then whacking someone and claiming innocence via fear of future harm; but as it is, you’re forcing people to choose between death and lying about circumstances after the fact (or weird legal contortions like various syndromes that basically already act as a workaround to this) and would be the topic for an interesting discussion, though I suspect the discussion would again result in people with wildly differing worldviews talking past each other.

I just woke up and now need to go back to sleep; hopefully all this makes sense.

Except I have to point out to both rc and mw that the defense is only offered when there is an assumption that the state has proved all of the elements of the offense.

Regardless, as mw’ s recitation of the jury charge shows there must be some degree of certainty as to threat and some degree of impossibility for resolution short of killing force before the self defense justification applies. The same should surely hold true with regard to torture. There also should be some certainty that the guy you’ve got has the actual information and won’t lie to you as peter’s story about Japanese torture of an American in the Russia thread illustrates.

@ Hvd

You know, I have long thought you were a lawyer. Maybe just because I’ve seen you weigh in on many things where you appeared to have a professional level of understanding. But this conversation has mad.e it clear you are not familiar with how the legal community works and thinks.

I note you have said your work was cited in legal contexts, so now I am wondering what is the flavor of your expertise area or areas? Not to ad hominem you (like I get automatically ad hominem’d if I reveal my legal background lol), but just to understand better what your training looked like and where you are coming from. Because we have truly had a lot more difficulty communicating here than one would have expected. I know you are intelligent, so I seek an understanding/explanation of why.

@ Hvd

I think the main problem here is you have insisted all along on seeing the issue through what you think is a legal framework, or what you think is pragmatic, real-world POV, while I have openly insisted on treating it strictly as a moral issue. The legal and the moral intertwine in various ways, and that gets confusing. Which is why I tried to keep the focus on the moral. Once you have a rational moral stance you are ready to go on and actually make laws based on that morality, NOT the other way around. I think the moral issue is where the real intellectual action is. That’s why I am doing this.

You also insist on keeping the fact situation complex, which also makes it impossible to focus on the complex and subtle issue I am trying to set up for discussion.

So, you been putting a lot of effort into not addressing the issue I posed.

You are also incorrect on your legal view of the self-defense issue. Interesting that you want to start your analysis with the point after the prosecutor has presented unrebutted evidence. But I prefer to start in the right place, where the defendant has the presumption of innocence.

See?

Completely different, and more correct. Would you say the prosecutor cannot erase the presumption of innocence with his own presentation? Absurd!! I hope you can see it. Same thing happens when the defendant enters his affirmative defense to negate the prosecutors presentation. AND, the prosecutor did not PROVE anything with his presentation, not in the court’s eyes. He has only showed enough to get into court. Period. You act like the ,game is over, when it is just beginning. You’re plain wrong on this.

AND, some affirmative defenses are partial, and some are absolute. Self-defense is an absolute one everywhere that I know about. If it holds up, you are as pure as the driven snow, morally as well as legally.

Maybe some time we can debate the hypo I actually posed–I tried to illuminate comments above why I think that is the gateway to a very necessary series of discussions. I’m not trying to waste anybody’s time here.

All this quasi-legal bullshit is completely irrelevant to the moral issue presented by my hypo. And which I am trying to explore in an honest and intelligent way.

Pay attention now.

Legal is about what is, moral is about what ought to be.

Even Willy’s six year ought to be able to understand that distinction, and that it requires a very different conversation to debate and analyze the moral than is required to blindly parrot the (supposed} legal.

How confusing-I thought folks here were all about what ought to be . . .

@Willy — ITA. Our government and many other other governments already do this exact sort of thing. And lots of people cheer them for it. Then they condemn other people for doing something similar and the same people cheer them. Who gets cheered for doing this and who gets condemned to seems to depend largely on the basis of rah rah go team rather than any thoughtful analysis.

And nor was I meaning to suggest the lawyers had any sorts of a special Insight or wisdom. I am the last person to say that credentials equal necessarily equals ability or wisdom.

I know I’m the one who pulled out the legal quote but that was in reference to a specific point someone was making; wasn’t trying to be all confusing with jargon or anything.

@ MW (and others as applicable)

You had a couple of typos that create some ambiguity, so I will respond only generally.

Your obviously nuanced approach, couple with your obvious and reliable good faith, are a huge advance over the response of most others here, or on the Internet generally.

I’ve been doing this political dialogue thingy long enough that I know most if not all of the possible rhetorical devices that get used to distract, derail, and/or obfuscate any discussion point. Many others know them as well. They have all been deployed on this thread in the service of allowing people to avoid the very uncomfortable hypo that I deliberately designed without any uncertainties to force us to confront this very uncomfortable issue at its base.

So, let me say to you and all other participants, with respect and affection but also with dumbfounded exasperation, what the hell is going on here, that this supposedly evolved group cannot directly engage a philosophical point properly set up in a hypothetical?

Do you realize you are all arguing with Socrates, not with realitychecker? Socrates used this technique with the youth in the streets. Law schools use this technique now. This is the way fine moral points get debated, folks. If you don’t like philosophy, just say so. But this is the way it always gets done by serious people.

Psychologically, one cannot witness this abject terror to engage a hypo without feeling that we all know there is much work that needs to be done on the issue that makes us so uncomfortable.

I have attempted to explain my purpose above. Once again, I am trying in good faith to open up what should be a very wide-ranging re-examination of a lot of our basic beliefs and assumptions, ya know, the ones that have delivered us into this unacceptable place. We all agree that it is unacceptable. The contradictions and dishonesties we have all been living with are the reason we got here. Think about it for a second.

My technique when things have obviously gone wrong is to start over, at the most basic level, and build up a new or improved belief system based on better accuracy of data and thought process. Anybody with a functioning brain ought to be able to participate in that process. It’s based on common sense, not some esoteric skillset.

My hypo takes us to that basic level. It opens up and demonstrates our willingness to live with dishonesty and obvious contradictions as a topic. Which can then immediately be seen as a widespread problem in our culture. And that insight can then be applied to many other relevant topic areas. It’s a process.

But you don’t start on the ninth floor. You start at the foundational level. So you know that what you build on top of the foundation will not all collapse when the foundation is found to be flawed.

This hypo demonstrates that the foundation most rely on in the torture conversation is flawed.

The spectacle of all these supposedly intelligent, supposedly intellectually curious, supposedly good faith debaters refusing so adamantly to look to the moral foundation of the torture discussions strikes me as being so incongruous that I CONCEDE IT MIGHT WEAR ME OUT BY DRAINING MY ENERGY, but it will never remove the need for us to re-examine our basic belief systems.

We did not get here by accident. We won’t get out of here without a lot more honesty in our discussions and our self-appraisals.

Maybe next year . . . (sigh)

@ Hvd

First, please re-read my last comment–I have laid out the big picture conversations I am trying to lead up to. They are many, and they are varied, and they are critical. But they have to be led up to.

I am trying to get people to do something very difficult, to re-examine some basic beliefs in their personal belief systems. I appreciate that you are trying in good faith to ‘get it,’ and MW can always be relied on to do so, and I am honestly perplexed at the difficulty you guys and others are having. We should at least be able to understand each other, even if we vigorously disagree with the positions taken.

This should not be about individual profiles, but sometimes background info helps to inform a careful opinion, which is why I share a bit and asked the same of you. I appreciate what you shared, but I still feel something ‘strange’ (to me, as a former litigation-oriented guy) in the flavor of your legal phrasings and formulations, so knowing you are not a lawyer, I’m wondering what the nature of your degree(s) might be, because we all get trained with a certain flavoring depending on what study path we are on. I’m thinking you may be more trained as a writer than as a strictly legal professional analyst. Not trying to pry, just to understand.

To your query–I constructed my hypo to remove all the uncertainties that would complicate a real situation in most cases, to allow focus on the precise moral issue, not the practical aspects. That’s just philosophy, mental exercise, if you will. Nothing to fear or resist in being asked to think afresh about a hypothetical fact pattern.

I absolutely expect that every parent would torture to save their child. I absolutely expected few to be willing to say so. We have seen those same parents would apparently be comfortable
condemning a govt that would do the same thing, only on a much bigger scale (i.e., many more innocents at risk in e.g. a dirty bomb scenario).

(Some think lying about the govt torture would make it OK. On a moral basis. That can’t be right, as a moral matter. So our general devotion to lying gets drawn into the conversation. Do you see?)

To me, that opens up a glaring contradiction. From a strictly moral perspective. And that contradiction finds its echo in almost every area of our system as presently observed and experienced.

Yes, I’m trying to get us to start a wide-ranging conversation, about what happens at the foundational level of our belief systems.

My endgame? People need to stop thinking in binary, stop thinking in extremes only. It feels good, but it is always problematic. The hard work is in trying to find the correct place on every issue somewhere in between the extremes, by examining options other than the obvious binary ones.

Perhaps I’m too ambitious. This thread show very clearly how much work is involved to even get the most basic points established. It’s exhausting, and very time-consuming.

I would submit that, in view of the difficulty of communicating on these complex issues, that we should all be willing, in good faith, to try a little harder to understand what is attempting to be shared.

Those of us who are here for the intellectual stimulation, at least.

Willy, you just can’t quit me.

Take your hand off your damn penis! 🙂