The beatings will continue

[sabotabby]

The U.S. government's role in torture, and possible culpability for war crimes. It's a good read, but the most striking bit was this (regarding meetings at Gitmo about how best to torture people):

Ideas arose from other sources. The first year of Fox TV’s dramatic series 24 came to a conclusion in spring 2002, and the second year of the series began that fall. An inescapable message of the program is that torture works. “We saw it on cable,” Beaver recalled. “People had already seen the first series. It was hugely popular.” Jack Bauer had many friends at Guantánamo, Beaver added. “He gave people lots of ideas.”

The brainstorming meetings inspired animated discussion. “Who has the glassy eyes?,” Beaver asked herself as she surveyed the men around the room, 30 or more of them. She was invariably the only woman present—as she saw it, keeping control of the boys. The younger men would get particularly agitated, excited even. “You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas,” Beaver recalled, a wan smile flickering on her face. “And I said to myself, You know what? I don’t have a dick to get hard—I can stay detached.”

That's always what I've suspected about pro-torture types; they get hot thinking about it. There are safe and consensual outlets for those sorts of sexual predilections but people with those sorts of politics are generally too uptight to go looking for them.

Hat tip: king_felix.

If you need a palate-cleanser after that, check out the Westboro Baptist Church getting Rickroll'd.

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Hat tip: trollprincess.

Comments

[pluvka.livejournal.com]

yesterday i overheard my boss talking about how he thinks torture is so great - he'd torture "them" himself. he sounded way too excited about that. this is just one of the many gems i've had the pleasure of hearing at this lovely job.

[sabotabby]

You need a new job.

I don't understand that psychology. I couldn't torture Bush.

[pluvka.livejournal.com]

absolutely. i can't imagine feeling that torture against anyone is ever justified - especially against some imaginary enemy.

this job has by far the worst mass of people i've ever had the displeasure of working with. like, another charming person in management who is amazingly open about her racism once said that "95% of the world celebrates christmas", as that somehow justified her hatred for all non-christians. who apparently only make up 5% of the world. LOL@foxnewsfacts. this all came about because someone asked her if we were selling non-christmas themed postage stamps - how dare they 'enforce their beliefs' on everyone else! also, pro torture boss dude claiming that civilians aren't being killed in iraq (LIBERAL MEDIA LIES!!).

fortunately i only have to deal with it for another few months. i have to admit that i get some laughs out of it, though. before i moved here i really had a hard time believing that people could be this stupid.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

the thing that alarms and saddens me about "24" is that it appears to be entirely built around the premise that torture works, and that denying this is denying a fundamental axiom. okay, so within the framework of the story this is good; there are other stories which require you to believe that magic rings can make you invisible and give you power over the whole universe, and that's not too hard to believe either. the trouble is that people go away from "24" into the real world without stopping believing this; they go away without even having been argued into it; it is, then, effectively propaganda, whether or not intended as such.

[sabotabby]

Given the politics of the producer, it's intended as such.

[peterbilt-47.livejournal.com]

I wish I could be amused by that observation.

Also, I hope the entire illegitimate Bush administration DOES get indicted for war crimes. It's probably nothing more than a masturbatory fantasy, but a boy can dream.

[sabotabby]

See, I do get wanking off over indictment.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Beyond the fact that torture is immoral, unethical and just plain bad no matter how you look at it, it is, in the end, a useless form of interrogation.
The victim will say just about anything, lies, hyperboles, just to get the pain to stop - the majority (if not all) of information gleaned from torture victims ends up being useless.

When I meet or encounter Shin-Bet types (and when I served in the army I met quite a few), I always felt I could tell who were the interrogators, they have this manner about them - I dunno, this kind of stiffness - and they will always size people up as if they're pieces of meat.
That's the most disturbing aspect, the psychological dehumanization that goes on for both the victim and the torturer.

[sabotabby]

I keep saying that torture is effective. Just not for information. In terms of intimidating a populace into submission, it works rather well.

[orpheus42.livejournal.com]

Roger the above comments on the disturbing nature of torture.

Response to the rickrolling:

[sabotabby]

[wlach.livejournal.com]

That's always what I've suspected about pro-torture types; they get hot thinking about it. There are safe and consensual outlets for those sorts of sexual predilections but people with those sorts of politics are generally too uptight to go looking for them.

Doesn't this kind of freudian explanation seem like a bit of a dodge of the moral responsibility involved a situation like this?

P.S. I'm going to be in Toronto next week. Will relay details in private email-gram.

[sabotabby]

It's not a complete explanation. Torture has a political purpose, and that's the "why" part of the equation. The psychological aspect just describes who really gets into it.

Man, everyone is in Toronto next week. There's a new Ethiopian place I'm dragging you to.

[pluvka.livejournal.com]

i am so copying that strategy for disrupting offensive protests from now on. it will certainly feel better than just RAGERAGERAGE!

[sabotabby]

I love it.

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I would never torture anyone to get information out of them, but I would definitely torture someone in the right situation (say, vengeance for atrocities committed against certain vulnerable, push-my-button targets); yes, there are many who seem deserving. I cannot get my head around the idea of cool, detached, impersonal torture -- of doing it for State reasons, to advance a policy or political ideal; but personal, testosterone-fuelled torture? Sure, I can see myself doing it.[1]

You mention "sexual predilections". I don't count the consensual stuff I do in the context of SM as torture, and there's a definite dividing line in my physiological response to consensual pain vs. the idea of torture as it is understood in this post. The glassy eyed, flushed, heart-pounding arousal in the latter case is not sexual arousal, I assure you. There are more than one way of "getting hot", as you put it, and you confuse the issue by reducing it to sex. I mentioned testosterone in the previous para., and maybe you have to be swimming in that hormone to really get what that desire to hurt someone feels like on the inside; but again, I doubt that their dicks were literally getting hard at the prospect. It's their hearts that do; metaphoric hardness. (If any dicks do get hard, their owners won't care about your religion or your politics, and they will find a way to channel it in daily life. Sitting through Politburo staff meetings seems very inefficient as a means of simply getting one's rocks off).

[1] This is not to say I'd actually do it, of course, or think it was good or justified; I can see myself doing it = I can see myself shitting my pants in public, too. I just want to put to bed the idea that the people capable of these kinds of thoughts are an abberant minority which can be done away with by socialization, or that they're limited to specific parts of the political spectrum. Even without the testosterone wash, I think that given the right context pretty much everyone could relish the idea of causing another pain. Of course, I admit the possibility that I am wrong, and my belief is simply an attempt at normalizing my own abberant minority feelings. Kinda hard to devise a good double-blind test.

[sabotabby]

When I slapped someone (once, and he really deserved it) I was horrified at myself. It's probably different wiring. It's bizarre too, because my world view includes the idea that violence is almost certainly necessary for bringing about a better existence.

I don't think BDSM is the same as torture, incidentally, consent being the glaring difference. Apologies if the post came off that way.

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

But the important question is: do you get glassy-eyed at the thought of your land-lady up against a wall/getting punched in the face? :)

It's def. a spiky issue all around; violence, and when it's necessary, and is it ever, and are there extenuating factors for it (revenge, revolution, education, self-defence, etc.)... The institutionalized violence of the government is, too me, the most perverse and inexplicable because it's cold, pre-meditated, impersonal; thinking that the torturers get hot and bothered actually makes it better somehow in my head, more human. But it's not that hormonal predisposition or a more personal attachment to the violence is some kind of a rubber-stamp of empathy in my book, either; also as much as the government thugs, I don't understand the no-doubt testosterone-poisoned males who kill people they're in personal relationships with, the "relationship on the rocks" murder-suicides, the "she dishonoured the family" sister-killers, the "his wife was gonna take the kids" executioners of children, like that guy in BC today. WTF DUDE! WTF! If they make a Guantanamo for people like those, I might volunteer for the Torture Corps.

[sabotabby]

But the important question is: do you get glassy-eyed at the thought of your land-lady up against a wall/getting punched in the face? :)

Not at the thought of doing it myself. I think I want to be distant from acts of violence.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

Track This
When I slapped someone (once, and he really deserved it) I was horrified at myself. It's probably different wiring. It's bizarre too, because my world view includes the idea that violence is almost certainly necessary for bringing about a better existence.

I think might do with prior experience and how desensitized a person is too violence. I don't know how much violence you've directly experienced in your life, but what you've said about your personal background in this blog it doesn't seem like you've had a lot.

But I (and I'm only speaking for me) experienced a good amount of violence (mostly on the receiving end) growing up and as much as I'm disappointed in myself as a human being in saying it, I could imagine myself doing some seriously vile stuff to Dick Cheney or John Yoo if given a half locked in a room with them. Though, it would be torture in the context that we're talking about, more like rage-filled revenge stuff. I hope that doesn't come off as creepy, but hell I scare myself thinking about it.

Just a thought.

(not sure I'm comfortable attaching my name to the 3rd paragraph of this)

[(Anonymous)]

I cannot see myself torturing anyone just for vengeance though I can think of people who "deserve" it and who I might not feel as bad about hearing that somebody else was torturing them as I ought to feel. The costs to my own soul (if you're religious) and psyche (whether you are religious or not) would be too great. I would feel dirty beyond imagining afterward regardless of how furious I felt while doing it.

And like you I cannot see torturing somebody for information, for in addition to the moral issues there are the complementary problems that the information is unreliable and there are faster ways to get more reliable information from a prisoner.

But the non-sexual context in which I can imagine torturing somebody is if I thought that I could educate them by doing so. Not punish, not just vent my rage, not interrogate but teach some useful lesson that they would take away from the experience other than "(Anonymous) is a f**king monster." I don't know how likely that is but I can sort of picture doing it.

Like you the sexual stuff is completely a different thing for me but I think I can maybe see how somebody without that outlet could become twisted enough to try to satisfy those urges nonconsensually on a prisoner and make up a rationalization for it. Or maybe not. That's scary.

Come to think of it, there are players I will torture as a friendly gesture even though I am not interested them sexually, but I'm going to include that with the sexual stuff because it's consensual and part of the same experience even when it isn't being sexy-per-se right then.

Re: (not sure I'm comfortable attaching my name to the 3rd paragraph of this)

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

Re: your first para.; agreed. I imagine it would be horrible to wake up to myself the next day. I would have to shut myself down, literally or not. It'd be a kind of death.

The "educational" torture angle ... no, I can't see it, for me. It goes back to the pre-meditation aspect again, it would have to be done in cold blood to be done well. I try to think of a lesson which could be imparted and it all defaults back to "I will teach you to love the Big Brother by putting this cage of rats on your face". The learner would be broken by the lesson. Unless... unless you were teaching someone how to withstand torture, I suppose. "I will do to you with love what our enemies will try to do to you with hatred. After this, you will have nothing left to be afraid off". Hmmm.

Out of curiosity -- what's your bio gender? (I am guessing female).