Month: December 2012

If Congress is looking to save money, here’s a place to start

by David Atkins

So, Congress is looking for bipartisan ways to reduce spending? They could start here:

Year after year, health officials meeting at invitation-only government conferences leveled with one another about Biowatch, the nation’s system for detecting deadly pathogens that might be unleashed into the air by terrorists.

They shared stories of repeated false alarms — mistaken warnings of germ attacks from Los Angeles to New York City. Some questioned whether BioWatch worked at all.

They did not publicize their misgivings. Indeed, the sponsor of the conferences, the U.S. Homeland Security Department, insists that BioWatch’s operations, in more than 30 cities, be kept mostly secret.

Now, congressional investigators want Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to open the books on the 9-year-old program and explain why $3.1 billion in additional spending is warranted.

The move by the House Energy and Commerce Committee — spurred by reports in the Los Angeles Times about BioWatch’s deficiencies — puts the program at a crossroads.

The entire field of “Homeland Security” is riddled with wasteful boondoggles like this. Remember that raising the Medicare eligibility age, the trial balloon floated by the White House, was only going to save $5 billion in the short term (with bigger costs than savings down the road.)

You’d think that programs like this would see the ax before healthcare for the elderly. But Washington obviously has other priorities you and I couldn’t possibly understand.

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Holiday Fundraiser Greatest Hits: “The Resentment Tribe”

by digby

Yes, the 10th Anniversary celebration continues.  And I’m asking for your continued support to keep going. You can click on the buttons or send something via snail mail listed over to the left.

After Boehner’s inability to get his crazies in line last night even for a symbolic vote that had no chance of passing, I think it’s crystal clear that we are dealing with a group of people who see politics through a very different lens than the rest of us.

But it’s not unprecedented.  The “my way or the highway” MO has been the preferred method of a large faction of our country for much of its history. In fact,  it goes all the way back to the beginning.  So, as part of my “Greatest Hits” series, I thought this one would be appropriate on a day like today. It features Lincoln’s famous Cooper Union speech.  The same observation could have been made today about Boehner’s Republicans:

Friday, February 25, 2005

The Resentment Tribe


The other day I rhetorically asked, “Why are they so angry?” and Matt Stoller replies : 

As long as individuals can stand up outside of the tribe and claim Americanism as their own, the right is revealed as weak, because it is their own lies about themselves that they cannot stand. Proof in the form of our existence is enough to make them angry. This is why, as Digby wonders, they keep getting madder as they keep gaining power. They are not really after a conservative agenda in terms of policy; they are not even after power, really. They are after a complete and utter subjugation of the American consciousness to their tribal mentality. And they will not stop until they get it. Hence, the culture wars. And now, the real wars. And unfortunately, I don’t think they are done.

They are far from done. In fact, it’s so old and so familiar that we might as well prop open our eyelids with toothpicks and turn on “I Love Lucy” re-runs. 


I wrote about this tribal divide sometime back and I agree with Matt’s analysis. This has its genesis in the original sin of slavery and is best illustrated by the fact that as the country has divided itself distinctly between the parties in a 50/50 fashion, the dividing line continues to fall along the same lines of the old confederacy. Once again, the best way to understand this is to go right to the heart of the beast and quote the first Republican president  Abraham Lincoln at the Cooper Union in New York in 1860: 

And now, if they would listen – as I suppose they will not – I would address a few words to the Southern people.

I would say to them: – You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us a reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to “Black Republicans.” In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of “Black Republicanism” as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite – license, so to speak – among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify.

[…]

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper’s Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper’s Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need to be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander.

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper’s Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held to and made by “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.” You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor … In your political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood and thunder among the slaves.

[…]

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you will say the Supreme Court has decided the disputed Constitutional question in your favor. Not quite so. But waiving the lawyer’s distinction between dictum and decision, the Court have decided the question for you in a sort of way. The Court have substantially said, it is your Constitutional right to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. When I say the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it was made in a divided Court, by a bare majority of the Judges, and they not quite agreeing with one another in the reasons for making it; that it is so made as that its avowed supporters disagree with one another about its meaning, and that it was mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact – the statement in the opinion that “the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution.”

[…]

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is, shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action?

But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!”

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me – my money – was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle.

A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another…Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them, if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’ new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

Lincoln had a keen understanding of the problem and he logically framed it in moral terms regarding the subject at hand, slavery. As it turns out this was not simply about slavery. It was about a deep and abiding tribal divide in the country that was originally defined by slavery but metatisized into something far beyond it, even then. Southern “exceptionalism” was always justified by its culture, which was assumed to be unique and unprecedented. 


You can apply Lincoln’s arguments to any number of current issues and come out the same. There is an incoherence of principle that we see in every section of the republican party, the willingness to call to State’s Rights (their old rallying cry) when it suits them and a complete abdication of the principle once they hold federal power — while still insisting that they believe in limited government! They blatantly misconstrue the plain meaning of long standing constitutional principles and federal policies (such as Brit Hume’s abject intellectual whorishness in the matter of FDR’s beliefs about social security privatization) and show irrational, rabid anger at any disagreement. They see Democrats as “traitors” fighting for the other side, just as the Southerners of the 1850’s accused the “Black Republicans” of fomenting slave revolts. They brook no compromise and instead repay those who would reach out to them with furious perfidy unless they show absolute fealty to every facet of the program. It is loyalty to “the cause”, however it is defined and however it changes in principle from day to day, that matters. 


It’s clear to me that during the first 70 years of the country’s existence, the old South and the slave territories that came later (as defined in that famous map from 1860) created a culture based largely on their sense of the rest of the country’s, and the world’s, disapprobation. Within it grew what Michael Lind describes as its“cavalier” culture, which created an outsized sense of masculine ego and “fighting” mentality (along with an exaggerated caricature of male and female social roles.) Resentment was a foundation of the culture as slavery was hotly debated from the very inception and the division was based on what was always perceived by many as a moral issue. The character and morality of the south had always had to be defended. Hence a defensive culture was born.


The civil war and Jim Crow deepened it and the Lost Cause mythology romanticized it. The civil rights movement crystallized it. A two hundred year old resentment has created a permanent cultural divide.


This explains why the dependence on hyper-religiosity (and the cloak of social protection it provides) along with the fervent embrace of “moral values” is so important despite the obvious fact that Republicans are no more “moral” in any sense of the word than any other group of humans. It explains the utopian martial nationalism. And although that map shows that the regional divide is still quite relevant (and why the slave states fought for the Electoral College at the convention) it explains why this culture has now manifested itself as a matter of political identity throughout much of the country. Wherever resentment resides in the human character it can find a home in the Republican Party. This anger and frustration stems from a long nurtured sense of cultural besiegement, which they are finding can never be dealt with through the attainment of power alone. They seek approval. 


Lincoln concluded the speech at the Cooper Union with this and I think it’s relevant today to those of us who believe that our side is, as Lincoln thought then, the side of enlightened, moral progress:

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.

This fight for the soul of America has been going on since the very beginning and it isn’t over yet. We can take heart in the fact that in every great battle thus far, the forces of equality and moral progress have eventually won the day. It’s never been easy. 

Let me now issue the standard disclaimer:  there are now and always have been many Southerners who don’t hew to this way of thinking.  And today, the divide is (somewhat) less clearly regional although if you look at the last election you’ll see the lines still hold. At this point in our history this is less about the South than it is about the political tribe that keeps the resentment flame glowing, wherever it is. That’s as American as apple pie.

I don’t know how much good it does to make these short take observations.  There are many scholarly books on these subjects which explain these things with greater erudition than I have done here.  But for those of you who are leading busy lives and are just trying to make sense of the news of the day, I suspect this sort of thing can be useful. If you think so too, and would like to keep at least some semblance of the independent liberal blogosphere going, I’d appreciate your help.

Happy Hollandaise everyone,

digby

Dday we hardly knew ye

by digby

If you think of it, take a minute to go over and say so long to our good friend Dday who is hanging up the blogging (for now…) He was a huge asset to this blog when he wrote here and I was very sorry to see him go. But he needed his own space and he certainly made the most of it. I think we will all miss his blogging, but hopefully he’ll still be tweeting and commenting. And I’m very sure he’ll still be involved in politics, whether it’s local or national. He always was.

Thanks for the memories, dday —

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Hallelujah

by digby

Fred Clarkson over at Daily Kos addressed Mike Huckabee’s heinous comments blaming the killing of little school children on the lack of prayer in public schools. It’s really good.  But this part really speaks to me:

Our country has wisely taken the step that we no longer use government employees as de facto priests and religious instructors in the public schools. Our teachers are there for broader and different educational purposes. The kind of omniscient God, the Creator of all things, can’t be removed from anywhere, let alone the heads and hearts of believers. And surely such a God does not require that we hire government employees to hector our children about Huckabee’s notion of his eternal wrath. Good grief.

Let’s be clear about this. We don’t need Christians leading non-Christians and non-believers in Christian prayers. And we need not insult the varieties of orthodox Christian with watered down ecumenical or interfaith prayers that mean nothing to them. Nor do we need anyone to teach the Word According to Huckabee as a condition of employment. (But if we did, what would the criteria be and who would get to decide?)

It is not easy navigating a religiously plural society. And there have always been Huckabees around who stand in opposition. But pluralism is what we have and I wish we would do a better job in all parts of our society to develop the knowledge and skill set that goes with it.

I do too.

Clarkson ended his piece with a paean to Leonard Cohen’s beautiful piece “Hallelujah” that’s really worth reading. And he put this up which made me cry. Again:

NRA blames decades-old game with no guns for gun violence

NRA President Wayne LaPierre decided that the best response to the Newtown massacre, in addition to creating an expensive police state in our shcools, would be to blame decades-old films and videogames, including Natural Born Killers and Mortal Kombat of all things.

Mortal Kombat is a video game series that began in the old arcades. It’s a one-on-one tournament fighting game with ridiculous, over-the-top fighting moves including, yes, killing blows. But no guns, at least in the first two installments. In later versions only one of the games many characters has a gun.

I used to play Mortal Kombat all the time in the arcades as a child. I downloaded the old-school versions for my Xbox about six months ago. There’s no sense in which these games make people more violent. Watching a video game character punch another video game character 20 feet into the air and off a bridge onto a bed of spikes may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it doesn’t lead people to buy or steal AR-15s and slaughter a bunch of children in real life.

What can lead to that behavior is this, combined with mental illness:

Ms. Lanza was a gun collector and avid shooter, friends said. She showed one of “her beautiful rifles, an old collectible she was very proud of” to Dan Holmes, a local landscaper who worked on her property and who would see her from time to time at a bar in town called My Place, where bands played.

Mr. Holmes said she and her sons “would go target shooting as a family.”

Jim Leff, a local writer and musician who says he knew Ms. Lanza, wrote on his blog after the shooting that she was a “big, big gun fan.”

That and big guns with high capacity magazines.

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Fiscal cliff notes 12/21: Steny scares me

by digby

Obviously, I don’t know what’s going to happen with the fiscal cliff and neither does anyone else.  But watching TV this morning I’m seeing an extremely disturbing trend among the Villagers who now claim the best outcome to be Boehner allowing the Democrats to pass Obama’s proposal with only a few Republicans. I would have to assume it would be the end of Boehner’s speakership, but maybe he wants to go out in a blaze of glory. Having Democrats passing a bill not only raising taxes but cutting social security would be a real legacy to be proud of.

Unfortunately, Steny Hoyer was on Andrea Mitchell this morning saying that he and Pelosi would whip for Democratic votes if Boehner could come up with an agreement and deliver a few GOP votes (didn’t specify how many.)

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

One can only hope that this is a Village fever dream and they have no real reason to believe it’s possible, but are instead engaging in their favorite fantasy where the alleged “grown-ups” come to the rescue to screw the American people in an act of so-called shared sacrifice which will not impact them in the least. But it’s scary that Hoyer brought up the TARP.  If they’ve convinced themselves that the world really is coming to an end if we go over the “cliff”, that dynamic may well be in play. So what happens with the “cliff”? I’m guessing we’re going over it anyway, no thanks to the typically idiotic Democratic leadership. As Noam Scheiber explains in this excellent post, there are only two alternatives to prevent it, neither of which are likely (we hope).  First, he points out that  the White House have to offer even more than they already have to get a majority of Republicans on board any plan, so that’s a non-starter. Short of giving up the tax cuts completely they won’t play. (And even that would probably not be enough — they want human sacrifice in large numbers.) The second possibility, as we’re seeing possibly take shape today, the Democrats could step up and deliver the majority of the votes. (And I would have to guess that in order to get enough Republican votes they will almost certainly have to give up even more.)  Here’s how it would work:

Boehner passes a bill with a rump group of Republicans and a majority of House Democrats. There are actually two ways this could happen. First, Boehner could essentially accept the offer on the table from Obama, perhaps with a tiny symbolic concession that lets him claim he squeezed more out of the president. Or Boehner could take up the bill the Senate has already passed, which extends the Bush tax cuts for families making under $250,000 per year and lets them expire above that.

I think the probability of that last is vanishingly small, but maybe he’s a patriot. The good news is that Boehner is highly unlikely to fall on his sword for any reason and at this point it’s hard to see how he keeps his position if he does this under any circumstances. We’d all better hope his desire to remain Speaker is greater than his desire to make this deal. Otherwise, we’re about to see the Republicans very deftly getting the Democrats to cut their own throats.  And lest you forget: on January 1st, all the tax cuts expire, the deficit shrinks and this whole argument looks very, very different. Any “deal” that gets made by this White House and passed with a Democratic majority is a deal they want, not one they have no choice in making.

Free to live in a totalitarian society

by digby

Contrary to popular perception, I’ve been around guns in my life (although, interestingly, not at home with my very conservative military father, who didn’t hunt and had no guns in his house.)I lived in Alaska for many years and knew a ton of people who had guns. I can’t imagine killing anything and I’m not interested in target games, (not even darts) so it never interested me personally. But I’ve known plenty of people who are responsible, level headed and sane who do have them. Having said that, the arguments I’ve had over the years on the topic has brought home the fact that despite their freedom-loving libertarian, anti-government mantra, for the most part gun nuts are actually authoritarian bullies and closet totalitarians.

Wayne LaPierre’s unhinged press conference illustrated that perfectly. In the wake of Sandy Hook, this is what he came up with:

The truth is, that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters. People that are so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons, that no sane person can every possibly comprehend them. They walk among us every single day, and does anybody really believe that the next Adam Lanza isn’t planning his attack on a school, he’s already identified at this very moment?

How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame from a national media machine that rewards them with wall-to-wall attention and a sense of identity that they crave, while provoking others to try to make their mark.

A dozen more killers, a hundred more? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill? The fact is this: That wouldn’t even begin to address the much larger, more lethal criminal class — killers, robbers, rapists, gang members who have spread like cancer in every community across our nation.

These individualists’ answer is to create another massive government database and put more armed cops in civilian institutions. Smells like freedom, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile, back in America:

The National Rifle Association today held its first press conference since last week’s deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, and the takeaway was clear: We need more guns.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” said NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre.

He went on to call for an armed police officer to be stationed in “every single school” across America to prevent further mass shootings, as critics tried to point out that armed law enforcement officials might not be the panacea the NRA thinks it is.

But before they could finish their sentence, the counterargument made itself as news broke of a mass shooting event in Pennsylvania with multiple casualties, including state troopers.

According to local reports out of Blair County, at least four people were killed and five more were injured in a shooting spree near Altoona. The gunman is said to be among the dead, and at least two state troopers were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.

WPXI’s Courtney Brennan says she was told by emergency officials that the shooting suspect “was ‘mobile’ at one point and went up and down a rural road and shot victims.”

A Measured Response 

by tristero

Fuck the NRA.

There’s no point in negotiating with nihilists

by David Atkins

Let’s recap: after the Republican Party took the country hostage by threatening the full faith and credit of the United States last year, the sitting President of the United States with an allied Senate majority caved to an extremist House majority and delivered “98 percent of what [his opponents] wanted.” They made a deal that would supposedly force Congress to address the supposed deficit crisis after the election by the end of the lame duck session, presumably after the Presidential election when little pressure from the voters remained. In theory, the Presidential election would also provide an impetus for negotiating strength for one side or the other, depending on the choice of the American people after a lengthy argument about national priorities.

As it turns out, the sitting Democratic President won re-election in a landslide, while his Democratic allies improbably gained seats in the Senate and narrowed the gap in the House, only failing to take a majority because of extreme gerrymandering. The polling showed strong support for Democratic solutions to the manufactured fiscal crisis, including a majority of Republicans in favor of increasing taxes on those making over $250,000 a year, as well as nationally firm resistance to any cuts to Social Security or Medicare.

But still the gerrymandered bare Republican House majority refused to budge. The President agreed to an array of concessions, including pushing the income level for the increased marginal rate to $400,000 instead of $250,000, and delivering a massive cut to Social Security in the guise of “Chained CPI”, ensuring that Social Security benefits won’t rise even as real cost of living does. This despite an American public that strongly supported progressive solutions to budget issues and had just elected Democrats who promised not to touch Social Security.

In response to the President’s unbelievable deference, Republican Speaker John Boehner offered a “Plan B” so preposterous it should frankly have been interpreted as a refusal to negotiate. It called for reductions to food stamps, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and Social Security in order to prevent any cuts to military spending, while bumping up the marginal rate income level to a whopping $1 million a year. Basically, Speaker Boehner’s plan was to starve and kill the poor, the sick and the elderly in order to preserve tax cuts for some of America’s wealthiest citizens and bloated military spending the Pentagon doesn’t even want. Senate Democrats were rightly offended by this bit of Christmastime callousness too cruel for Ebenezer Scrooge and immediately announced the proposed bill a non-starter.

As if this weren’t stupid enough, Speaker Boehner then pushed his proposal to the House floor anyway. And it failed because it’s wasn’t conservative enough for House Republicans. An eventuality the Speaker knew would occur, as he read out the Serenity prayer and announced that the he didn’t have the votes prior to taking the vote.

Unless one believes that House Republicans want a sequester, the only possible explanation for a refusal to accept Boehner’s ultra-conservative “Plan B” is sheer belligerent nihilism on the part of the Republican caucus. It’s the political equivalent of a suicide bomber so deeply wedded to ideological fervor that self-destruction and the annihilation of countless innocent victims is preferable to any form of good-faith dialogue or negotiation.

The White House claims it will still work with Congress to negotiate a deal. It’s hard to see how, though. If Speaker Boehner tries to bring forward a neoliberal bill that most Democrats and just enough Republicans can pass, it will be the end of his political career–and Republicans may just attempt to remove him before he gets a chance. Nothing that can gain Republican majority support in the House has a chance of getting through the Senate even if the President were willing to accept the unthinkable just to make a deal.

Republicans are already taking the blame from the American public for their refusal to act in a sane manner.

The President and his Democratic need to simply take us over the cliff and offer the Republicans a pure middle-class tax cut, as well as a reversal of the most unacceptable sequestration cuts. Then keep offering the same deal all the way until November 2014 if need be to increase the pressure and the pain.

There’s no point in negotiating with nihilists.

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Holiday Fundraiser Greatest Hits: Genie in a bottle 

by digby

Since this is the 10th anniversary of Hullabaloo I thought I’d run some greatest hits over the next few days just as a sort of walk down memory lane. Considering the time in which we live, it’s a bit more harrowing of a journey than I expected.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Genie In A Bottle

by digby

Nobody is going to ask me who should be hired at The New York Times to replace Judith Miller, but if they did I would say that they should hire the best and most unsung national security reporter in the country — Jason Vest. He’s a real reporter, not a stenographer, but he also has an impressive interest and grasp of the history of various groups, cabals and individuals who make up the current national security establishment and the Bush administration. And lo and behold, he actually writes about them. This is a huge key to understanding these otherwise inexplicable people and their motives. I highly recommend that you read his pieces wherever they come up and I will continue to bring them to your attention.

Today, he has written a piece on torture for the National Journal that is fascinating because he’s spoken to old guard CIA who have had some experience with this stuff in the past. They all agree that the moral dimension is huge, but there are good practical reasons for not doing it as well. These range from the difficulty in getting allies to cooperate because of their distaste for such methods to the fact that the information is unreliable.

But the thing I found most interesting is the observation that it does something quite horrible to the perpetrators as well as the victims:

“If you talk to people who have been tortured, that gives you a pretty good idea not only as to what it does to them, but what it does to the people who do it,” he said. “One of my main objections to torture is what it does to the guys who actually inflict the torture. It does bad things. I have talked to a bunch of people who had been tortured who, when they talked to me, would tell me things they had not told their torturers, and I would ask, ‘Why didn’t you tell that to the guys who were torturing you?’ They said that their torturers got so involved that they didn’t even bother to ask questions.” Ultimately, he said — echoing Gerber’s comments — “torture becomes an end unto itself.” 

According to a 30-year CIA veteran currently working for the agency on contract, there is, in fact, some precedent showing that the “gloves-off” approach works — but it was hotly debated at the time by those who knew about it, and shouldn’t be emulated today. “I have been privy to some of what’s going on now, but when I saw the Post story, I said to myself, ‘The agency deserves every bad thing that’s going to happen to it if it is doing this again,'” he said. “In the early 1980s, we did something like this in Lebanon — technically, the facilities were run by our Christian Maronite allies, but they were really ours, and we had personnel doing the interrogations,” he said. “I don’t know how much violence was used — it was really more putting people in underground rooms with a bare bulb for a long time, and for a certain kind of privileged person not used to that, that and some slapping around can be effective.

“But here’s the important thing: When orders were given for that operation to stand down, some of the people involved wouldn’t [emphasis mine –ed]. Disciplinary action was taken, but it brought us back to an argument in the agency that’s never been settled, one that crops up and goes away — do you fight the enemy in the gutter, the same way, or maintain some kind of moral high ground?

To some extent civilization is nothing more than leashing the beast within. When you go to the dark side, no matter what the motives, you run a terrible risk of destroying yourself in the process. I worry about the men and women who are engaging in this torture regime. This is dangerous to their psyches. But this is true on a larger sociological scale as well. For many, many moons, torture has been a simple taboo — you didn’t question its immorality any more than you would question the immorality of pedophilia. You know that it’s wrong on a visceral, gut level. Now we are debating it as if there really is a question as to whether it’s immoral — and, more shockingly, whether it’s a positive good. Our country is now openly discussing the efficacy of torture as a method for extracting information.

When Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined the phrase “defining deviancy down” he couldn’t ever have dreamed that we would in a few short decades be at a place where torture is no longer considered a taboo. (It certainly makes all of his concerns about changes to the nuclear family  seem trivial by comparison.) We are now a society that on some official levels has decided that torture is no longer a deviant, unspeakable behavior, but rather a useful tool. It’s not hidden. People publicly discuss whether torture is really torture if it features less than “pain equavalent to organ failure.” Society no longer instinctively recoils at the word — it has become a launching pad for vigorous debate about whether people are deserving of certain universal human rights. It spirals down from there.

When the smoke finally clears, and we can see past that dramatic day on 9/11 and put the threat of islamic fundamentalism into its proper perspective, I wonder if we’ll be able to go back to our old ethical framework? I’m not so sure we will even want to. 

It’s not that it changed us so much as it revealed us, I think. A society that can so easily discard it’s legal and ethical taboos against cruelty and barbarism, is an unstable society to begin with.
At this rather late stage in life, I’m realizing that the solid America I thought I knew may never have existed. Running very close, under the surface, was a frightened, somewhat hysterical culture that could lose its civilized moorings all at once. I had naively thought that there were some things that Americans would find unthinkable (even if their government was secretly engaging in them) — torture was one of them.

The old Lebanon hand that Vest quotes above concludes by saying this:

I think as late as a decade ago, there were enough of us around who had enough experience to constitute the majority view, which was that this was simply not the way we did business, and for good reasons of practicality or morality. It’s not just about what it does or doesn’t do, but about who, and where, we as a country want to be.

Now that we’ve let the torture genie out of the bottle, I wonder if we can put that beast back in. He looks and sounds an awful lot like an American.

It sounds ridiculously naive now, doesn’t it?

If you can spare a few bucks to drop into the kitty, so that I can keep on writing depressing stuff like that, I’d very much appreciate it.

Happy Hollandaise everyone,

digby

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