Friday, February 19, 2010
Bob Barr booed for stating the obvious
Call waterboarding torture in front of a mob of brownshirts (aka CPAC), get shouted down.
The very first entry at yourdictionary.com defines torture as the inflicting of severe pain to force information or confession, get revenge, etc.. Hmmm, that doesn't sound similar to waterboarding (or the other so-called "enhanced interrogation" techniques) at all, does it?
Back when I first learned about the holocaust and Nazi regime in 6th grade, I wondered how it was possible for regular, ordinary German people to have gone along with it. How sheepish would they have had to be to tolerate a totalitarian government throwing folks in concentration camps, torturing, slaughtering at will...?
Today's conservatives are yesterday's compliant Germans (replace "scary Jews" with "scary Muslims" and there you have it). They're the kind of idiots that gave the Milgram experiment its notoriety. They are boorish, loud-mouthed, thoughtless, anti-intellectual buffoons who are so terrified of brown people that they're willing to implement a literal fascist dictatorship. Sad.
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I may be misreading your comment, but you seem to misunderstand the Milgram Experiment. It was the first of many studies showing that ordinary people, like you and me, will act this way under the right conditions. It doesn't require 'idiots'. That's the whole point.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lucifereffect.com/
I don't know if Cork misunderstands it or not, but I think he was pointing out that "ordinary" people are very willing to listen to authority figures simply because they are in authority.
ReplyDeleteThat might be the subject of another post, but as anarchists, we've obviously broken free of the brainwashing that takes place from childhood on obedience to authority, especially obedience to the state.
Milgram wrote an article in 1974 called "The Perils of Obedience". Sounds like the title of an anarchist pamphlet!
Sherlock Holmes said, "to the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are". This article fails to do that. If torture is defined as the infliction of pain, then waterboarding is not torture since it does not cause pain.
ReplyDeleteAnd trying to equate the Holocaust with the current "war" is absurdly dishonest. The Jews in Nazi Germany were ordinary citizens minding their own business. They were rounded up; men, women, and children, and slaughtered. "Scary Muslims", on the other hand, are responsible for scores of brutal murders. Leon Klinghoffer, Nick Berg, Daniel Pearl, and the 3,000 innocent victims of 9/11 all bear witness to this. Simply put, Muslims are not being herded onto cattle cars and shipped to gas chambers. But some Muslims are definitely slaughtering innocent people. It's a complete lie to pretend the "war on terror" is anything similar to the Holocaust.
uzza,
ReplyDeleteAs SE pointed out, a high number of ordinary people *are* likely to mindlessly obey authority figures (and I suspect modern conservatives are especially prone).
Sasquatch,
I'm obviously not comparing the "war on terror" to the holocaust. I'm comparing the compliant mindset that allows governments to torture and commit atrocities.
This article fails to do that. If torture is defined as the infliction of pain, then waterboarding is not torture since it does not cause pain.
ReplyDeleteYou're an idiot.