Actually, Torture Worked

It worked for the good people of Christendom who hunted witches and heretics.  It worked for Communists to find capitalist pig traitors.  It works for the Iranian government to find American spies.  It worked to find Pinochet's enemies.  It's worked to confirm every wild paranoid conspiracy theory every tinpot dictator has ever had.  It's worked to find the state's enemies and put them on TV so they could confess their crimes to the revolution.

Torture is great... for hearing what you wanted to hear in the first place.  The victims say what must be said in a desperate bid to end the suffering.  Whatever crazy, Kafka-esque nightmare of a regime used the torture uses the "confession" to punish dissidents even more brutally.  All to reinforce fear.  But, that's not what we did.  Oh, no.  We kept our tortured prisoners secret, even from the Senate committee that was supposed to know about them.  We destroyed video of what happened.  So, why torture people if you don't use forced confessions to bolster a illegitimate government?

Those who defend it today claim it was for information. But that's been knocked down by the report issued last week.  We didn't get anything we didn't already have, and everything else was stony silence or wrong.  But hey, that wrong stuff was useful.  Our government tortured because the people in charge of national security at the time know that torture doesn't produce information. It produces propaganda.  It produced utterings that "justified" every bomb they planned to drop.  It produced screams that "backed up" every gun they fired.  Torture was never supposed to find the truth.  It was supposed to support their efforts for unending war and occupation.

Because, when tortured prisoners tell you that all the crazy stuff you think is happening and going to happen is true, you get to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, and had no capability to harm us.  You get to keep those soldiers there indefinitely, or at least until your successor partly cleans up your messes, because you've got "intel" that terrorists are all over the place.  Those who ordered the torture, those who defend it now, need enemies all over the place.  To justify military build ups that benefit their campaign contributors.  To justify invasions that benefit mercenary companies. To justify wiretapping with no warrants.  To justify entrapping Muslims into criminal conspiracies.  To justify bombings that reinforce America's military might to the world.

And, to be honest, we, or at least some of us, the American People, wanted all these things too.  Dropping bombs on civilians half a world away avenged us after 9/11.  Watching a nation crippled by our invasions and the resulting chaos comforted us, that we were still #1 after one of our skyscrapers became concrete dust. Seeing Muslim guys with their dark skin and black, uncut hair in court wearing prison garb made us feel superior.  Hearing that guys who admitted being bad under torture were being tortured made us feel like we were returning pain for pain, damage for damage.  An eye for an eye.  Oh, yes, torture worked.  We just need to stop acting like national security was the goal.

Yeah, Sure Phil, Whatever You Say

"If you can’t reconcile some of the things Phil says with his otherwise friendly demeanor—perhaps because you are gay, or a duck—I don’t blame you. And I don’t blame Duck Dynasty for keeping the show safely apolitical, ensuring smooth digestion for a mass audience."

By now, the choicer tidbits of GQ's interview have been widely disseminated.  Here's the whole article, in case you'd also like to read the interviewer's reactions to Phil's bible-thumping.

First things first:  Phil Robertson is a goddam-fucking homophobic bigot.  When you compare a sex act between consenting adults to asshole-religious-fanatics flying planes into buildings, you're an asshole-religious-fanatic who hates gays.  When you literally tell people that allowing sodomy is the the start of allowing anything and the source of America's problems, you're a fucking homophobic bigot.  Period.  When Trent Lott told us that integration was the start of modern-day American problems, people correctly assumed that meant he favored segregation.  Trent Lott ended up resigning, because acting like you like Black people but still want them to use different drinking fountains is just no longer credible.  However, claiming that you love homosexuals while telling them their sex acts should be as criminal as blowing up a pizza joint, and that you hope that they renounce their "lifestyle" so they can be your "brothers" is somehow, still, supposed to be a rational opinion.  

Phil, what if we don't want to be your brothers and sisters in Jesus?  What if the Christian family just has no appeal for us?  Phil's greatest asshole tendency in this article is to assume that everyone wants to be saved like him.  No, we don't.  We don't want to be involved in this man's life of control freak antics over his family.  We don't want anything to do with a man who won't even apologize to people he's beaten up before becoming saved.  We don't want anything to do with a white Southerner who insists that he certainly never saw any Black people being mistreated.  

And now we get to what's been ignored:  Phil is basically saying the same thing Germans said all through the summer of 1945.  We didn't know it was happening.  We didn't see it.  No one complained to us.  That lasted until Nuremberg.  Hey Phil, does the North really have to stage a version of a war crimes trial documenting Jim Crow?  Could you not have cracked open a fucking book to learn that Black people who complained or tried to change the situation in any way got lynched, run out of town, or beaten?  Will someone please drag this asshole motherfucker to a room, tie his beard to something, and make him watch Mississippi Burning? 

I'm tired of hearing Southerners' lame ass excuses for why it never occurred to them that Black people might not have liked segregation, no voting rights, and a constant campaign of terroristic violence to completely smother anything resembling free speech. Oh, wait, that would get in the way of their own persecution complexes.  

To white Southerners (and some white Northerners, I'll admit), the abdication of power whites were never entitled to is seen as some sort of oppression.  So, I'll clarify:  Phil, you and your ilk were never entitled to keep women and non-white men from voting.  You were never entitled to keep them ignorant.  You were never entitled to keep them out of professions you wanted to preserve for your own status.  You were never entitled to outlaw consensual sex between people of the same sex.  You were never entitled to keep homosexuals from marrying.  You were never entitled to do any of these things, so taking these powers away from you is the opposite of persecution.  

Preventing you and your ilk from persecuting others is the key to everything other ethnic groups, women, the disabled, and the LGBT community have achieved.    I know you think the law shouldn't protect the freedoms they need to achieve.  I know you think the law should protect a non-existent "right" you think you have to treat others any way you want to. 

Phil's fans may think he's been unfairly silenced to keep him from preaching his faith, but what about the Dixie Chicks?  What about Helen Thomas, Martin Bashir, and Alec Baldwin?  I guess only preaching their bible is the only free speech that shouldn't have any consequences.   

Phil's fans think he is being punished unfairly for just stating what their sacred book says.  Legally, they have no leg to stand on.  So they just argue that the decision came from some sort of gay mafia that doesn't want any Christian to say anything, ever.  Last time I checked, your homophobic rants were still safe in your own churches.  Phil's fans ignore one thing that is lacking from the First Amendment:  there's no obligation, for anyone, to listen to anything Phil wants to say.  A&E doesn't have to be a megaphone for someone trying to convert people, or convince them that "love" can be found, but only if you agree that Phil is right and you must live just like him.  Phil, my advice is to find a small island just for yourself.  Preferably one that is being slowly taken away by rising sea levels.  The ocean will never tire of your preaching.

Your idol gropes you, and you're not at a rock concert. What do you do?

I am a damned infidel.  However, besides a note on my Facebook page, I keep pretty quiet about it.  Besides trashing the religious right on this page, that is.  The vast majority of my relatives are still Christians.  Most of my friends have a "spiritual" life of some sort or another.  They keep their metaphysics out of my life, and I don't remind them that there's no evidence and the whole concept breaks down when you take a good, hard, look at it.

It also means I don't go to conferences or get involved in the now numerous skeptic/secularist/atheist groups literally sprouting up all over the place.  I live in a place with every religion under the sun as well as non-believers who deconverted from all these religions, so everyone is just mixed up with each other and kind of tries to stay out of each other's hair (and bedroom).

So I don't really have to get involved with the recent scandals of sexual harassment going on at the non-believing conferences and conventions around the country.  I don't want to get involved either, mostly because just saying that this behavior is unacceptable makes the harassers' defenders issue numerous threats, including threats of rape and death.  Which seems stupid coming from people who keep saying the non-believing community doesn't have a misogyny problem. When Rebecca Watson revealed her 4am elevator experience, the community didn't have her back, but did stab her there.  First of all, when someone invites you to their hotel room at 4am after you've left a bar, it's never for coffee and conversation. Never.  I don't care what this guy said after about how harmless his proposition was.  It was for sex.  We're not all as naive as Paula Jones; when a man invites you to his hotel room, we already know it's for sex.  And it's creepy to do when the woman is alone, in a closed, confined space no one can exit until the desired floor is reached.  Watson didn't do anything wrong in her Don't-be-that-guy PSA.  And she was right to name him.  Other women need to know who the creeps are.

The fact is that all of ElevatorGate's defenders have insisted that women have the obligation to be treated as sex objects as conferences and conventions.  And not just at non-believers' gatherings.  It seems that every event that is supposed to draw people away from home to enjoy their interests with other like-minded people actually has a huge "COME FOR THE EASY SEX WITH THE CHICKS WE DUPED INTO SHOWING UP" sign that only men can see.

Fortunately, the blogosphere and Wired.com have been doing some great work.  Bloggers of both sexes have been naming names, even when it could get them in legal trouble.  And Wired has been exploring the issue in a little depth, publishing reports on the problem and its sociological origins, and advice to avoid being that guy.  Kudos to Wired for telling guys how to avoid harassing, instead of making it a woman's problem to avoid.  But even they have been getting backlash.  Look at the comments. Most people who have witnessed harassment, or in some cases, assaults are told they should have called the police.  At a conference. Where the criminal can just melt into the crowd and disappear in the 20 minutes it takes the cops or even security to show up.  Most of the status quo's defenders don't know what they're talking about, and think that because they have blinders on, there's nothing to see.

Wired is on the right track.  The online magazine has treated it as a serious problem, looked at the sociological reasons it could be prevalent, and placed the burden on harassers to learn self-control.  Harassment is not a burden anyone should have to bear at a conference they've come to for professional or personal enrichment.  Women (and the occasional man, not denying the stage five clinger) should not have to stay home and miss out on enjoying their lives or advancing their careers in public.  And we will not.  The burden needs to be on the would-be and already-done-it harassers to maintain self-control or deal with the loss of public respect once exposed.  Policies need to come from the women who have been harassed and enforced not just by security, which almost never works anyway, but by passers-by (I'm thinking of you, Bri).  Judgement from one's immediate peers, the ones he's come here to impress, would go a long way.  But it seems, instead, all the judgement is reserved for those who want men to learn self-control.

So I'll say it.  Guys, learn some fucking self-control.  It's your obligation to us and the civilized society you get to live and work in.  Learn self-control on your own, 'cause you won't like how I teach you.

The Presumption of Innocence: Not Just for White People Anymore!

To the NYPD and all those who sided with the NYPD to support Stop-n-Frisk:  all Judge Scheindlin is saying is that age bracket, sex, and skin color are NOT a substitute for "reasonable suspicion" or "just cause", which are legal terms that have definitions.  She found that it even violated Terry v. Ohio, which invented the term "reasonable suspicion" in the first place.  To those religious conservatives who complain that "separation of church and state" isn't in the Constitution:  neither is "reasonable suspicion".  But non-whites still had to live with the NYPD literally stretching it to mean "anyone we feel like searching, so go fuck yourself".

Thank you, Your Honor, for reminding us that the Fourth Amendment applies to non-whites too.   I know it's hard for these lock-em-up types to understand, but non-whites (specifically blacks and latinos) don't have to put up with being treated like criminals in order to walk on the street.

My Latest Girl Crush

If Yemmynisting is not on your blog reading list, it needs to be there.  In a place (the US) and time where the LGBT community is on the threshold of freedom and equality, Yemisi Ilesanmi is from a place (Nigeria) that the 20th century seems to have left behind.  (In terms of technology.  Sadly, the 19th century left it behind socially).  Ilesanmi struggles against a culture that opposes LGBT rights violently whenever and however it can.  Nigerians against LGBT rights aren't caught up in Western nonsense of spouting bigoted rants and then whining when they're called bigots.  Nigerians against LGBT rights just spout ignorant nonsense as if it's proven scientific fact.  They don't think they're expressing a conservative, religious point of view; they think they're expressing the only way to think brain fart about the subject.

In steps Ilesanmi.  She takes no prisoners and doesn't care if you don't like it.  Ignorant superstition is just shot down with no mercy.  And her opposition hates her for it.  And, Yoda love her, she refuses to apologize.  What polite way is there to remove someone's foot from your throat? What polite way is there to keep people from lynching you? When her opposition insists on "politeness", what they're really insisting on is that no one call them on their bullshit to their faces.  Her opposition neither knows or cares that those who would restrict the freedom and equality of others must make a justification, not the other way around.  If your own religious freedom depends on discriminating against or oppressing others- guess what- you're in a religion that encourages people to be assholes.  It doesn't make you a man or woman of your god to search your thesaurus for new insults for LGBT people.  It just makes you an asshole.

Reading her blog on a regular basis is a reminder (sometimes embarrassing) of how cowardly and lazy I can be.  What's the point of accepting the equality of others if I'm not willing to make some sacrifices, piss off some assholes, or shoot down some ignorant garbage?  Are the opinions of ignorant douchebags who tell me that their insults and discrimination and oppression of others a sign of their god's love really important?  Isn't it time we started treating their opinions bullshit with the complete lack of respect it deserves?

Goodnight, Sweet Prince - An Ode to Batting Left and Throwing Right

I will be selfish for one paragraph and whine about how the way-too-early death of Doghouse Riley has ruined my reading life.  The only writer who comes close to him is Charlie Pierce, mostly because Pierce is not afraid to lob insults.  Doghouse was (and always will be), my blogging Pole Star.  His is the example I try to attain.  I want my writing to "sound" like his.  I want to be right about everything the way he was.  I want to understand everything about the writing he leaves behind for us, because he nailed the blogging form down.  Whether he had only a quick quip or a rambling, autobiographical revelation, he knew how to write so people would stop clicking.

Doghouse's great talent was in knowing what was so wrong about the right-wing and everything they say and do in the first place.  Whenever Tom Friedman or David Brooks opened their mouths, their euphemisms and half-truths always sounded good, even if in the end I could just feel that their conclusions were dead wrong.  But Doghouse always knew how to cut right through their bullshit.  He knew what they were omitting, wrongly assuming, outright lying about, or reversing their opinions on without admitting they were wrong before.

And he had the moral courage to be pissed at these motherfuckers.  When bullshit (also known as Iraq War Commentary) was broadcasted on international television and got thousands killed, it was Doghouse who held up their hands and said "Can't you motherfuckers see all the motherfucking blood all over these hands??!?!?!?!?"  When the Emperor paraded down the street buck naked, it was Doghouse who howled with laughter at the Emperor's arrogance.  And his subjects' cowardice.

Because Doghouse knew, and pointed out constantly, that these motherfuckers couldn't get anywhere near legislation, or even a podium, without the willing acquiescence of not just right-wingers everywhere, but everyone unwilling or unable to see through the bullshit.  Sure, harping on racist politicians is fun. But someone needs to point out when that racism is by popular demand.  Ripping a new one on a leader helping the rich get richer is easy.  Attacking, brutally, our own smug assumptions of how our good livings indicate that we are better people is thankless.  In right-wing land, even the poor believe in tax cuts for the wealthy because the wealthy have repeatedly told the poor that's the only way they'll get any job. And the poor have been unwilling to even try to contest it, mostly because it melds so well with their fear that somewhere, somehow, a black guy is living off of them.   Someone needs to fucking tell the Emperor's subjects to laugh at the naked guy in the middle of the street.  Because the Emperor only gets away with this bullshit because his subjects let him.

I'm going to blog more often.  You can read or not.

sure, right, okay ....

I'll make John Stossel a deal.  He personally can go without wearing seat belts if he wants to.  However, when he inevitably hits something with his car (speed limits are for people who want to be oppressed), and everything except the mustache goes through the windshield, skipping along the road surface like a well-thrown stone over water, leaving streaks of gooey clumps, no government workers are going to clean that up off the road.  John Stossel's streaks of gooey clumps will be left for all to see and cry "Freedom!"

John Stossel's relatives will have to come out with shovels, brooms and dustpans and clean it up themselves.  In return, John Stossel's relatives will be free to bring John's casket, dump the gooey clumps that were John Stossel in said casket, and then drive to the nearest landfill for John Stossel's funeral.