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.

maybe i don't want to seem nicer

some genius named nathan named his blog after a guy stupid enough to fall asleep on a window ledge and fall out to the street below. this makes nathan's blog worth reading for a reason that must occur only to christians. and nathan has decided he knows just how to make atheists seem nicer. because if there's one group of people whose opinions matter to me, it's the christians. oh wait, i meant the hell's angels.

nathan's first idea is that atheists need to stop feeling smug. i guess nathan doesn't like the condescending way we atheists roll our eyes at yet another recital of pascal's wager, or the first cause "argument". that eye-roll might have something to do with the fact that these arguments have been refuted, repeatedly and long ago. why should we pretend to care about bad re-runs?

i'll tell you what nathan- watch the south park episode where they explain what scientologists believe. and then tell me what our attitude should be with the people who actually believe it. then, make yourself, as a courtesy, sit with one of those weirdos at the times square subway station and get a stress test, and force yourself to listen to how the thetans are causing your problems, and what scientology's "evidence" is of this. do not tell me, with any expectation of being believed, that you don't feel the slightest bit smug about not having been hoodwinked into believing into some dreck l. ron hubbard dreamed up and sells in the mass market paperback section. and remember: one woman's dreck is another's "faith". try not to roll your eyes at the poor soul.

oh, and apply this to wicca, mormonism, and your smug knowledge that of course zeus and athena are false gods.

then, nathan wants us atheists to ignore christians' proselytizing, because they're not really trying to convert us anyway, just the people who haven't made up their minds. nathan, here's a fucking clue (christ, am i smug): we want to reach out to the people who haven't made up their minds too. we just do it by summarizing the "arguments" for the existence of a deity and refuting them. we also point out various contradictions in your "book", as well as the contradictions between the different things christians tend to believe about their deity. so, we have to address you whether you want us to or not. i know, your jobs are much easier when we don't . which is probably why you think it would make us seem nicer if we just let you spout gobbledy-gook with no rational, evidence-based response. it's like a football team's offensive squad demanding the other side not bother to defend their goal. i wonder what the ref would say?

nathan, dear, can intelligent and rational people believe in magic? and tolkien's elves? and tolkien's hobbits? can intelligent people there really was a cinderella, and spend their lives looking for that glass slipper? because that's all communicated by books too. your "book" is a collection of stories never meant to be taken literally as things that actually happened. it was people trying to forge a cultural heritage with a story of shared struggle and sacrifice. cute story, especially is you like killing innocent, firstborn children on behalf of the good guys. the god "communicating" through that book is a manipulative, vengeful, petty, jealous, bloodthirsty asshole who apparently has no problem planning our sins and then punishing us for them. and in order to forgive the humans whose sins he planned and plans to watch, he sent his "son" to earth to lead a blameless, sinless life. after this blameless, sinless life, this god then has the son's friends betray and abandon him, and then has the authorities of the patch of dirt the son lived and preached around force this son through the most excruciating, tortuous death humankind has ever devised (except, of course, suicide from watching general hospital). this horrific death then makes it possible for this god to forgive humans' sins. you call this intervention? here's a clue: this all-powerful god could have decided to just forgive people, but didn't. how do you rationally, intelligently explain why the tortuous death of someone who supposedly was himself perfect makes it possible for an all-powerful deity to forgive people for shoplifting? what was this god's thought process? what's rational and intelligent (not to mention ethical) about any of this crap?

i know you hear this all time, but where was this intervention during the holocaust? why does a just god let this happen, to his chosen people no less? i notice that this god lets alot of shit happen that just wipes out hundreds of thousands of people with one big wave. why intervene for the ancient hebrews leaving egypt, and not for people on the hijacked planes on 9/11? how does this god pick his interventions? i notice most of them happened in this "book", with parts dating back 4,000 years ago, with these last interventions happening about 1,900 years ago. why no interventions now?

nathan, do you read what you type before posting? do you know that a hypothesis is based on a series of observable facts? oh, i visited all these islands in the pacific ocean and found species are similar to each other and yet still different species. and i found that each one is perfectly well suited to that particular island's environment. and other people have found fossilized skeletons of animals that no one sees anymore. why would some species die out, and some survive- and does the environment have anything to do with that? i guess i could come up with a theory that explained how attributes that make a species better suited to a particular environment make it easier to survive, and pass on offspring with those attributes. and over time, attributes that are not good for an environment cause those living things to die without offspring. i guess i could test the theory by examining other environments, and observing whether species are suited to those. and i guess scientists in later generations could find even more fossils, and figure out how to date the fossils and the rocks the fossils are in, and then i guess some future scientists could also examine genes to see how closely related different species are.

oh, i noticed that people who get cowpox don't get small pox. why is that? i guess, maybe, the cowpox is not as strong as small pox, but getting it makes your body somehow better at resisting smallpox. maybe i could convince a few brave souls to be injected with pus from cowpox blisters, and see if they too resist small pox. but that would be a combination of induction and deduction, and the christians have decided that that can't be the scientific method. guess i won't bother.

get it, nathan? someone sees observable facts without an explanation, then makes an explanation. this explanation (called a theory) is then tested by experimenting and collecting additional observed facts. this theory is used as an explanation for facts until some new, observed facts no longer support the theory. then a new explanation is thought of, or the original theory is revised, and this new explanation is tested. see? in the scientific method, no one is required to except a theory without experimental data to support the theory. this enables human beings to understand how the world operates with the best knowledge we have at the time. which is a fuck of a lot better than trying to figure out how to make the sun stop in the sky.

however, you are correct about one thing: science is easy to abuse. just tell people that it's a belief system that atheists have "faith" in, tell people that the dinosaurs lived with people in the garden of eden, and put a saddle on a triceratops. but please note, it tends to be your fellow christians who do the abusing. i guess, to reach the undecideds.

which leads me to nathan's last pearl of wisdom. millions of people claim to be mormons, and therefore christians. can i judge christianity by these millions? what about the christians following sun myung moon? might not be in the millions, but a lot of people anyway. which millions of christians should i judge the religion by? the ones who want to go back to forced pregnancy and childbirth? which sect got it right? i just want to know- who are the real christians, who are the fakes, and who gets to decide who is what? are you the decider? am i? is the pope? how 'bout pat robertson?

and what is the christological narrative? four conflicting accounts? is the part about jesus coming back to israel to give the jews one last chance to accept him a part of the christological narrative? is jesus appearing in north america part of the christological narrative? exactly how broad is this broad narrative? and who decides how broad it is? me? you? the pope? jim wallis? mitt romney? sun myung moon?

as for quoting old testament law: i'll make a deal with you: when conservative christians stop telling me that homosexuality is considered an abomination in leviticus, and that some prophet in the old testament told us god knows us in the womb and therefore abortion is murder, i'll stop with the shit about not eating shellfish and mixing fabrics. oh, and we can see how the laws were supposed to work- the punishment is usually right there in the text, and it usually involved throwing rocks at offenders until the offenders were dead. i'm sure the christians who you consider intelligent and rational because they just happen to believe the exact form of christianity you do are cool with this.

you can call yourself chewbacca, but that doesn't make you a wookie

regarding this asshat:

why the fuck are we supposed to be against eugenics? can't we do anything to flush these dipshits out of the gene pool?

my prediction for the democratic national convention

number of times speakers will tell everyone how important "faith" is to them: 6,789,032
number of times the constitutional ban on religious tests for office is mentioned: 0

elitism is whatever fox noise says it is

cokie roberts is a blessing in disguise. she really does make an asshat of herself, and on national television to boot. she also serves a deeper purpose, even if she doesn't know it: she makes me feel good to be a liberal. i'm so grateful to myself and the people who have influenced me that she and i aren't on the same political side. why the fuck myrtle beach instead of hawaii? who cares if he vacations in a place that seems "foreign and exotic"?!? that's what vacations are fucking for- going someplace really different from home. there was a time when vacations were supposed to teach you about how people could live differently, and learning this was considered good for you. not anymore. unless your vacation reinforces the sameness of your existence, you're.... what? elitist? unless you go where everyone else goes, and do what everyone else does, you're what? elitist?

"elitist" used to have an actual definition, until the republicans decided that the federal government actually deciding federal policy needed a word that would give it a negative connotation. "elitist" used to mean someone who not only thought he/she was in charge of everyone else, but that this was perfectly natural, and that it was all based on nature, so no one else could be in charge. elitism is not, and never was, the idea that studying biology and chemistry might make you more qualified to determine what acceptable levels of pollution on human health are. elitism is also not the idea that taxpayer-funded experts might be a little more biased towards public health than, say, experts funded by companies that pollute. the idea that taxpayers might want their guys/gals working on pollution policy instead of the corporations' guys/gals isn't elitism- it's applying the concept of dancin' with them what brung ya.

the republicans have milked the word elitism like it's a monsanto cow. you could be an elitist if you eat arugula, or even know what a whole foods store is (hint- the answer is cleverly hidden somewhere in the name). really? obama is talking above people's heads because he mentions whole foods? my mother living in a suburban wasteland either goes there or to wild oats, which republicans probably also can't identify. which leads me, at last, to a point. i think republicans are just flinging the term out at random these days. to say that mentioning arugula prices in a state where arugula is actually grown is elitist bespeaks a level of numbnuttery that rivals anything brittany spears has done- ever. okay, i exaggerate, but i am going to keep complaining. the way the republicans are defining elitism to include ever more things, it will eventually include anyone who doesn't eat with their fingers.

and while i'm at it, telling the truth isn't elitism (sorry, hillary, i love you, but you're wrong). i don't trust people with fixations on both guns and religion for a good reason- something's wrong with someone who insisits some invisible sky daddy created the world in six days, and that the government must let him buy something that can spit out the maximum bullets. most of the people who blasted obama the most for stereotyping rural and small-town people would never trust a muslim who loves his koran and his m-16. not every politician is going to act as if small-town america is the real america, and that everyone on the coasts should want to be just like them. and it might do our political system some fucking good if the "heartland" heard the truth about themselves, and maybe took a good hard look in a goddamned mirror. small-town americans have certainly never been shy about calling coastal city dwellers whatever they'd like.

we here on the coasts are the people who had the education, support, and (dare i say it?) initiative to get our asses here. the cities are centers of intense competition- whatever you do for a living, you better do it well, or move back to bumfuck, missouri. the cities are also the centers of intense culture. i can identify, even if i can't read, dozens of languages from each other. i've discovered fine art and performance artists i never would have even heard of back in the "heartland". i see documentaries most americans never get to see about topics the "heartland" could either give a fuck about, or is outright hostile to. i am exposed to people who have amazing life stories. it's certainly possible to live where i live and keep a closed mind- but you have to work at it. the coasts are for people who are not satisfied with conversations about gas prices and property taxes, and thank the people who first established the coastal cities and the people who have stuck with developing them. the coasts are for people who want to think both deeply and broadly. and small-town america doesn't like the fact that some people actually prefer the cities and the people in them to their apple pie/little league perfection. instead of telling yourselves that coastal city people are elitists who want to run your life, knock up your daughter, and steal your house, you could try listening to them. i know small-town america doesn't believe this, but the people of the coastal cities are just as american as they are.