You’re expecting intellectual integrity from right-wings hacks. Wow, that *is* funny!

I can’t believe I used intellectual, integrity, and right-wing all in the same sentence. I need to lie down.

The fact is, liberals are afraid of the legal system and want to pervert it to their ends. They are afriad of wiretaps and torture because they would get it in both ends. And they deserve it too for selling out America and weakening our resolve. Anybody who is against torture is against our troops and Veterans day and sho0uld shut up.

We demand perverted ends!

[very unconvincing fakeGary, btw]

I agree. Real Gary wouldn’t have missed this typo: …and sho0uld shut up.

And Jillian,

Well done! A tour de force! Brava!

Who knows – we all know that lefties have no morals, after all, and one thing I can tell you about gay abortions is that they ain’t cheap.

WTF? I WANT MINE FREE! And once the caliphate is established Christians will be forced to pay the jizya to cover the expense!

Oops! Sorry! The above was not Beth at all, but me. Could this kind of thing be behind all the Beth/Ben confusion?!?!

Could it??!?!?!?!

Can Cheetos be somehow used as a torture implement?

Your hypothetical scenario is very interesting, Jillian, but you are forgetting one very crucial point: where is the LED counting down to zero? How am I supposed to imagine a criminal justice scenario that doesn’t involve an LED counting down to zero??

Also, you should specify whether the prosecutor is a gruff, plainspoken white guy or one of those prim liberal types with glasses. The ham sandwich makes me think he is a PC elitist, but you have to paint a picture for us.

Julius Streicher should also get a posthumous pardon, along with William Joyce. As long as we’re trying to retroactively condone war crimes and the war whores who love them…

“If you honestly do not think that waterboarding is torture – and I’m looking at you, Matt Margolis – then have the intellectual honesty necessary to argue that men like Yukio Asano ought to have their convictions overturned and their wartime records posthumously cleared.”

That’s totally different though, cuz he’s one of the bad guys. And our country is based on Judeo-Christian values. And, uh, what about Jack Baur?
Won’t someone think of the Freedom Spread? FREEDOM SPREAD!!!!

“Can Cheetos be somehow used as a torture implement?”

Certainly, if you hold them just out of wingnut’s reach. For extra cruelty, slooowly open the bag and eat them one, by, one.

Gary Ruppert, why would you make such a statement that liberals are afraid of the legal system? What a nonsensical statement. As to being afraid of wiretaps and torture, you just might want to check the Constitution as well as US codes and statutes. If anyone is afraid of the legal system, it appears to be conservatives. Many do not want to abide with the laws of our nation, but want to over-ride them with their own interpretations. By ignoring our Constituton and laws, you have sold out the values of being a true American. We are a law abiding country, as was the intent of our founding fathers. I doubt that even the majority of our troops believe that torture is acceptable, but a coward that does not bother to serve in the military believes it is the right thing to do. The majority of Generals and military experts believe that torture is wrong. Why do you hate America?

Just think of the retroactive pardons we’ll need to issue when they have to argue that starting wars of aggression is not-a-war-crime!

Unfortunately, they’ve already been weaselling out of this one. The argument is that water boarding is a class of techniques that includes things that are torture and things which only score 0.9 torture units (with 1.0 or greater being actual, quantitatively measured torture). The really good non-torturers can induce 0.99 torture units which, of course, doesn’t qualify as torture.

Who do you think you are, Me?

I’m a Lawyer, you know.

No, no, no… you’ve got it all wrong. See, waterboarding isn’t torture, it’s a sign of manliness and resolve. When the American government does it. It’s only sadistic torture when someone else does it to Americans. Why can’t you liberal moral relativists understand this?

And Ted, apparently they can be used as a weapon, so probably yes. But we really don’t need to give Jonah Goldberg any more ideas.

Gary Ruppert, why would you make such a statement that liberals are afraid of the legal system?

Don’t mind Gary, he is just compensating for his feelings of inadequacy. Specifically, he does not feel adequate to posting enough hilariously inane posts to keep us satisfied. The market demand must be picked up by immitators, some of them of inferior quality.

.9 Torture Units … What does that equal in Dershowitz units? Is it still at 1=1 or has the declining US moral high ground index pushed the value up over the 1=2 mark?

BTW, feel free to spread the Dershowitz unit meme–I could use the exposure. =)

Gary, cut the crap. My Grandfatehr died in WWII when my father was a baby.
What have you given, bitch?

fatehr?

I think I got a little worked up there.

I heard someone argue that if waterboarding really was torture, then the protesters who gave a waterboarding demonstration in front of the White House should be arrested, along with the military drill sergents who performed waterboarding on their own soldiers as part of training.

It’s like the concept of “informed consent” is just too subtle for some folks.

Funniest blog indeed…I’d like to switch my votes to Jon Swift please.

Jillian, maybe this guy can make things nice and sparkling clear for you. Clear as an unmuddied lake. Clear as an azure sky of deepest summer:

‘Waterboarding Has Its Benefits’ by Deroy Murdock

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjNkYmU2NWVlOWE4MTU5MjhiOGNmMWUwMjdjZjU2ZjA

(Appy polly loggies for not knowing how to format this stuff. I’m still a cut and paste kind of guy)

Don’t apologize. Great stuff.

BTW somewhat off-topic but Glen Greenwald tears dough-boy a new one for his “serious, nuanced” support of torture today. Really excellent column, even by his high standards.

Batocchio. I got the link over at C&L. Some other good links in the posting too.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/11/12/proud-of-waterboarding/

Picking up on what Gundamhead said, Greenwald’s column is about Peter Beinart and Doughy Pantload having a nice, long circle jerk discussion (on their Corner-sponsored vlog series….who knew?) about torture and how fundamentally serious and ambivalent teh Pantload is in his desire to exterminate the brutes. This sounds very funny, but I lack the stomach for it at this point.

Bonus points: Pantload is now sporting the wingnut face mullet!

I’m sure the We Lurve Torture crowd will find a subtle way to say that because the person torturing US soldiers was … not “like us,” it is unforgivable and completely 100% different than when we “use enhanced interrogation techniques” on people who are … um … melanin enhanced.

Also, 9/11 changed everything.

Woody Allen said it best in Sleeper:

Historian (showing Miles a tape of Howard Cosell Pam Atlas Ann Althouse Michelle Malkin): “We have a theory, that whenever a citizen committed a crime against the state, they were forced to watch this.”
Miles: “Yes, that’s exactly what that was.”

I don’t know who it was, but on one of those inane “dialogues”* on NPR on Friday? Saturday? Sunday?, some ‘govt official’ said that waterboarding wasn’t ‘simulated drowning’ at all because New Webster’s defines drowning as including death, and we weren’t killing people with the technique for chrissakes why are you all so wimpy about effective interrogation techniques.

So, if you’ve ever said, “I’m drowning in debt” or “I’m drowning in work” or “Help! I’m drowning”, you were wrong, bitch! You didn’t die!

*I don’t know what it’s called. They put on a neo-con, a kinda-moderate who is labled ‘liberal’ and a ‘journalist moderator’ who is usually neither. Doughy Pantload hisself was on there once, iirc. It’s usually dreck and I’m usually out of bed when it comes on early in the morning. 6:00 am Eastern maybe?

if it is just J and P, isn’t it more of a line jerk?

because New Webster’s defines drowning as including death

Imagine haggling over dictionary definitions when everyone knows what the language means.

From his post:

“It does not maim, cause permanent physical damage,or result in death.”

This is exactly what our WW2 enemies hit on: that you can torture without leaving physical marks and then pretend it isn’t torture.

Torture does not *have* to maim, cause permament physical damage or death. That’s just the right’s handy redefinition. Torture without lasting physical signs, pre-emptive war – what other concepts can we crib from those wonderful Germans?

Jillian, maybe this guy can make things nice and sparkling clear for you. Clear as an unmuddied lake. Clear as an azure sky of deepest summer: ‘Waterboarding Has Its Benefits’ by Deroy Murdock

Gbear, I always though that these guys make things pretty damed clear a while back:

The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
[…]
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
[…]
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
[…]
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Gary, cut the crap. My Grandfatehr died in WWII when my father was a baby.
What have you given, bitch?

Hey! Gary has given up a lot. He really enjoyed his childhood growing up in Mumbai; the um…smells and… fragrances, the dung patties, the beautiful beige skies…

He had to sacrifice a lot to move to Bangalore and take this job.

Today’s right wingers don’t believe that the system of laws should operate the same irrespective of the identity of the various parties.

If the accused is a right winger pursuing right wing goals, then no laws can have been broken, and it does not even make sense to use phrasing such as “the accused”.

If the accused is not a right winger, and is not furthering right wing goals, then the accused is by definition guilty, and punishment is demanded whether or not relevant laws exist defining an action as a crime; thus the need for a “trial” evaporates.

Trials are decided not by evidence, procedure, evaluation, testimony, and judgment under objective conditions, but solely by the identities of the accuser and the accused.

put a sammich on a pix of a torture-loving wingnut and he will cry like a baby.

I believe that wingnuttia will respond that one key difference is that we are white guys waterboarding brown guys. Japanese soldiers, while not technically brown, are brownish. And they were waterboarding white guys. Plus, the white guys were in uniform, which makes it bad to waterboard them, because the uniform totally shrinks because it was made out of shitty rayon in a Haliburton factory in Belize staffed by eight-year-olds. The brown guys are usually wearing a burqua or something, or whatever we’ve stripped off of them so that genetic-superfund-site quasi-women can point at their genitals and laugh on camera.

Also, 9/11 had not happened yet. And 9/11 changed everything. Like, before 9/11, Rudy was just a an upjumped mouthy thug in a bad haircut who couldn’t tell a second cousin from a third without sticking his dick into it several hundred times. Now he’s America’s Mayor.

gbear:

The NRO–comedy gold!

“Ohio-based trucker Iyman Faris pleaded guilty May 1, 2003 to providing material support to terrorists. He secured 2,000 sleeping bags for al-Qaeda and delivered cash, cell phones, and airline tickets to its men. He also conspired to derail a train near Washington, D.C. and use acetylene torches to sever the Brooklyn Bridge’s cables, plunging it into the East River.”

Yep, I feel safer already…….

Dorothy, Yea, well they did. But it was so horribly wordy. And that was before, well, you know. And Mr Murdock has, well, pointy thoughts.

(ps: it was snark)

No, really, it’s too much….debates over torture seem SANE after being at Gates of Vienna….seriously:
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2007/11/utopianism-that-demands-self.html#readfurther
Of course, the link to the Center for Vigilant Freedom is even worse, and comments at Little Green Footballs have even begun using “Atlas Juggs”….it’s a bloody free-for-all, though not all of my comments seem to be being posted….weird, eh? ROFLMAO!!

How could we talk a politician into introducing such a measure? Sure, it would be called ‘political theater,’ but it would be incredibly effective.

(btw, for posterity, here’s my much-less-impressive post on this idea)

Doodle Bean,

I heard that piece, too. IIRC, the person who was going on about the semantics of water-boarding, and was trying to explain why the military guy who called it “drowning torture” was wrong, was the style editor. He quoted Webster’s, proving (in his own mind) that unless you died it wasn’t drowning.

Mind you, the military guy was an expert on water boarding, having taught countless recruits how to survive and resist waterboarding, but what does he know?

OK, let me go back and edit my last post. I can’t stand the word ‘snark’. Snark is what folks at FDL pat each other on the back with.

Ahem: Dorthy, have you read ‘A Clockwork Orange’ by Anthony Burgess? I think the intent of my posting was pretty clear for anyone familiar with the book (or Stanley Kubrick’s movie version, which isn’t nearly as scary as the book).

Well, to be fair, the conservatives of the day (General MacArthur was really ahead of his time, he’d fit in well today) did drop some charges, and, even used secret CIA funds to put some war criminals (such as the guy in charge of organizing slave labor) back into power (the aforementioned guy was Prime Minister of Japan from 1957-60). In fact, the core of the political party that has ruled Japan since 1955 was made up of war criminals supplied with CIA money. Yay!

Haha, intellectual consistency and honesty from wingnuts! You’ve essentially invited them to stalk you; smear you; and accuse Clinton of something or other. That’s about the best you’re gonna get out of that lot of weenies.

That’s true, Legalize, but at least we’re not talking about Hudnall, Idaho or hangover cures anymore . . .

Oops. Blew it, didn’t I?

I wish the media would only interview people who’ve actually undergone waterboarding, instead of quoting idiots with a degree in nothing.
Re the ‘simulated drowning’ the authors of these first-person articles in the washington post and salon say, waterboarding is worse.. it is simulated death via drowning.

This is an excellent post and an excellent point.

Dr. Luba,

Thanks for the clarification and verification. My radio comes on very early and sometimes it’s hard to tell the chatter on NPR from my dreams – often they are equally surreal.

I had no idea the “it isn’t really drowning” guy was a style editor. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the ‘liberal’ in the piece. Oy. Our tax dollars at work.

Finally, the last time I was in Idaho…

Gbear,

Sorry: I knew you were being facetious, but I didn’t think the article itself was. I should have written that more clearly.

Ahem: Dorthy, have you read ‘A Clockwork Orange’ by Anthony Burgess? I think the intent of my posting was pretty clear for anyone familiar with the book (or Stanley Kubrick’s movie version, which isn’t nearly as scary as the book).

Saw the movie, but years and years ago.

Yeah, I agree with the upthread comments that asking a wingnut to articulate and defend an idea is like asking your dog to…do something that it can’t possibly do.

You know what I mean.

These stupid wingnut fucktards are really pissing me off, particularly when it comes to serious stuff like this. They’ve been watching too many episodes of shit like ’24,’ and have no clue about the very real pain and suffering that comes from humiliating, degrading, and coercive techniques.

Then again, they’re just aping the “adults” at the White House, specifically:

The memo (authored by John Yoo and Jay Bybee) defines torture so narrowly that only activities resulting in “death, organ failure or the permanent impairment of a significant body function” qualify. It also claims, absurdly, that Americans can defend themselves if criminally prosecuted for torture by relying on the criminal law defenses of necessity and/or self-defense, based on the horror of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Finally, the memo asserts that the criminal law prohibiting torture “may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations undertaken of enemy combatants pursuant to the President’s Commander-in-Chief powers.”

In short, the memo advises that when acting as commander-in-chief, the president can go beyond the law.

When our own senior Justice Department (!!!) set the table like this, what else can we possibly expect from the robots downstream?

The transcript of an interview on Democracy Now with the forensic psychiatrist who interviewed Jose Padilla is one of the most disturbing things I’ve read in the past year or two (and there are plenty of candidates for most disturbing).

If we assume that Padilla was not “tortured” based on the weaselly definition above, what exactly was done to him?

In this very small cell, he was monitored twenty-four hours a day, and the doors were managed electronically. And between what Mr. Padilla told us and other sources, essentially it’s possible to open and close these doors electronically. And he would hear the click of the door opening, which is a loud click that sort of echoed, and then a very loud bang over and over and over again for hours at a time, possibly days. He had no way of knowing the time. The light was always artificial. The windows were blackened. He had no calendar or time, as you mentioned earlier. He really didn’t see people, especially in the beginning. He only had contact with his interrogators.

…as a clinician, I have worked with torture victims and, of course, abuse victims for a few decades now, actually. I think, from a clinical point of view, he was tortured.

…during my time with him, some of his reasoning seemed somewhat impaired, some of his thinking seemed impaired, his memory certainly, his ability to pay attention seemed very impaired. I developed a differential diagnosis from this: severe anxiety. Post-traumatic stress disorder can do that. But also, we know from really basic neuroscience studies that extreme isolation for prolonged periods of time — and I’m talking, you know, the studies are on maybe days or weeks, and he had extreme isolation for years — really do, in fact, impair higher brain function. And I recommended that we get some neuropsychological testing. And, unfortunately, he wasn’t able to fully cooperate with that. However, the testing we did do was consistent with brain damage, yes.

…This was the first time I ever met anybody who had been isolated for such an extraordinarily long period of time. I mean, the sensory deprivation studies, for example, tell us that without sleep, especially, people will develop psychotic symptoms, hallucinations, panic attacks, depression, suicidality within days. And here we had a man who had been in this situation, utterly dependent on his interrogators, who didn’t treat him all that nicely, for years. And apart from — the only people I ever met who had such a protracted experience were people who were in detention camps overseas, that would come close, but even then they weren’t subjected to the sensory deprivation.

…given what sensory deprivation and isolation of this scale does, it’s also entirely possible that he wasn’t given drugs, and it’s just the psychiatric effects of the isolation and the sensory deprivation, because the hallucinations can be incredibly vivid. People feel like they’re losing their minds, that they’re coming apart. It’s absolutely terrifying.

…What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being’s mind. That’s what happened at the brig. His personality was deconstructed and reformed.

…the purpose of keeping Mr. Padilla isolated was to foster a sense of dependence on his interrogators and to essentially foreclose in his mind utterly any hope of rescue. And it makes reference to the fact that, given that people who have had contact with the criminal justice system will expect to see an attorney and be rescued by an attorney, they want to essentially disabuse him of the notion that he will ever be rescued. They want him to believe that he is in their power forever. And I believe, in a sense, they succeeded.

…One of the things that came out in the course of my evaluation was, he was required to sign his name John Doe.

(Q – And what was the reason for wanting to have him sign his name John Doe?)

…He’s no longer a person. He’s no longer an individual. There will be no record that he was ever there, that the interrogators — this is from my knowledge of torture around the world — that the interrogators essentially will be absolutely immune to any accountability.

So, maybe some prominent wingnuts will sign up for some good ol’ sensory deprivation. I mean, it isn’t torture. It’s a no-brainer, eh?

Sorry for such a long (and unfunny) post, but I guess I’m with Jillian when it comes down to it – It probably has something to do with the spectacle created by so many of our elected representatives making excuses for torture lately. It’s surprising just how unfunny that is.

Peace

Well, aside from the fact that you’ve shown yourself to be a traitor by admitting to having never seen a Superbowl, this is a great point. It will, of course, go entirely unnoticed along with every other worthy argument for the last six or seven, or twenty years.

No, really, it’s too much….debates over torture seem SANE after being at Gates of Vienna….seriously:

wtf is it with GoV, they ramble on and on and on until you lose the will to live, they obviously missed the meeting where it was explained that getting your point across requires brevity. Its like reading the transcript of a pub bore.

justme, is it only traitorous for Yanks never have gone to the superbowl, or is it the whole world, or are non Yanks traitors by definition (except for that nice man Blair, mark Steyn, Hitch and that black Dutch woman)?

I’d rather just invite them to opine on whether it’s torture after doing it themselves. But to make it fair, they get to be kidnapped, drugged, starved, and sleep-deprived first, and they don’t get to know whether the person doing it to them is Al Qaeda, some liberal who hates them, the bully they feared in second grade, a random convicted serial killer, or Rudy Giuliani who’s convinced they have the information that will win him the presidency.

Because you can generally endure anything when you know it’s going to end, but as others have noted, it’s a vastly different thing when you think you might be going to die.

lobbey–I do the same with my lack of being concise, I’m afraid, but somehow it’s just worse there…and if I’m feeling mischievous, I just can’t not leave a comment.

“Michelle Malkin’s Left Testicle”…..ROFL….that name needed usage. Many thanks.

debates over torture seem SANE after being at Gates of Vienna….seriously

That’s really all you needed to say… putting “Gates of Vagina Vienna” in a blog post is kind of like a big green Mr. Yuck sticker for teh Interwebs.

“Hi! I’m a moronic wanker who stole my name from Jack Vance and now I’ll tell you all about the evil Mooslims about to destroy Western Civilization! Nyeeeyow! Gotta keep an eye on those rural compounds! They’re comin’ to get us! Gimme three wilsons for a bee, I gotta go tie an onion to my belt!”

Dammit, why doesn’t the strikeout tag work on my posts?

Here’s the even weirder thing, Sidhe.

I’d WAY rather BE tortured than be the torturer.

There is NOTHING more dehumanizing, more likely to wreck your humanity and steal your soul, like being forced to participate in a torture session. Whether you brought the poor fucker in, or you were the scared asshole that thought that a mock “execution”, a pistol to the head under an empty chamber, beatings, c’mon now, REAL beatings where the teeth all fly out in a spray of mucous and blood, where the rifle butt breaks the nose and the cheekbones, and sometimes it goes on ’til the forehead cracks and the grey matter starts leaking out, and still the poor good-as-dead guy is trying to please you, tell you what you wanna hear, because he believes he might still walk away, when everybody else in the bunker knows he’s gonna die in the next hour. Hard.

It’s not fair. That’s the thing. You exercise that kind of power, but you don’t actually CONTROL that kind of power, you’re just a thug for the power structure, it tears up your insides.

You think PTSD is all about what you saw, what you experienced.

Sometimes, guys come home wrecked for the simple reason that they were asked/told/forced to sacrifice their most basic humanity in the name of survival. They had to do things they KNEW were evil, and then they had to spend the rest of their lives trying to figure out if THEY were evil for it.

It’s a fucked up system. And it hurts a whole bunch of people…

mikey

There is NOTHING more dehumanizing, more likely to wreck your humanity and steal your soul, like being forced to participate in a torture session.

Frantz Fanon wrote about this, as several of his psychiatric patients during the Algerian war were torturers who suffered from migraines and other physical ailments. They didn’t connect the dots between the symptoms and their “work”, but he did.

Lindsay Beyerstein has a more recent story about the impact of torture on a torturer.

I suppose you have to be Dick Cheney or George Bush to avoid any detrimental impact. After all, they issue the orders others follow.

speaking of George Bush (now that linkage is working) check out this despicable photo op he participated in recently.

It literally turned my stomach.

I wonder if Yoo and Bybee based their memo on the Spanish Inquisition guideline for torture, that “it was not to cause the loss of life or limb or imperil life” (citra membri diminutionem et mortis periculum).
But the Spanish Inquisition never had the intellectual dishonesty to claim that what they were doing wasn’t torture, because they were following these criteria, .

The latest talking meme is that there are different KINDS of waterboarding, and we use the GOOD kind, so it’s okay!
Tied along with the, “well they want to kill US, so we should be allowed to do whatever we want to them!” Which as about as much poise, sophistication, and rational thought as “He started it!”

In all of the rationalizations I’ve read two things seem to be key to keeping the compartments locked:

1. There is the “CERTAINTY OF GUILT” imposed on the victim.
2. There is “NO INTENTION OF MURDER” presumed in the process.

All of the apologist cling desperately to those two attributes.

Its like they believe ‘Christ’ himself is preforming the torture.

You’re forgetting something very important here, which is the star around which the entire American-conservative world revolves: it’s only okay when we do it, and Asano was not one of us.

But I guess that’s where this road is supposed to lead in the long run.

mikey, I have a feeling you and I could have the sort of six-hour conversation together that would creep out the people who thought they knew us. 🙂

Believe me, I do know what you’re saying though I won’t get into it here. But I’ve seen too many people gleefully take up the role of abuser or torturer, not giving the slightest damn about losing whatever humanity they had to begin with, to believe that most of the assholes currently advocating waterboarding would be bothered by it at all. They’re bullies, and you don’t make bullies think by making them hurt others. You make bullies think–if at all–by hurting them.

“Seeing as we don’t seem to be making any real progress on this whole “why torture is bad” issue, or on the “why waterboarding is torture” issue, either,”

Screw that — everybody knows waterboarding is torture, that torture is not just “bad,” it’s evil. You see, this is why the Right-wingers win so many arguments with the Center (let’s face it, nothing “leftist” about the Democratic Party). They turn every obviously-wrong thing they want to do into a great debate, and we obligingly play of the field they choose.

Torture is evil and waterboarding is torture, full stop. Condemn it loudly for what it is, don’t beg people to accept what is obvious in the first place.

You make bullies think–if at all–by hurting them.

I’ll disagree. Many bullies are sociopaths. The only way to make sociopaths think is to humiliate them and also punish them for their actions. Social standing and prestige are often the most important things to sociopaths. Humilation/mocking and imprisonment are the biggest threats to that prestige.

As far as I can tell, prestige to them functions like love to us. It’s something they will do almost anything to achieve and defend.

There are plenty of law-abiding sociopaths out there — they behave legally because their fear of getting caught kind of substitutes for a conscience. It keeps their baser instincts under control.

Sadly, this administration has given even the law-abiding sociopaths the excuse to act badly. Defining torture and saying it’s o.k. to plead self-defense has opened the door to every bully and sociopath out there to go wild. Because that is the other thing about sociopaths — they are empty inside unless they are feeding off other people’s strong emotions – emotions such as pain, fear, anxiety, anger…

That is one of the many reason why the Bush-league administration has been so bad for our country — he’s given free rein to sociopaths to get that emotional food they crave without any punishment.

And that is why punishment is going to be so important. No telecomm immunity for spying, for exampe. Impeaching Cheney and Bush for any number of high crimes and misdemeanors for another.

I’ll disagree. Many bullies are sociopaths. The only way to make sociopaths think is to humiliate them and also punish them for their actions.

I don’t think you’re disagreeing at all. Humiliating sociopaths *is* hurting them.

Hurting people is so much more than smacking them in the head. As mikey notes, for example, hurting people–some people anyway–is making them smack someone else in the head. But that wouldn’t hurt a conscienceless sociopath anymore than threatening the family of someone who hasn’t got one.

Oddly enough, I think waterboarding these assholes would serve the dual purpose of terrifying/hurting them and humiliating/hurting them. But I doubt it’d work on most of them anyway, since having been freshly humiliated by circumstances, they’re not going to be eager to humiliate themselves by explaining to their fellow assholes that they were wrong. They’d know all too well how much humiliation that would involve, and I doubt they’d risk it.

I’d like to hope it would shut some of them up, though, so rational people could be heard.

lobbey,
It is un-American to have never seen the Superbowl. There are many excuses for never having made the actual pilgrimage. If you have been kidnapped and spent your entire adult life in a six by six foot underground cell beneath a serial killer’s suburban home awaiting an unspeakable butchering, you are exempt from having to corporally appear at the stadium, though your captor, for the crime of impeding said pilgrimage, will spend eternity having his internal organs redecorated by Richard Simmons and Liberace.

Non-Yanks? Come now, everybody knows the Yanks are a baseball team, and that’s a whole other kettle of fish. They still aren’t necessarily traitors, unless, of course, they’ve never seen the Superbowl. Since the World Series and the Superbowl are brilliantly scheduled to not coincide, baseball fans can manage quite easily to not fall prey to traitorous behavior.

What is this “whole world” of which you speak?

Excellent argument, incredible post…

But I’m very, very afraid that for wingnuts everywhere – be they best-selling wingnut-welfare recips doling out bigot truisms; or reactionary judges and law-school profs (not just at Regent U.!); or corporate execs/GOP mega-donors; or just plain dirty rednecks – the Constitution is to be more honored in the breach than the observance. There is a primitive, quasi-spiritual Constitution sitting hot & restive in the wingnut heart, which can’t hold a candle to the parchment in the Archives; and the spiritual Constitution – “24”-like, Minuteman-like, provides *immediate* and unambiguous counsel and authority. The *true* Constitution is like the Coliseum, to these people: site of the eternal agon, messy with common blood & sweat. The fight over restraint and rights and all that seems to them never to end, and they feel as if each victory *for the People* is actually a loss. They’re cheated if the cops can’t summarily shoot down “perps,” or if abortion providers can’t be hounded away or even lynched, or if gays can “flaunt” their “lifestyle” on Main Street without threat of beating; or especially if dirty furriners can move around the U.S. speaking and dressing as they wish.

Don Siegel’s “Dirty Harry” was in its time a nasty little exploitation movie riffing on Nixonian “Silent Majority” resentments; but at this point Harry’s no longer “dirty” – he’s the motherfucking man, he runs things with proud thuggishness in the form of Cheney or Scalia…or, certainly, Giuliani.

Even Hillary Clinton is far more careful to take a “stand” on the possibility of committing horrific mass murder via nuking Iran – a sovereign country which hasn’t attacked us – than standing strong on maintaining Constitutional protections for parties most in need of it.

Shit – I meant that the parchment Constitution can’t hold a candle to the Constitution-of-the-wingnut-heart. My bad.

So…the Red Cross teaching us how to save drowning victims has all been yeat another Liberal ruse?

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