Shorthand for Nothing

Recently, Mancow Muller agreed to be waterboarded, hoping to prove that it wasn’t torture. A Gawker tipster writes that it may have been staged as a cheap publicity stunt. (Full text, and relevant videos, which you should read, are through the link.) In this case, I’m inclined to believe the radio host when he says it was torture.

It’s entirely possible that he went into it hoping for a half-hearted attempt, sitting through it for thirty seconds, and then saying “It’s not that bad.” That would be better publicity for a right wing radio host. He’d have the support of all the right-wing pundits, mocking the liberals. The liberals would be calling it a fraud. And it’s very possible he was hoping to make it deceptive in appearance. But now that I’ve watched him on Olberman, and another instance of waterboarding, I think his response is legit, whatever else happened before.

The biggest reason is this: if it is entirely fake and he wasn’t under any displeasure, or that displeasure wasn’t that bad, he has no reason to say that it’s torture. He would try to downplay it. I don’t think anyone was questioning its efficacy, so he doesn’t stand to gain from going on and proving “yeah, it’s bad and will make people talk.” No, a victory for him would be to go on the air, get waterboarded, and then be able to say “eh, it’s not that bad.” He didn’t. And I really appreciate that.

My biggest question, really, is how is it people can simultaneously believe that something is “not torture” and that it is an effective interrogation technique that involves subjecting someone to an unpleasant experience they want to avoid so much that they confess to whatever they know. That’s what torture is, isn’t it? Torture is subjecting someone to something that will make their will break. There isn’t a way to make it mild. It has to be unbearable. It can be psychological, it can be physical, it can be social, but in the end it’s all torture.

And you know what? If you think it’s okay to torture terror suspects, that’s really your right. Just stop pretending that it isn’t torture. It is. What they do to the students of SERE is torture. My father, a naval aviator who completed SERE training, once told me he would have turned in his wings rather than go through it again. If you want to talk about the effectiveness of these interrogation techniques, if you want to defend them, do so with the full understanding of what they are doing. If you really want to say that we need to torture these people, or that they are bad people who deserve it, do so with the full understanding of what we are doing to them. Watch the damn videos of people getting waterboarded. Listen to them talk about it. Read about it.

Because when the Bush administration authorized it, they knew. This wasn’t a decision they made lightly. It was a deliberate authorization. They weighed the options. They considered the morality. And they decided that their objectives were more important than that, that it was worth becoming monsters to pursue our goal.

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Racism is not dead, it’s just taken a bizarre turn. Now you have some of the conservatives blaming the blacks for being racist. That’s right, folks: the blacks are now oppressing the white man. Those making these observations are almost invariably the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts, but the tone of the observation tends to vary from “idle sociological observation” to “THIS IS AN OUTRAGE WHY AREN’T THEY BEING ROUNDED UP.”

This is where racism has been lately. Most conservatives don’t think it exists anymore, unless it is the “blacks hating whites” variety they have no problem talking about. Now that we no longer have racist laws, racism is pretty much gone. The reason blacks are poor is because they choose to be poor! The reason you don’t see as many minorities in government as you would expect from numbers is because they just aren’t as qualified for office! We aren’t being racist, we’re just observing that in the land of opportunity, they don’t seem to be seizing the day very well.

This is the kind of racism that expresses itself by saying, “I’m not racist, I love my black friends.” It’s a sort of blindness to your own actions and a belief that what you do is perfectly normal and acceptable. “I’m more than willing to get past racism, I’m just waiting for them to go first.”

I think a really good awareness program would be just confronting some of these people with some basic sociological research on minorities in America.

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Just a quick update on an earlier post in which I said Republicans don’t threaten to move to Canada when they lose. Turns out some of them do! I think mostly younger ones. And a few are saying New Zealand or Australia or something. Apparently Obama is just that bad.

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One of the conservative forums on which I lurk has a thread for predicting the election’s outcome. Approximately half of the 35 votes believe McCain will win (18/35, slightly better than half). In the interests of full disclosure, a lot of people on this particular forum seem to be under the age of 18. Still, I was surprised that fully half of voters thought McCain would win.

Some gems from the thread, after the jump.

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Probably you’ve heard by now that Sarah Palin, in the event McCain/Palin loses this election cycle, wants to remain a prominent figure in national politics. I’ve been quietly making this speculation for some time now, but at first I thought she might be more likely to run for one of the state’s Senate seats. I think I was wrong about this one. Sarah Palin wants to be president of the United States in the year 2012, and she is going to use the same narrative she’s been running on.

She kicked out the incumbent Republican governor, if you recall. She fought the existing Republican establishment. She is a diehard Republican, but she still bucked the establishment. And now she has a flotilla of intellectual Republicans who don’t like her and think she is dangerously unqualified and a bit of a lunatic. She will be fighting against these elites who think that knowing what you’re doing is important in a candidate. She has a narrative already. She will drag the word “maverick” kicking and screaming back into politlcal discourse.

You see, many observers think the Republican party is tearing itself apart. You are seeing the intellectual conservatives and the conservative base, and they are not happy with each other. John McCain has ultimately decided he would rather appeal to the base. And he has set up Sarah Palin to become their new champion. It’s politics without high-minded discourse, just gimmicks and obvious ploys to make the common man feel included. Joe the Plumber? Really?

Are the gimmicks working? Can Sarah Palin come back from this election and lead the Republican Party to victory? Can this Republican Party win elections anymore? Do they need someone whose gimmick is being a reformer to shake up the party? Or is it perhaps that what they really need is someone who is intelligent and thoughtful and has the right temperament to lead, to redefine the party so that it is no longer associated with angry shouts of “socialist!” and “terrorist!” and “muslim!” and “kill him!” at rallies. A thoughtful party with traditional values, rather than a hateful party afraid the gays are going to steal their jobs.

Watch Sarah Palin carefully. What happens to her could be a sign of the future of the Republican Party.

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I’d like to encourage you to take a good look at the picture of Ashley Todd, who didn’t get mugged yesterday. See how the ‘B’ is backwards, sort of like she made it herself, in the mirror? I’m not really here to talk about that, though. Nor about Fox’s prediction that this would sink the race for McCain. There isn’t a lot of insight to add–McCain staffer makes a bad decision, makes headlines, and then admits that she was race-baiting in Pennsylvania.

I’d like to talk about some of the conservative reactions, as collected by Wonkette. It’s not every day the conservatives are dealt a blow like this. Colin Powell elicited a predictable reaction. Most endorsements do. But Ashley Todd? How do they feel about someone taking a risk for their campaign and failing?

If the collection of comments are any indication, the reaction appears to be partly what you would expect–lamenting that someone would risk their campaign’s good standing like that. But it also consists of people claiming she is probably a liberal plant: “Exactly something an idiotic liberal coward would do. bet if you look close enough she’s an obama supporter.” Apparently conservatism is incapable of doing wrong–it is all caused by acts of liberal sabotage.

In all fairness, I do not think conservatives on the whole will be accusing her of deliberate sabotage. Anger at the media makes more sense, for breaking the story in the first place when the police were clearly not convinced of the story. It may not be reasonable to assume the media won’t break a story like this–but it certainly fits in with the conservative metanarrative.

But the fact remains–there are those who are so devout in their support of the cause they believe anyone who does damage to it is a saboteur rather than merely someone who makes bad decisions. Sometimes unquestioning devotion to your cause is a bad thing.

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The conservative forums I have been reading seem to have a common consensus these days: the election is close! Normally I would link to all of the polling sites and political analysts who disagree–who think it is patently obvious at this point that McCain is in dire straits, that the election will likely not be close, and that a McCain victory will be an upset.

I have been saying this election will not be close for a long time (but not blogging about it, so you will have to take my word for it). Partly this was based on political analysts, partly it was based on this feeling that Barack Obama was an exciting candidate. Sure, I worried. But at the same time, there was this feeling of inevitability, one that made it all the more exciting, instead of complacency-inducing.

While I don’t think the McCain campaign should become defeatist, and while I do believe they are flailing around in mad desperation at this point, I believe that a healthy understanding of the polls might benefit their cause.

There’s a bit of a disconnect, though. It’s clear the McCain campaign knows it’s losing. Morale is low, and I think Obama’s feeling of inevitability is beginning to wash the Republican campaign under. But it talks as if it doesn’t believe that. “We’ve got them just where we want them!” Seriously, John? That just makes you sound out of touch–making the defeatism worse while simultaneously making the “it’s a close election and you are all fooled!” people believe it even more.

Whatever is going on internally with the McCain campaign, I can say one thing with conviction: this is not a close election. I would be much less enthusiastic if it were.

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Colin Powell has just endorsed Barack Obama, and the conservative base is not pleased with the result. He has “betrayed his party,” “revealed his true leaning,” and basically all sorts of nasty words. Perhaps this is a minority representation–I’m still looking into a more representative reaction–but this is pretty much exactly what I expected.

It reveals a lot about the campaign. Let’s go back to John McCain for a minute. He’s a maverick, right? He leans across party lines. He’s got half the Democratic ticket from 2000 endorsing him. He fights his own party leaders. He does this because he is bipartisan and compromises.

Colin Powell is, as far as I am aware, is a highly respected public figure, which may well sound the death knell for McCain’s political chances. I believe he is respected across party lines. If anyone’s endorsement would likely be viewed as “mavericky,” as something indicative of a strong independent mind and reasoning apart from party lines, I think it would be Colin Powell’s. But instead, it’s casually dismissed as treason to his party, probably because they are both black.

Obama is routinely criticized for never reaching across the aisle by the conservative base. He is “the most liberal Senator.” I wonder if this isn’t because everyone who ever works with Barack Obama is immediately dismissed as a traitor to his party?

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Earlier today I made the comment that the post-debate polls have Obama winning by a really lopsided number–well over 20 points–among independent voters. One of the crazier conservatives I know responded with the following gem: “Yeah, but the people answering the polls are probably, idiots. Obama lied so many times, that I think Luciger [sic] wants to be his apprentice.” (Punctuation and spelling are his. I think he meant Lucifer.)

I didn’t watch the debate so I couldn’t comment on whether or not Obama was lying–my understanding is they both said some pretty outrageous things about health care. I don’t get the feeling he was lying so often Satan, Prince of the Air, Father of Lies, The Great Enemy, would want to become his apprentice.

But for all that, this is a pretty common reaction among the conservatives I encounter: if the polls disagree with you, disagree with the polls. When in the minority, they say “well most people are idiots.” And when they’re in the majority, they say “finally the people are seeing through the lies.” While conservatives are by no means the only people who view statistics through a heavily distorted lens, they certainly seem to do it more frequently than others.

But maybe I’m biased–I haven’t seen any presidential statistics that favor conservatives in a long time. It’s hard to selectively interpret data to be in your favor when the data actually is in your favor.

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It doesn’t take a lot of digging to find someone who wants to move to Canada if McCain/Palin achieve a victory. I think everyone knows someone who was going to move to Canada if Bush/Cheney won in 2004, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say the same about Bush/Cheney in 2000. I don’t actually know anyone who moved to Canada. (Fortunately, this year, they will almost certainly not have to change their minds.) But I know lots of people who said it, and I think they were sincere at the time.

It’s also not difficult to find a Republican who thinks that Obama is a fraud, suspects he has terrorist leanings, believes he is a secret Muslim, or calls him a communist or a Marxist. I’ve known a few who believe he hates America, hates white people, and that he is a dangerous radical. Naturally, these people also believe that anyone voting Democrat is in some way inherently flawed. Either they are selfish and lazy, brainwashed by the liberal media, or actively opposed to America. They believe the Democratic supermajority of 60 seats in the Senate, combined with a Democrattic president, will bring our country to ruin. They use phrases like “America the foolish.” They say that “One man one vote was the stupidest thing we ever did.” (This guy I just quoted is something special. I can write pages upon pages about him.) They essentially believe that our democratic system is flawed when they are losing.

A lot of this could probably be said about the “I’m moving to Canada” liberals. But I have never once seen a Republican make the same threat. I think the reason is this: for the conservative base, it is “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Patriotism is required–anyone who is not a patriot is a freedom-hating terrorist. Patriotism is the greatest of virtues. “My country, right or wrong.” “You don’t appreciate the sacrifices that man has made for our country.” You can do nothing better than love your country as a conservative.

I think this creates cognitive dissonance for them. If Obama is elected, they will complain about everything he does and says. If the Democrats pull off their 60-seat supermajority, they will bemoan the atrocities being committed against the Founding Fathers’ ideas for this great nation. Their way is obviously the correct way. They are the only ones who put country first. They are the only ones who are bipartisan. Everyone else is an extremely partisan self-centered radical!

Unfortunately, “everyone else” these days apparently make up half the nation. According to Gallup, there are almost ten percent more of those selfish America-hating radicals than good, hard-working conservatives. In a very real way, America is made up mostly of these people the conservative base couldn’t find a good word for if they were paid to.

They will hate the government soon, probably all three branches. They think the majority (or at least a plurality) of the population are mindless sheep at best and active opponents of America at worst. But they still love their country. They are patriots. So they have no recourse but to be angry. It must have been better back when we had our way, back when Mr. Reagan told Mr. Gorbachev to tear down the wall. It’s those liberals who’ve ruined everything for us–how dare they?

It isn’t that liberals are never angry, it’s that liberals have other options.

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