The First Rough Draft of Moral Abnegation

Once when I was teaching college composition in Kentucky, I was working my way around the room, talking to the students about their thesis statements for their research papers, when I asked one student what her thesis was, and she replied, "Child abuse."

"Well, that might be a topic," I said, "but it's not a thesis statement. What exactly will you be arguing regarding child abuse?"

"I'm against it," she said.

I endeavored to explain that arguing against child abuse wasn't going to be much of a paper. That argument was already settled; child abuse was bad. What was debatable, however, was what exactly we should do about it.

What's driving me absolutely nuts is that we as a nation can't seem to get that far regarding torture. Whenever I turn to one of the loathsome 24-hour news channels, journalists--excuse me, "television news personalities"--are now constantly telling me that "there's an intense debate about the use of enhanced interrogation techniques."

How and why is there a debate? Have we all gone mad? There should be no debate: torture is bad. It's wrong. It's terrible. We shouldn't do it. The end.

Yet the media just laps up whatever is served to them by the right-wing freak machine. "Journalists" have become so morally vacant, so invertebrate, that if they were in Nazi Germany, they'd be reporting that there was an intense debate between Jews and the Nazis who wanted to feed them into ovens. They would have roundtable discussions about whether it was "really right to call it genocide," because otherwise the Nazis would say that they're biased in their reporting.

They still actually give that black-hearted lunatic Cheney respect that he long ago lost any right to. He and his cabal have been caught lying innumerable times, and yet to actually call a lie a lie is somehow evidence of "bias." They fail to challenge absurd statements from the freak machine about how Obama wants terrorists to be walking our neighborhood streets. Let me tell you who shouldn't be walking our neighborhood streets: Dick Cheney. I won't feel safe until they lock up that sick fuck next door to Khalid Sheik Mohammed. They deserve each other.

"Enhanced interrogation techniques" is newspeak at its finest. You would think people who ostensibly have been trained to use precise language would find such a term not only abhorrent but laughable. "Enhanced interrogation techniques" is something Blofeld says to Bond as his goons are lowering a giant circular saw onto him: "We have certain . . . enhanced interrogation techniques, Mr. Bond--BWA HA HA HA HA HA!" And yet turn on the news, and some blow-dried dipshit with a degree in "journalism" will sure enough be using it. It takes former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura to call it what it is: torture. Unlike Cheney, Ventura served in the military. He was a Navy Seal. He was waterboarded. He knows what he's talking about.

Here's an idea, "journalists": start investigating whether Cheney and his fellow depraved cohorts were using torture to build the case for the war in Iraq. The evidence is starting to build. And that would be the greatest abuse of power in this country's history. But what's that? There was a new American Idol crowned? Someone just posted new topless photos of Carrie Prejean?

Oh, well, never mind then.

But my rants should not in any way be taken as an attempt to excuse or turn a blind eye toward the actions of our current president. Despite his earlier rhetoric, he now seems content to sweep the matter of torture under the rug for the sake of political expediency. That disgusts me. I can never look at him the same way again. I know, I know, I shouldn't be surprised. Call me crazy, but I actually thought that any sane, semi-intelligent, semi-educated person would recognize a policy of torture for it was: a malignant cancer on our institutions.

There's a line in Heinrich Böll's Billiards At Half Past Nine that I've remembered ever since I first read it in high school. Forgive me if I don't quote it exactly, but it goes like this: "Whenever I meet someone, I ask myself whether I would like to be turned over to them. I usually don't like the answer."

Whenever I encounter someone defending our government's use of torture or attempting to excuse it, I ask myself whether I would like to be turned over to them.

I don't like the answer.

Such persons have renounced their humanity.

Watch out for them.