Torture Day, October 17th

[andygates]

Note it in your diaries, it's the day that the USA gave up on all that "shining beacon" rubbish and signed torture into law. The moral authority of that country is now on a par with, say, China, or Burma. It seems you can indeed boil three hundred milllion frogs alive by just turning up the temperature slowly.

Just think, this time next year you could be celebrating the first anniversary of institutionalised, legal torture. How neat! Quick, get an Abu Ghraib torture hoodie for your kids for Hallowe'en!

You could wrap copper wire around Jefferson's coffin and generate enough power to light a small town, he's spinning that fast in his grave. You Americans who read this: how did you let your country get this bad? How do you tolerate it? Have you no shame?

Comments

[andygates.livejournal.com]

I think you've hit two nails on the head there. First, the idea that The People are in charge is at the heart of democracy, and yet it's clearly a crock in a dynastic plutocracy with big-business lobbies. I'm not saying we're better, but it does rather highlight how there may be cycnicism and resistance to the export of "democracy".

Good government has the people fairly represented. That has nothing to do with votes - that's just one method and arguably the hardest to bork. All that matters is that the rulers represent the peons; this is why I have a big problem with plutocracy, as big business interests don't have to listen to the people, just the market. And corrupt centres cannot export virtue.

The second nail is of course that YES! You should get up in arms! That's the whole damn point of the Right to Bear Arms, isn't it? To get pissed at King George and throw his tea in the bay? Or is this a case of risk/reward balance: legalised torture isn't quite horrible enough?

[estaratshirai.livejournal.com]

It is a risk/reward balance, in fact: not because legalized torture isn't horrible but because my particular King George has much more sophisticated killing machines than the previous and isn't across an ocean from me.

Contrary to what might be the global concept of Americans, we're not actually all capable of just taking up the semi-automatic weapons we've got stashed in the basement and killing other members of our own community. I'm not a soldier - I'm a mother and a priestess. The kinds of help I might be able to provide a resistance movement are much less bloody than what you're asking of me.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Aw, you're no fun :)

[maythen-apple.livejournal.com]

I was *raised* to be a blood spattered soldier against The Man. I actually do know how to pick up the semi-auto. (it would take me a bit to get back up to speed, childhood was long ago)

But I'm not inclined to being gunned down, disposed of, or tucked in some cell.

Instead I do the things that I can. I vote. I write letters. I attend events. I contribute. I get involved as much as I can. But it isn't working.

Just because we live here doesn't mean we're running the show.