America's Authoritarian Moment: Horrific Torture and Police Abuse -- How Much Will We Take?

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/americas-authoritarian-moment-horrific-torture-and-police-abuse-how-much-will-we-take

There is so much that’s horrifying about what’s now simply called “the torture report,” the redacted summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into years of unforgivable CIA abuse post-9/11. But one thing that recurs disturbingly often is anal rape imagery: examples of “rectal feeding,” of rectal exams that used “excessive force,” and “at least one instance,” according to the report, of threatened sodomy with a broomstick.

Am I the only one who thought about Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant who was not just threatened but actually sodomized with a broomstick by the New York Police Department’s Justin Volpe in 1997? The torture report’s release, in the wake of grand juries failing to indict police officers who killed unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and right here in New York, where Louima was tortured, reminds us of the danger of unaccountable state power.

Yet an undercurrent of authoritarianism in American culture — and a particular American deference to authority figures who are supposed to “protect” us – threatens to let it go unchecked.

To be fair, many Americans are horrified by the torture report’s revelations. And many Americans believe police officers should be held accountable when they use excessive force and harm or kill Americans, of any race. But there’s a disturbing impulse evident lately, to excuse abuses of power on the part of those who are charged with protecting us, whether cops or the post-9/11 CIA. “I don’t care what we did!” former Bush flack Nicolle Wallace shrieked on “Morning Joe” Monday. And she spoke for too many Americans. (Though not for her former boss Sen. John McCain.)

[woo me with science]

1. K&R

[blkmusclmachine]

2. When you wonder why the DEMS just sit around and go all GOP-lite, comfort yourself in the fact that

Republicans are worse.

[HereSince1628]

3. But, you see don't you, that moment is in the past.

The CIA torture report is a retrospective, and it was significantly delayed by years...

The authoritarians are way way down the road on that project and most of the nation still sleeps.

[deutsey]

4. When the water starts to boil

it's already too late for the frogs sitting in the pot.



As a sidenote: Snopes says it's false that frogs will continue to sit in a pot of water gradually coming to a boil. The site quotes a professor of Zoology as saying: "As the temperature of water is gradually increased, the frog will become more and more active in attempts to escape the heated water."

This, apparently, is what distinguishes the frog from the average American.

[Scuba]

5. So Nicolle Wallace doesn't care that we (allegedly) raped little boys in front of their mothers.

What a piece of shit she must be.

[marmar]

6. K/R