An America that tortures, and other nightmares

We have more than a recession. The bottom has fallen out.

We debate whether the United States should torture prisoners. We debate it and the “in favor” argument wins. Not once, but again and again, for years now.

At the birth of the Republic, Gen. Washington forbade the mistreatment of British and Hessian prisoners of war. He hoped we would indeed inaugurate “novus ordo seclorum,” a new order of the ages. Because the Founders knew they were establishing a republic of men and not angels, they set this new order on a firm foundation of the law, particularly a Constitution based on separation of powers and, especially, checks and balances against the excesses of the executive. It wasn’t just that the Founders had rebelled against a king; they took their cues from ancient Rome, and knew how an emperor could use constant war as an instrument to destroy peoples’ liberties.

Constant war and torture.

If these sentences induce sleepy-time, welcome to America today, where not only teenagers but most adults know little about history. The Founders knew no self-governing people could survive such self-ignorance.

I rode down the elevator the other day with a young man in his mid- to late-twenties. It was a day when 58 people had been killed in bombings in Baghdad. But because the Iraq war is “boring,” and the “surge” is “working” — so say the cowards and fools who run most of the corporate media — this news is largely buried. It wasn’t even mentioned on network radio, which led with a small, non-lethal bombing in Times Square. (Message: be afraid!) I rode down with this young man as he fiddled obsessively with a small device making sounds of gunfire and explosions. I realized he was playing some kind of video game. Did he even know the real violent suffering that went on that day, partly because of the actions of his own elected government? A government that uses torture as an instrument of national policy. The man was a perfect example of how our society now infantilizes adults, except the ones who volunteer for war of the non-video game type and do the dying while the rest of us are “consumers.”

Sadness comes at odd moments now. I was reading a piece on the 50th anniversary of Van Cliburn’s electrifying moment in Moscow, winning the Tchaikovsky competition at the height of the Cold War. As the New York Times put it, “To this repressed society came a lanky, boyish 23-year-old Baptist from Kilgore, Tex…That Mr. Cliburn was so openhearted, guileless and sensitive — qualities that abounded in his playing — was a large part of his charm. Soviet cultural officials dubbed him ‘the real American Sputnik.’ " That was another America.

I choke up when I see movies about Project Apollo, when we had great national purpose beyond using a pitiful tax cut to be “consumers” and “stimulate” the economy. When I see the Marine recruiting ad in movie theaters that shows archival footage of our soldiers as the liberators of continents in the service of just causes. These seem like the musty records of an ancient civilization, not my country, in my lifetime.

We are men and women, not angels, and real history is replete with monstrous acts, including ours. But they were the exception. They were not the spirit of America, much less a return to the bloody, tyrannous old order of the ages. Can we imagine Truman or Eisenhower or even Nixon defending torture? Or Congress, the Supreme Court or the press letting them get away with it? Ah, but that is that foreign country of the past.

The Bush administration well knows that torture produces unreliable information, puts our own soldiers at risk and makes enemies for America around the world. Yet it steamrolls ahead in the most public fashion. Outrage, even questions, are minimal. The citizenry barely gave Congress to the Democrats, so the president can continue to do as he pleases, the emperor the Founders feared.

One can only conclude that many Americans agree that it’s good to torture. Torture is good politics. So cowed are the media that they refer to it as “enhanced interrogation techniques.” So shredded is the Constitution that the courts and Congress are hamstrung.

Maybe it’s not surprising, given generations of progressively worsening education thanks to ongoing tax cuts and a failed educational establishment, thanks to an affluent elite that has been bought off, much like that in Rome (before the caesars started killing them off), thanks to rot in so many institutions. I’ve seen polls that show many Americans believe Saddam Hussein caused the 9/11 attacks. The torture electorate will believe Barack Obama is a Muslim, helped along by Hillary Clinton’s sly insinuations. She understands.

And this is a good Christian nation, the torture electorate claims, sans irony. If we were such a nation, we would pray every day for our enemies.

But these “interrogation techniques” will only be used on “the most dangerous terrorists in the world,” the president says. The torture electorate hears this from their talk-radio propagandists and cheers. Who will decide who is a terrorist? Mr. Bush’s government. We saw how that worked out with the rendition and torture of an innocent Canadian citizen. Now run along to the mall and consume. This is wartime, after all. And then get back in time to watch American Idol. A good Christian nation needs its idols.

So, yes, the recession will be worse than anyone can imagine. Yet recessions often put things right in an economy, purging the imbalances, shaking out the perversions of the market. It’s rough justice, but things swing up again.

But the bottom has fallen out. The center has not held. Every day a McCain presidency looms larger. What else could we expect for a nation that allows a president to proudly proclaim that torture is an instrument of national policy? I am not afraid of the terrorists. I am afraid of what we have become.