Are we really so fearfull?

[n2doc]

The Wash Post is doing a great series of articles on Torture this weekend. Here is one:
Are We Really So Fearful?
By Ariel Dorfman
Sunday, September 24, 2006; B01

DURHAM, N.C.

It still haunts me, the first time -- it was in Chile, in October of 1973 -- that I met someone who had been tortured. To save my life, I had sought refuge in the Argentine Embassy some weeks after the coup that had toppled the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, a government for which I had worked. And then, suddenly, one afternoon, there he was. A large-boned man, gaunt and yet strangely flabby, with eyes like a child, eyes that could not stop blinking and a body that could not stop shivering.

That is what stays with me -- that he was cold under the balmy afternoon sun of Santiago de Chile, trembling as though he would never be warm again, as though the electric current was still coursing through him. Still possessed, somehow still inhabited by his captors, still imprisoned in that cell in the National Stadium, his hands disobeying the orders from his brain to quell the shuddering, his body unable to forget what had been done to it just as, nearly 33 years later, I, too, cannot banish that devastated life from my memory.

It was his image, in fact, that swirled up from the past as I pondered the current political debate in the United States about the practicality of torture. Something in me must have needed to resurrect that victim, force my fellow citizens here to spend a few minutes with the eternal iciness that had settled into that man's heart and flesh, and demand that they take a good hard look at him before anyone dare maintain that, to save lives, it might be necessary to inflict unbearable pain on a fellow human being. Perhaps the optimist in me hoped that this damaged Argentine man could, all these decades later, help shatter the perverse innocence of contemporary Americans, just as he had burst the bubble of ignorance protecting the young Chilean I used to be, someone who back then had encountered torture mainly through books and movies and newspaper reports. That is not, however, the only lesson that today's ruthless world can learn from that distant man condemned to shiver forever.

snip:
Are we so morally sick, so deaf and dumb and blind, that we do not understand this? Are we so fearful, so in love with our own security and steeped in our own pain, that we are really willing to let people be tortured in the name of America? Have we so lost our bearings that we do not realize that each of us could be that hapless Argentine who sat under the Santiago sun, so possessed by the evil done to him that he could not stop shivering?

[e-mail]

Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean American writer and professor at Duke University, is author of "Death and the Maiden."

full article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/AR2006092201303.html

Others in the series (all are well worth reading:
Does it work?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/AR2006092201304.html

Torture's long shadow
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/17/AR2005121700018.html

[bobbolink]

1. Yes, "we" are. Jung was right -- in order to grow up, we have to

face our shadow selves.... this country is allergic to that sort of thing.

That includes Dems, also. We don't like looking at our deeper selves.

Thanks for posting a good article! :thumbsup:

[Solly Mack]

2. Have you read this? (speaking of Jung)

http://baltimorechronicle.com/011305PaulLevy.shtml

I agree with you.

[bobbolink]

5. Good article, and thanks for kicking this good thread!

When I saw it languishing on page 3or4 (memory is sooo short), I said, "This can't be--needs more attention" I'm glad you saw it and pushed it along.

Now, that article is fine, and I'm copying it to save. I'm so surprised to see references to "Good Germans"--hits too close to home, I think. I can remember as a kid, we talked about this a lot--how could the Germans have possibly turned a blind eye to what was happening. Now we are living it, and ... there are So many blind eyes!!

THere are also the books of Alice Miller, who detailed just *why and how* a Hitler could have come to power in Germany. What she says is actually surprisingly close to what John Dean says in his new book. I doubt that he read any of her writings, and I think he would have gained from it.

Thanks, Solly.... wish we could have more discussion on this. I fear it's the important part of what is being left out of our national awareness, and I'm including Dems in this!!

:hi: for a fine post!

[Solly Mack]

7. The mirror is a scary place

That we enable our worst nightmares demands people to take a good look at themselves...and everything they think they are.

Thank you, bobbolink!!

"Collective psychosis" - it's not just what happens to other people.

[bobbolink]

14. "The Mirror", indeed. Very good way to put it. "Collective psychosis"

"It's not just what happens to other people" -- There's a bumpersticker in that! :evilgrin:

This is why I'm not jumping up and down at the prospect of a Dem "takeover". Unless/until we start looking within, and dealing with the deeper issues, we're only recovering the same furniture.

We're supposed to be a smart and curious nation. Can't we start looking inward a bit?

Can't we at least, those of us who are of the Christian persuasion, look seriously at what "confession" really means??

MUST we retrace the steps of the Germans?

oh joy, now I'm really cheerful...

[Sapphire Blue]

23. More from Paul Levy...

Article Library on George W. Bush's Insanity: http://www.awakeninthedream.com/html/bush.html

[countryjake]

30. Malignant Egophrenic...and the disease is reaching epidemic proportions!

Peoples tongues are hanging out, waiting for someone to step forward and stop this madness, but no, we musn't mention taking a stand against torture...we might look weak?

If ever there was a time to rock the boat and call madmen the sadists that they are, it is now!

Thanks for posting that article, it was very interesting.

[n2doc]

6. You're Welcome!

DU is perplexing sometimes. I don't know if someone else had posted these articles before, but I couldn't find them, and they really are must read stuff. So it was strange to see them languish and stranger still that no one would comment. So thanks again all for the kiks and recs.

[lildreamer316]

15. Not strange at all.

As was said above...Who wants to look in the mirror?

Unfortunate, but not strange. Some at DU are very stridant about making sure we are not looking too closely.

[Solly Mack]

3. Thank you for posting this. Recommended

and Yes - collectively, America is that fearful

Sad

[scarletwoman]

4. More thanks, and another k & r. (nt)

[bobbolink]

8. Can we get a couple more recommends?

I realize this isn't a topic a lot of people are comfortable with, but... this is important and needs to be seen.

Let's get it to the greatest page, eh?

Thanks!!

[Solly Mack]

9. I second that. Please recommend.

[bobbolink]

10. I third it....

oh, wait... :hi:

[Solly Mack]

11. LOL.....just 1 more Recommend needed now

:)

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. K&R. A terrific commentary; one of the best articles I've seen yet

on this topic. I have been trying, inarticulately, to argue with some damn fools I've run intolately about why we should not, must not, cannot even consider doing this because it corrupts us and everything we thought we stood for. This says it far better than I can.

[Greyhound]

13. Here's #5, and thanks. In answer to the question, yes we are.

This is the main theme in Bowling for Columbine, amerika's irrational fear of everything.

I am plagued by an image of a thoroughly spoiled, mean-spirited, toddler wandering around a busy shopping area with a loaded gun and nobody wants to approach it for fear of being shot, but they're unable to leave the area.

[il_lilac]

16. the most chilling snip to me...

"Can't the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured by our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted, not only the "intelligence" that is contaminated, but also everyone who looked away and said they did not know, everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage so they could sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march in the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever suggested, even whispered, that torture is inevitable in our day and age, that we must embrace its darkness?"

[Solly Mack]

17. Yes! It corrupts us all. It destroys us all

I honestly don't understand why that is so hard to understand. Yet it seems beyond the grasp of so many



Speak out now. Stop it now. Or there is no coming back from this...

[Sapphire Blue]

21. And to me. "...everyone who looked away and said they did not know..."

... everyone who is indifferent...

Elie Wiesel: The Perils of Indifference

(Excerpt)

Of course, indifference can be tempting -- more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person's pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the Other to an abstraction.

(snip)

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony. One does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it.

Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.

(snip)

In the place that I come from, society was composed of three simple categories: the killers, the victims, and the bystanders. During the darkest of times, inside the ghettoes and death camps -- and I'm glad that Mrs. Clinton mentioned that we are now commemorating that event, that period, that we are now in the Days of Remembrance -- but then, we felt abandoned, forgotten. All of us did.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ewieselperilsofindifference.html (text & audio)

May God / Goddess / Allah / Jehovah / YHWH / the Creator / Waheguru / the One have mercy on us, awaken our souls and restore our humanity.

[Solly Mack]

22. Thanks for adding that!!!!

Thank you!!! :)

[bonito]

18. Drop the deaf and dumb thing its hurtfull

My mom is deaf as was my dad and let me tell you, every time I heard those words, well, Peace

[Dystopian]

19. k & r....a must read! eom

[Solly Mack]

20. Nudge. This is so worth reading and exploring

[Sapphire Blue]

24. I just read 'Torture's Long Shadow'. I wish Congress would.

I may just print these all out and send some off to them. They might find this especially helpful...

Torture's Long Shadow
By Vladimir Bukovsky

... Investigation is a subtle process, requiring patience and fine analytical ability, as well as a skill in cultivating one's sources. When torture is condoned, these rare talented people leave the service, having been outstripped by less gifted colleagues with their quick-fix methods, and the service itself degenerates into a playground for sadists. Thus, in its heyday, Joseph Stalin's notorious NKVD (the Soviet secret police) became nothing more than an army of butchers terrorizing the whole country but incapable of solving the simplest of crimes. And once the NKVD went into high gear, not even Stalin could stop it at will. He finally succeeded only by turning the fury of the NKVD against itself; he ordered his chief NKVD henchman, Nikolai Yezhov (Beria's predecessor), to be arrested together with his closest aides.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/17/AR2005121700018.html

[Solly Mack]

27. Excellent idea!!! Essays of Conscience to Congress

[bobbolink]

32. EXCELLENT!

:yourock:

[countryjake]

25. How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?

From your other link, another excellent article:

Does It Work? By Edwidge Danticat
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/AR2006092201304.html

~snip from the end of the piece~

Rare is the opportunity, as we seem to have now, for the torturer to plot out methods in advance and in public. Should a person be strapped to a board and have water poured down his nose? Should she be forced to stand for long periods of time in the cold without being allowed to sleep? Should he be slapped in the chest, face or belly? These are almost novelistic questions with no more rational answers than some haywire plot or dark verse.

After first reading it as a young girl newly escaped from Jean-Claude Duvalier's dictatorship in Haiti, I recently rediscovered a poem called "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forché. The narrator describes dining with a dictator who, after the luxurious meal, empties a bag full of human ears on the table

"I am tired of fooling around," he tells his visitor. "As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go themselves."

He lifts his glass of wine, and with one sweep of his arm, brushes the ears to the floor.

When the ears hit the ground -- like those of all my disappeared neighbors, I imagine -- the narrator notices that some of them are pressed to the floor while others are catching "this scrap of his voice." My fear is that when it is most needed, none of our ears will bother to catch any voices at all. Then will the tortured see any reason to live on? And if they live, whom will they tell?

[Solly Mack]

26. In tears

"When the ears hit the ground -- like those of all my disappeared neighbors, I imagine -- the narrator notices that some of them are pressed to the floor while others are catching "this scrap of his voice." My fear is that when it is most needed, none of our ears will bother to catch any voices at all. Then will the tortured see any reason to live on? And if they live, whom will they tell?"

[countryjake]

28. It hits me very personally, too.

As an abused child, I used to waste alot of time wondering why so many eyes never saw, why ears were turned away, why I lived in such an ass-backwards world that allowed my life to be the way it was.

The topic of subjecting anyone to authorized blows and condoned mistreatment always takes me way back and those shivers the fellow was stricken with are something no person on this earth should ever have to try and recover from. My shivering now is from sheer anger, plain and simple, and it will always be directed at those who will not listen.

[bobbolink]

33. "And how many deaths will take til we know... that too many people have

died?"

All those Katrina deaths, yet---what has changed for poor people in *this* country.

What, indeed, does it take???

:cry:

[countryjake]

34. I've found that a "blame the victim" mentality is being encouraged...

Just like a girl in a mini-skirt was once deemed "asking for it", nowadays when you try to discuss this torturing of "suspects" who may or may not have any information to offer or ever done anything in the way of "terror", ordinary people will say that those prisoners shouldn't have been "against America" in the first place. There is no examining of the circumstance of their capture, bounties offered, factions warring internally...just that if we caught 'em, they must be bad. Even the ones who have been released that are speaking out are considered spiteful or lying or worse yet, paid by the "enemy".

That's probably why so many are not as shocked and angered as most of us are...they've been fooled by our government for so long, that they seriously believe it might really be all about security or necessary to "win" some imaginary "war" and that our country, right or wrong, is a required anthem or else they might become suspects themselves by having sympathy for the "enemy". As tho those Iraqis in the pictures should have left their homes or wrapped themselves in US flags, entirely, back in 2003, to prove a loyalty to the invaders of their country and that would have made them "safe".

I see the same trend in some views of the survivors of Katrina...they have all been categorically lumped, seen as leeches of society before the hurricane hit, or irresponsible and unable to care for themselves. I had such high hopes that the victims would be able to open the eyes of our country...that some movement would arise to finally recognize and deal with the overwhelming poverty that is the disgrace of our nation and see that so many have been disenfranchised, written off. But no, they are being blamed for what happened to them.

Did you know that some jackass movement is arising in Houston to arm and protect themselves from the displaced folk of Katrina who relocated there? Just like the Minutemen, those idiots fail to see the true problem and are scapegoating and attacking the victims!

[bobbolink]

35. Where have you found this view about Katrina survivors?

I'm just curious--I don't hang around those people who would think that, so I'm interested in where this is a prevalent view. Although, I must say, I sure don't see much interest among "progressives". They may not talk in that kind of dismissive and harsh judgemental way, but... they aren't interested.

I'm certainly not surprised to hear that, because the interest in poverty issues is....zilch.

Let 'em eat cake is now the theme song of the US.

Being a poor person myself, I see this, and it hurts deeply. Hope has vanished.

[countryjake]

36. It's coming from the "Bootstraps" people...

mostly the ones who blindly still support the prez, cause their situations are so isolated and comfortable, they couldn't imagine ever being beaten down by circumstances or actually being born into a world with no future. I had fights with some as that hurricane approached the Gulf, before it ever even hit, over NOLA being a degenerate and filthy place, with all the standard condemnations of lazy wicked folk living off the system. I'd go so far as to say that they were glad that death and destruction happened. And I might add, these are the same ones who were rah rahhing during the decimation of Falujah in Iraq; who declare that any witnesses or exposers of torture are supporters of the "enemy"; and who most likely wouldn't mind seeing all Muslims beheaded.

[n2doc]

29. Toles today has a pretty good comment/toon

[Solly Mack]

31. Excellent

and it's working.