Wednesday, April 22, 2009 

Torture Defenders

The thing is, I can kind of understand the conservative position on the torture scandal.
Bear with me.
I find arguing with the lay torture defender is infinitely harder than hearing Dick Chaney defend his sadistic policies. To cite a great example by Cenk Uygur, all you have to ask them is "Would it be ok to describe cold-blooded murder as 'so-called' murder?" Then why do reporters use those words and others like them, and why is it ok to label the controversy a 'political' controversy.
The reporters are arbitrarily drawing the line. The proper line would be if the law calls it torture, or if it is universally understood to be torture and the law is ambiguious regarding specific definitions (as ours are, the Geneva Conventions, as well), it must be called torture by reporters and commentators who claim to be objective. The proper analogy for this behavior is to the conservative insistence on calling the Democratic Party the "democrat" party. Factually incorrect (the party gets to chose its own name, as you and I do) and only done to assuage the primal impulses of their viewers and/or themselves.
At least with Cheney and other Bush operatives you know that they truly believe that a controversy about even blatant murder should be described as 'political'. Because they believe that Article 2 grants the executive literally unlimited powers during wartime, and wartime is to be defined and described ONLY by the president.
This is extraordinarily radical and yet it has been mainstreamed by the press as a whole, and especially by Fox News' small plurality of the viewing audience.
These people always existed, they just didn't have such powerful representatives.