Neither the MPs at Abu Ghraib nor the guards at Guantanamo Bay started the US down a path of being a nation that tortures all by their lonesome. They didn't even order it. And why should it be so surprising that there would be little squeamishness about torturing foreigners when our domestic culture has been encouraging in-house torture for a very long time?
The torture of US citizens is common in prisons. This includes dehumanizing solitary confinement and the threat of rape torture. Prisoner advocates have been pointing out for a very long time that prison rape is a casual punchline praised for universally accepted, though never proven, deterrence benefits. US prisoners of war considered solitary confinement among the most terrible tortures and nearly everyone considers rape to be torture, but we allow these things to be done in our country every day.
Though winking at torture never stopped with convicted inmates. Police brutality against minorities and uppity demonstrators has been a long-accepted staple of US national culture - almost as if getting to bully and beat people was a perk of being a law enforcement professional, because it's just so darn fun. Even if most members of the police force conduct themselves laudably and would never want to torment anyone, cases of sadistic behavior by law enforcement rarely raises the mainstream outrage meter, or any attention at all.
Now that Tasers have been approved for law enforcement use, police torture of even upstanding white people who've never protested anything in their lives has become commonplace. Which is great in a way, because then we're more sure to get news coverage of it. Still, it's disconcerting to realize how easy it was to sell everyone on the idea that the police should be able to torture whoever they feel like torturing whenever they want to.
Admittedly, Tasers don't usually cause major organ damage or death, so that's all right then. Except that technology advances are likely to begin making it so easy and efficient for the police to torture even large groups all at once that we might want to think harder about where this is going. Especially when the attitude of some people towards their fellow citizens has gotten so pitiless that moronic advertising company Saatchi & Saatchi of Los Angeles decided that terrorizing and threatening people would make for a good ad campaign, as did Toyota and a bunch of people who referred their 'friends' for this treatment.
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