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.
Three weeks ago at a Baptism party in Virginia, Prince William County police tasered the grandfather of the boy being Baptized. Here is a local news report on the incident:
The grandfather was tased multiple times for the crime of being drunk on private property while trying to show his I.D. Tasering has become routine. Cop thinks you're being mouthy: you're tased. If the charges are later dropped, which they often are, the tasing was your punishment for the crime of not being deferential enough. An internal investigation concluded procedures were followed.
A New York mom was tasered in front of her kids because she questioned why she was being ticketed for driving with a cell phone when she didn't have one. She filed suit this week. Take a look at the video:
In this case our "heroic and manly" officer, embarrassed at his own mistake, tries to save face by tasering the mom in front of her crying kids. All charges against her have been dismissed and police are conducting an internal investigation to see if they can find a way to justify what happened.
In Michigan, two teenage boys died this spring in separate incidents. These and many other cases are detailed inside.
Yesterday morning a coworker informed me of the tasering incident at the University of Florida where John Kerry was giving a speech. The video was horrifying--I understand that we can all disagree on the parameters of civil discourse, procedural ethics, and whether or not this is a free speech issue, but I was most disturbed that four police officers pinned down a young man and proceeded to taser him after he pleaded for them not to.
I'm not writing this diary to discuss the incident per se, but because I'm shocked that I can't find a single prominent left blogger (I've checked Kos, Think Progress, Crooks and Liars, and obviously Open Left...not exhaustive, i know, but they're my regular rounds) taking this issue on. Doesn't this open up an opportunity to discuss the boundaries of the police state, not to mention some very important ethical issues? Am I alone in thinking that the blogosphere is in a bind--they don't want to discuss tasering because it might require a sharp criticism of Kerry's (essentially) nonresponse to the situation? Are liberal bloggers afraid to talk about tasering?
Even Tucker Carlson is condemning this for God's sake.
Why won't Kerry call for the cops to be fired for using excessive force? Of course I don't consider Kerry responsible for the tasering, but he has the power to rectify this situation somewhat but he doesn't have the will to do it. He's a classic "lame liberal" right now.
