Wednesday, December 10, 2014

How do we make it matter?

I've been really disgusted by the revelations of the Torture Report, but resisting the idea of simply sharing selections from the large number of pieces I've seen about it, many of them excerpting damning chunks. There's too many. This quote, from an anonymous reader at Andrew Sullivan's blog, gets as close to a summation of my feelings as anything I've seen:
"I wish I had some insightful analysis that I could offer, but all I thought as I read of these atrocities was, 'It won’t matter. It won’t matter. It won’t matter.'

The report won’t even cause a ripple in this country’s view of torture. If anything, it’s liable to strengthen the position that any and everything is justified, because look at what they did and continue to do to us. To feel outraged, you must view the torture in a vacuum, free of its associations with September 11. And I guarantee you that will NEVER happen. The apologists won’t let it happen, and certainly those who conducted and authorized it will never let it happen.

Add to that the political view that it was released by Democrats in their waning days of Senate power, on the day the Republicans had hoped to grab headlines by humiliating Gruber in front of Congress, and there you have it. The report is at once groundbreaking and astounding – and completely irrelevant if not outright damaging to its own intents and purposes.

I have a feeling we’re about to see, over the next few days (if the story even lasts that long, which in itself is telling), just how far we’ve fallen from our lofty heights. Osama bin Laden must be smiling from his watery grave."
Between this and the continued revelation of police execution with impunity (no matter how little a citizen-killing cop's version of things is undermined by recorded evidence, or how unnecessary pulling the trigger can seem) the news is that we as a society have empowered those who have sworn to protect us to do all manner of callous, inhumane, heinous things to that end. To the point where the actions taken really do damage whatever claims to moral high ground we hope to have, or the constituent community relationships within our borders.

How do we make this stuff matter? How do we make this report matter, or these deaths (which is NOT just any one guy) matter?