Dirty work

One of the problems with torture is that somebody has to carry it out -- someone has to do it, has to inflict deliberate, coercive pain on another individual. And in the doing of it, it doesn't matter a bit what this inflicting of coercive pain is called, whether the word torture is used or some nicer-sounding euphemism like "tough" or "aggressive tactics."

And most people can't do this. They just can't. Not at first anyway. This is part of why the word "inhumanity" means what it means.

Soldiers can be trained, conditioned -- almost programmed -- to obey orders, so they can always be ordered to perform this "duty." But soldiers are also trained to respect things like honor, and given such orders most soldiers will refuse. Some few will comply, accepting that their superiors must have some greater good, some greater purpose in mind. And following their orders, they may, as ordered, betray their own instincts and their own sense of honor. But such "good soldiers," ordered to become bad soldiers, bad men, burn out pretty quickly. They become substance abusers or suicides, or some sad halfway case.

Which leaves only one reliable group of people who can be counted on to perform this duty: Those who enjoy it. These people -- the sociopaths, the sadists, those who find cruelty sexually gratifying -- must be deputized, empowered and rewarded for their work.

But this deputizing, empowering and rewarding also doesn't just happen. Someone has to do it. Someone has to be present to unleash them and to congratulate them. To ensure that their requisitions -- chains, ice water, cellophane, jumper cables -- are carried out. To look on these monstrous servants without blinking, without recoiling, and to smile on this partnership which allows our dirty work to get done while pretending our own hands are clean.

And again, most people can't do this, won't do this. The only ones willing or able to do so are those who share a bit of the sadist's glee or the sociopath's detachment, those who get a bit of a sexual kick out of it. So a steep and narrow chain of command has to be established, as direct a line as possible from the sadists directly to the very top consisting only of those who share a measure of their sickness.

And what of those at the very top? Denial, detachment and compartmentalization are powerful things. Those tools -- the very same ones that may allow some few torture victims to survive -- can be employed, for a while, by someone who isn't yet a monster. But soon enough these people at the very top, the ones ordering, commissioning and endorsing monstrosity, must either come to embrace the sadism and sexual perversion of the monsters in their employ, or else they must become wholly delusional, creating a sense of self utterly unrelated and irreconcilable with the reality of who and what they really are, the reality of what they do.

Those at the top have names, so we might as well use them: President George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace. I do not know these men personally, so I cannot say which is the case with them, but there are only two options.

Gen. Pace either gets sexually thrilled at the idea of waterboarding, or else he is a deluded fool further removed from reality than Walter Mitty or Elwood C. Dobbs.

Bush and Rumsfeld have both displayed occasional flashes of raw anger when defending their prerogative to order torture, glimpses of the snarling faces of the sadistic pervert. But then each has also maintained the fantastic claim that the interrogation tactics they are defending -- things like waterboarding or the "no-touch" torture tactics learned from the North Koreans -- must never be called "torture." So perhaps Rumsfeld and Bush are delusional fools rather than perverts.

But those are the only options.

Comments

[zalm]

Actually, the name's Dowd. Elwood P.

If you should want to call him, use this number. This other one is the old number.

[LL]

Well, this is as clear and complete explanation of why torture is wrong and why we shouldn't allow it as I've ever read. Especially this part: "To look on these monstrous servants without blinking, without recoiling, and to smile on this partnership which allows our dirty work to get done while pretending our own hands are clean."

Still, I'm sure there will be those who will say in response to this, "But what about...?" People are stupid. They will come up with a million different excuses for not caring what happens to other people, and if they have to make the other people NOT people, ie, less than people, so it's OK to do stuff to them, they'll do that. There are probably still people in Rwanda saying that it was OK to hack people up by the hundreds of thousands in 1995. They may not say it publicly, but I bet somebody's saying it. Just like there are people in the U.S. today who say the South's (I cap it because these people would) enslavement of black people wasn't so bad because blah, blah, blah.

This, by the way, is one of the reasons I'm an atheist. If people really are the image of god, the greatest example of his/her/its/their work, I don't want anything to do with him/her/it/them.

[animus]

The US fetishises will. Like Keyser Söze, they believe that the willingness to perform hideous acts in pursuit of ones goals is both necessary and virtuous.

[Noah Brand]

I don't mean to be a jerk, but it's not very nice to lump sexual perverts in with torturers. When folks' universal watchword is "safe, sane, and consensual", it's not nice to call 'em sociopaths or associate them with the kind of moral fiend who could engage in actual torture.

[Rick]

It's a little unusual to see the Religious Left codifying bigotry, prejudice and narrow-mindedness so openly, so without the nuance and erudition that usually accompanies their spewing...

Usually those known to decry black and white thinking would in some way attempt to couch their own black and white thinking... but not here apparently.

I would recommend that Slacker Fred find a number of interrogators who've plied their trade at Gitmo (like my brother who served with the Coast Guard providing port security for six full months did), hang out with them, share a beer or two, and then come here and claim that they all are sexual deviants or delusional fools or suicidal shills or what-the-hell-ever... at least we'd hope that anecdotal evidence would be presented to substantiate the claimes being made...

Otherwise there's little difference between Slacker Fred and Fred Phelps.

[Jeff]

Fred:
And most people can't do this. They just can't. Not at first anyway. This is part of why the word "inhumanity" means what it means.

As long as they don't have to directly see their handiwork, most people will. There's been numerous studies (See The Milgram Experiment) where the subjects were told that if they pushed a button, someone would be shocked with X volts. When the subject pushed the button, they would hear a scream as if someone had been shocked with X volts.

The experiments showed that an authority figure could easily persuade 60 to 65% of the subjects to inflict considerable pain on an unseen stranger. The authority might have to fit one of your two personality types, but the person pushing the button does not.

BTW, one has to wonder at "The Harvey of the Sierra Madres"!

[Mnemosyne]

At the risk of Godwinizing the thread, even the Nazis discovered they couldn't get just anyone to do their dirty work. The soldiers in the einsatzgruppen (lightning squads) that were sent out to kill Jews and Slavs in the occupied Eastern territories frequently requested transfers, and those requests were speedily granted so the squads wouldn't rebel.

There's a reason why the FBI and CIA agents that were assigned to Guantanamo were horrified by what they saw and requested transfer as quickly as possible. Rick, I'm sorry, but you may need to give your brother a couple extra beers next time and get him to tell you what really happened while he was there, not the comforting stories he's telling you right now.

[Mike]

I would recommend that Slacker Fred find a number of interrogators who've plied their trade at Gitmo (like my brother who served with the Coast Guard providing port security for six full months did), hang out with them, share a beer or two, and then come here and claim that they all are sexual deviants or delusional fools or suicidal shills or what-the-hell-ever... at least we'd hope that anecdotal evidence would be presented to substantiate the claimes being made...

Otherwise there's little difference between Slacker Fred and Fred Phelps.

So either your brother was involved in torture, or he's not one of the people Fred is talking about. Which is it?

[hapax]

Personally, I'm breathless with anticipation to read what kind of "nuance and erudition" should be applied to Fred's apparently wrongheaded "black and white thinking" about torture.

It's okay with fava beans and nice chianti, perhaps?

[Rick]

Rick, I'm sorry, but you may need to give your brother a couple extra beers next time and get him to tell you what really happened while he was there, not the comforting stories he's telling you right now.

Interesting...

So you know my brother better than I do eh?

Which of course fits in with Slacker Fred understanding the interrogators better than anyone who might've actually met and hung out with them...

And Mike, you'll have to come again man... your logic is a tad... loopy... then again, so is Fred Phelps and the sycophants who defend him...

[Duane]

What is the quote that says more misery has been unleashed on the world by regular folks just showing up for their jobs?

I don't think it has to be any more complicated than that.

[spencer]

It's a little unusual to see the Religious Left codifying bigotry, prejudice and narrow-mindedness so openly, so without the nuance and erudition that usually accompanies their spewing...

So some torturers are really pretty okay guys, if you just get to know 'em a little? Maybe we should walk a mile in their steel-toed boots before we judge?

The hell with that.

[Mnemosyne]

So you know my brother better than I do eh?

To use a somewhat extreme metaphor ... David Kaczynski thought he knew his brother, too, until his wife pointed out that the Unabomber struck every time David sent money to his older brother, Ted. We don't always know our family members as well as we think we do.

And, as I implied above, sometimes our family members try to protect us from knowing things about them or their work that they know we would find disturbing.

[Amanda]

Really, I think Fred has a point here. My only criticism would be to remove the sexual overtones to the post. People can find such disgusting acts gratifying without them being sexually so. They are just as despicable for their seeming need to hurt others to reinforce their own supposed superiority. Writing it off to a sexual fetish of sorts clouds the issue, at least in my mind.

But, his essential point (as far as I interpret) is true: people who order these acts and carry out these acts are not normal, everyday people. You could probably share a beer with them without incident, for sure, but that does not excuse the lack of empathy and humanity that is surely going on to enable them to commit these crimes.

[pecunium]

Rick: I'm an interrogator, for, going on, 15 years, and I have to say, I'm with Fred on this one.

Now, are you telling me your brother was waterboarding people, or putting them in, "the stand-up" or denying them sleep for days on end?

Because those are some of the things Fred is talking about, and they are torture, and doing them does break the people who do them. I know, because I have seen the damage that doing far less (as well as far more) than that does to the people who've done it.

Not that I really expect my words to carry much weight, but feel free to google my name , and append either torture, or interrogation to the string.

Terry Karney
SSG USA
OIF-1, Mar.-Jul. 2003

[Jesurgislac]

I find it entirely plausible, for exactly the reasons Fred points out, that Rick's brother was never involved in torturing anybody. If you read Rick's comment, he says his brother is in the Coastguard and was providing port security, hanging out with interrogators. So what we are hearing from Rick is his account of what his brother said about what Guantanamo Bay interrogators told him. We don't need to calumniate Rick's brother: it's fairly obvious that he's neither a useful source of information in himself, nor is it particularly useful to hear third-hand reports via Rick. But there's no reason to suppose that someone serving in the Coastguard and providing port security at Guantanamo Bay is involved in torture, or would be permitted to witness torture being carried out.

Moazzam Begg, one of the British prisoners who was released from Guantanamo Bay in January last year after being kidnapped in Pakistan in late 2001, writes in his account of his time in the prison that many of the guards were decent people who were doing their best to treat him decently in an indecent situation. The torturers will be a small minority of the personnel at Guantanamo Bay.

[Harald Korneliussen]

"And again, most people can't do this, won't do this. The only ones willing or able to do so are those who share a bit of the sadist's glee or the sociopath's detachment, those who get a bit of a sexual kick out of it."
This is a critical point where you're wrong, slacktivist. The definition you gave applies to all of us. I'm not a sadist by any means, but I'm honest enough with myself to admit that I could derive pleasure from other people's helplessness if I _wanted_ to seek that pleasure. Psychological experiments like the stanford prison experiment show that I'm not unusual, and that it doesn't take a special kind of person to act sadistically. It takes one to not, in certain situations. And even that I think is just by deliberately refusing to seek this pleasure, rather than being incapable of feeling it.
This is important! We can't count on being nice people from nature. We aren't, thanks to evolution (and original sin, if you prefer to see it like that. I don't think it's unreasonable). We have to act nice, even though we aren't, that's the whole point. That's why the american public, which is being slowly led to accept increasingly inhumane measures, is in such terrible danger.

I'm afraid those who were nice to Moazzam Begg only played out the "nice cop" role, by the way.

[Jesurgislac]

I'm not a sadist by any means, but I'm honest enough with myself to admit that I could derive pleasure from other people's helplessness if I _wanted_ to seek that pleasure.

Then you are a sadist. You just choose not to exercise your sadism. Good for you! (Meant sincerely.) You might find that you could safely exercise your sadistic impulses if you got involved with the BDSM community where you live and became a safe, responsible Top.

This is important! We can't count on being nice people from nature. We aren't, thanks to evolution (and original sin, if you prefer to see it like that. I don't think it's unreasonable).

Wholly unreasonable, Harald. Trying to link the imaginary (and ridiculous, IMO) notion of "original sin" with the real issue of our "natural impulses" as apes is an unreasonable thing to do, because it conflates two entirely separate issues and ignores a third issue - that our societal setup encourages us to submit to authority.

It is the willingness to submit to authority that the experiments tested. Some people are willing to defy authority; a significant majority are not.

If you look at what our nearest relatives, chimpanzees, are "like", as for example in OUR INNER APE, then we are clearly, considered as animals, hedonistic rather than agonistic. Any animal trainer will tell you that animals tend to learn better by rewarding them when they do the thing you want them to do, than by punishing them when they do the thing you don't want. Any good manager will tell you that praise and understanding works better than punishment.

Unfortunately, there is a widespread and traditional meme that human beings are inherently wicked, and must be kept in line to prevent us doing horrible things. While Christianity certainly bears a great part of the blame for the prevalence of this meme in western culture, it predates Christianity and is widespread in parts of the world where Christianity hasn't touched. I think it originates from the rise of agriculture: that people in authority began to label as "wickedness" human impulses that are inconvenient to people in authority.

In the 19th century in the US, a slave trying to escape slavery, a nominally-free woman trying to escape the authority of her husband or father, a slave doing the work they were bought to do badly and messily and lazily, could all be labelled "wicked", when they were merely - as we can now see - inconveniencing those with authority over them. A woman in the US who wants a regular prescription for oral contraception, a supply of Plan B in her bathroom cabinet, and the right to get an early abortion if both contraceptive plans fail her, is labelled "wicked" by men who find women with the legal right to bodily autonomy inconvenient.

"Original sin" is a religious fantasy, dreamed up by St Paul. Anyone who seriously claims to believe it believes in a God that routinely condemns babies to hell to burn eternally for the crime of dying unbaptised. I believe anyone has a right to believe anything they like: I don't have to like what they believe in.

[Bruce]

To dismiss torturers as primarily sadistic psychopaths or sexual deviants is quite wrong, perhaps dangerously so.

A study (see p. 13) of Brazilian torturers and death-squad members conducted by Philip Zimbardo (of Stanford prison experiment fame) and others found that the Brazilian authorities actually weeded out the sadists during training, as their lust for inflicting pain made them uncontrollable and unable to focus on the purpose for torturing - to extract confessions. It was instead the training, a sense of camaraderie and indoctrination with "national security" ideology that made otherwise ordinary people into monsters.

[Kirala]

Jesurgislac: Christianity is about coming to grips with original sin, then finding the way out. So traditionally there have been all sorts of theological studies to figure out how, say, unbaptized babies will evade hellfire. Most Christians seriously believe in original sin without seriously believing the latter. (And if the loopholes are logically dubious, well, people have a tendency to be illogical.)

Kept in line to prevent us from doing terrible things? Well, given that most people are born with a conscience and a society with halfway-decent codes of morality, most of us have a lot to keep us in line - and need it. Authoritative programs to "keep people in line" fail precisely because they are run by people who themselves need to be kept in line, who think that they're exempt from some rule or another because they're pursuing a "greater good" that becomes more nebulous by the day. (This is ignoring the small number of sociopaths who simply enjoy the license to harm to get ahead.) I tend to find more examples of original sin in what the empowered do - e.g. concentration camps, torture, genocide, rape - than the powerless. And when any activity destroys empathy with our fellow human beings, I have a hard time labelling it anything other than "wicked."

[Jesurgislac]

Kirala: Christianity is about coming to grips with original sin, then finding the way out.

That definition would go a long way to justify arguing that no decent person could ever become a Christian.

(Don't get me wrong: I think there are many other versions of what Christianity is about that I honestly and sincerely admire. But the ugly notion of "original sin" is not one of them.)

[Dave Lartigue]

http://slithytoves.sytes.net/~dave/wordpress/?p=1571

[Jesurgislac]

Dave, by descriptional definition, torture cannot be "unChristian", since both individual Christians and the Christian churches have committed torture, personally and institutionally. A Christian can argue (much as an American can argue) that the Christian religion aspires to be anti-torture... but a Christian could also argue (as Christians have, in the present and through most of Christianity's history) that it's okay to torture so long as you torture only bad people for good purposes.

Safer, in my view, rather than trying to link the badness of torture with religious or nationalistic sentiments, to stick with "Torture is bad. It must be stopped."

[JR]

One minor quibble with an otherwise excellent post: at least when I was in the military, the joint chiefs of staff were not in the direct line of the military chain of command. They are mainly an advisory body to the president. Not saying anyone's hands in the upper echelons are clean at this point, but Pace would not have been in the chain of command of the torturers. The Navy chain of command we had to learn when I was in bootcamp, circa 1986, was president, secretary of defense, secretary of the navy, chief of naval operations, then on down through the various unit commanders to the bottom of the pyramid, me. I'm pretty sure it is the same in the other services (except the Marines, who fall under the SecNav also.) I don't THINK it has changed.

[pecunium]

Jesurgislac: I may have been less clear. I didn't want to go into the side-note of Rick's comment (probably not the best thinking) because he asserted his brother was 1: involved in interrogation, and 2: those who committed tortures were just fine, and 3: implied they were in some way noble for havig done it (via a means/ends argument, which I saw in the subtext of the post).

Yes, I saw him say his brother was a Coastie, and pulling port security, and that hanging out with those who have committed tortures would show them to be regular guys, just doing a job, and none the worse for wear.

Well, I've hung out with those guys, and they were worse for wear. I was not surprised when I heard that they were being investigated. There was something about them which was wrong, off, and damaged.

[Andre]

Jesu's point, that the innate human trait that the torture system explots is not so much sadism as it is servility, is exactly on the mark. The problem comes down to those who facilitate, order, and organize torture. In this context, Fred notes that "Denial, detachment and compartmentalization are powerful things," but I'm not sure if he realizess just *how* powerful. Take a look at Christopher Browning's book Ordinary Men (if you don't mind a churned stomach) - when you have leaders who detach themselves from the human realities of what they order and followers who are ideologically and socially conditioned to submit to that authority (as all military personnel must be, per their job), two things can happen. Either acts of extraordinary courage, or grave human rights abuses. Sometimes, mercifully, we get the former. Too often, the latter.

Might there be a bit of sadism lurking behind the displacement that allows an otherwise sane man to order torture? Perhaps, but there's nothing to be gained (and potential allies to alienate) by making this personal. I don't think it's helpful or illuminating to call someone like Bush 'sick,' any more than it is to call him 'stupid.' Willfully or not, he is failing to acknowledge the humanity of his fellow man. That's reason enough to be ashamed by and speak out against what he's doing. It's not psychological illness or personal moral depravity. It's worse than that. It's barbaric military policy.

[Scorpio]

Sorry Fred. Perversion is more likely. Ever see the pic of Bush kicking some poor jock in the balls? Read about the coat-hanger brandings?

[Matt]

Just saw this story from the AP. It seemed relevent:

AP learns Gitmo guards brag of beatings By THOMAS WATKINS, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 1 minute ago

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - Guards at Guantanamo Bay bragged about beating detainees and described it as common practice, a Marine sergeant said in a sworn statement obtained by The Associated Press.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061006/ap_on_re_us/guantanamo_alleged_abuse

[Cooper]

Isn't calling torturers sadists a bit like calling rapists lovers? Perhaps some torturers really get off on it, but that's a very small minority of all sadists. And avowed sadists, ones who have accepted it, don't seem as likely to let it play out in their jobs. Why would they need to?

If Bush is a sexual sadist, I don't give a damn. He could be into midgets or bananas or nuns or missionaries; it's none of my business. It's also got nothing to do with the issue of torture. You're defaming BDSM here, Fred.

[ako]

Another good book on torture is Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People, by John Conroy. As part of his attempt to understand torture, the author sits down with former torturers and talks to them. This includes former secret One of the astounding features is how much they were ordinary people. Some were intensely patriotic, but some were just draftees, or people doing national military service, who were told "This is what you will do," and obeyed. Some people justified it in their own heads by telling themselves how bad the other side was, or that what they did wasn't really torture, because it wasn't mutilation or disfiguring. This was a particularly popular excuse with things like waterboarding and "field telephones". So in one aspect, Rick is right. It isn't always the obvious monsters who commit torture. It can be the guys who seem pleasant when you sit and chat over a beer.

Another interesting thing in the book is a list of the nine responses of democracies caught torturing. It's based on case against the British government in 1971, but the book provides an unsettling prediction of the Bush administration's statements on Abu Girab and Guantanamo Bay.

The nine responses, which the author says vary in chronological order are:

1. Denial coupled with attacks on the people who make it public, claiming that spreading these stories encourages the enemy.

2. Minimizing the abuse. Claiming it's not torture, but something less.

3. Disparaging the victims. Acting as if everyone who's brought in for questioning is guilty of something terrible.

4. Arguing that it had to be done. This usually involves some variant of the ticking time bomb excuse.

5. Painting everyone who defends the tortured as defending the nation's enemies.

6. Treating any attempt to deal with the incident after it's over and done with as raking up the past.

7. Acting as if it's a few people out of control, and nothing to do with how the system's set up.

8. The 'someone else did something worse defense', used to minimize what happened by comparing with other brutality.

9. Arguing (especially several years later, or after compensation has been paid) that they'll get over it.

Again, this book was written in 2000, so it predates the entire Bush administration.

[christine]

This is a little off topic, but to the same point. I've been watching Anderson Cooper this week in the Congo, and he did a piece on all the rape that is going on there. But, it's so much worse than just regular rape(? yes, I know that sounds wrong!) But these women and girls, as young as 3 are gang raped to the point that they are ripped to shreds, with holes, or fistula. It is so brutal. And here's my point.... How can these men do this?? I know why they do it, to terrorize the population, but what is going through their heads as they are raping girls that are 3, or 5 or 10 years old??? How do they walk away from that and not be damaged men? When does the cycle of violence ever end when there is no erasering these acts? And finally, what kind of citizens are our tortures going to be in the future?

[Avedon]

You left out Dick Cheney. Even his friends express astonishment at how little feeling he has for other people. He sounds to me like a complete sociopath.

[Jesurgislac]

In many ways Dick Cheney appears to me like a model aristocrat: if he has feelings, they're for people he considers to be his social equals. He doesn't care what anyone else thinks of him: public opinion just doesn't enter into his scale of things. When he shot a man who was supposedly his friend, he blamed his victim for it - at a time when the man could have died of what Cheney did. He evaded being questioned or breathalyzed for 18 hours after he shot the man and declined to apologize or to take any responsibility. It was about the least successful tactic PR-wise, but the most successful if the objective was evading any possibility of real investigation or prosecution even if he had killed his victim. The arrogance of it is like when he responded to queries about why he, supposedly a supporter of the Vietnam war, had avoided actually fighting in it: "I had other priorities."

Apparently his daughter Mary responded to an interviewer asking about gay marriage with the legal provisions she and her partner had made for each other in lieu of marriage, claiming that everyone ought to do that: she didn't seem to realize that, as she and her partner live in Virginia, the Republicans in power have ensured that the legal provisions may not stand up to any contest. But then, she may simply assume that regardless of what might happen to ordinary same-sex couples, she'll do just fine. And so she will, no doubt, assuming her father is still in power at the time.

[Harald Korneliussen]

Jes, come on. Do you never get angry and want to hurt people? And don't you even admit that if you in those situations DID hurt people, it would give you a certain pleasure for a very short while? That doesn't make you a sadist, but you could encourage those sides of yourself deliberately. If you did that, you'd be a sadist.

You seem to think sadism is some sort of "natural orientation" or something. It's not. It's something messed up in people's sexuality. It can be messed up in you by others, or deliberately by yourself. I believe I know ways it could be done, but I'm not 100% certain, and I certainly don't want to try. Don't even want to think about it, really. But from the Prussians and on, how to encourage and control people's sadistic potential has been part of the science of millitarism.

"descriptional definition", huh? I'm not going to waste time arguing against _your_ ideas of Christianity or original sin, since they are so far from mine.

[Jesurgislac]

Do you never get angry and want to hurt people?

Of course I get angry. Frequently. Very verbally.

And don't you even admit that if you in those situations DID hurt people, it would give you a certain pleasure for a very short while?

Actually, no. This is really just not true of everyone. It is certainly not true of me. I realised well over thirty years ago that I cannot get pleasure out of seeing someone else get hurt: not even - and is at times a source of great frustration! - if they hurt me. It would make revenge a lot simpler, certainly when I was a kid, if I could get enjoyment out of someone else's pain. But I don't.

But, I know people who do get pleasure out of people getting hurt. The messed-up ones are those who mix this up with their day-to-day lives: the ones I get along with are the safe, sane, consensual Tops who manage their sadism as part of a consensual sex life, and don't ever practice it on someone who didn't sign up for it.

Don't ever assume that just because it's true of you, it's must be true of everyone. If you are the kind of person who gets pleasure out of other people's pain, it's a lot safer and saner to do so in a consensual BDSM environment.

That goes for your Christian beliefs, as well, of course. You may not want to believe that Christians torture people, but a brief look at current events and the history of Christianity would tell you that you're wrong; you may not want to believe that original sin means babies (and, presumably, blastocytes, zygotes, and fetuses, if you believe in ensoulment from fertilisation) go to hell, but that is what many Christians who believed in original sin have believed.

[hamletta]

That goes for your Christian beliefs, as well, of course.

You know, I always find that people who claim to know all about Christian belief couldn't tell you the difference between Pat Robertson and Dietrich Bonhoeffer if their lives depended on it.

[Jesurgislac]

couldn't tell you the difference between Pat Robertson and Dietrich Bonhoeffer if their lives depended on it.

Probably not if my life depended on it, no: I imagine that would make me dazed, confused, and inclined to panic and say anything.

(Nor do I quite see what knowing about what Christians believe and have believed has to do with whether or not I know the name of a modern American politician/evangelist who famously blames "homosexuals" and "feminists" for 9/11, and distinguishing between him and a German anti-Nazi who was executed towards the end of WWII. Can you explain what the hell connection you see between these two people, aside from their both identifying as Christians, or why you think I wouldn't be able to distinguish between them?)

[Harald Korneliussen]

Jes, as I said before, I don't buy this thing about sadism as a natural, healthy, safe "orientation". We shouldn't do all things just because we can learn to enjoy them.

And also, I don't believe you when you say you could never learn to like cruelty. Then it's you who are in denial, not me. If you have become such a nice person that your disgust at yourself would instantly prevent enjoyment, good for you. I hope that is true of me as well, and I hope I never find out for sure. But if you think this is just your good nature, that it never can change, then it can _be_ changed, by skillful manipulation.

Read about the success of prussian conscription if you don't believe me - it's interesting for us pacifists anyway. At the time it started, everyone knew that commoners made poor soldiers, on account of being so soft-hearted. Today, systematic brutalization is part of every army (although many deny it - they may even be honest, they may not be conscious of what they do, but the Prussians certainly were)

[Jesurgislac]

I don't buy this thing about sadism as a natural, healthy, safe "orientation". We shouldn't do all things just because we can learn to enjoy them.

You're entitled to your own prejudices. The fact is, though, that safe, sane, and consensual BDSM presents no danger to either Top or bottom. Pleasures that do not harm others (and that are not intended to harm others) are a source of natural enjoyment.

And also, I don't believe you when you say you could never learn to like cruelty. Then it's you who are in denial, not me. If you have become such a nice person that your disgust at yourself would instantly prevent enjoyment, good for you.

As I said before: you shouldn't judge others by yourself, and because you are in denial, don't assume that others must be. I accept that you neither wish to engage in safe and consensual BDSM, and would like to assume that you don't take out your frustrations on others. It isn't "disgust" I feel when I cause pain to others: it's pain. You may not have this reaction, but don't assume that no one else does.

But if you think this is just your good nature, that it never can change, then it can _be_ changed, by skillful manipulation.

What an ugly thing to say. Of course I don't know what might become of me if I were in a situation like the guards in Abu Ghraib or the interrogators in Guantanamo Bay - if it were being presented as my duty to cause pain to others, or if some other means of manipulation were being used. I don't know that I would have the strength to resist doing what I knew to be wrong, or the ability to withstand forms of pressure that have never been out on me. I'm not pretending to be a moral tower of strength. I am simply saying that just because you have an inclination towards sadism, you shouldn't assume that everyone else does. Nor should you assume that this inclination in you is disgusting and unnatural: first because that makes it more likely, not less, that someday you'll hurt someone in a way neither safe, sane, or consensual; and second, because it is horrible to think that someone thinks of themselves as a disgusting/unnatural person, when there are safe/sane/consensual ways to enjoy their inclination.

[gold]

The government should be persuaded to pay for all healthcare