In the last several days, Ive seen more people defend torture than I can count. Many of them simultaneously claim, without any difficulty, that the torture never happened and that it was effective. Many also explained that the Senate report could not be trusted even though they had read none of it and would not, in fact, willingly read any of it. I recognize that I should have expected this and should feel not the slightest surprise, and yet, I feel saddened to learn that there are, out there, plenty of people who would be good Nazis, good Maoists, good members of the CPSU. I should feel no surprise -- after all, it isnt like Germans or Russians or Chinese people are especially unusual, any depravity that they are capable of, Americans are also capable of -- and yet, I feel saddened. I should feel no surprise to discover that the very same sorts of people who are happy to tell me how immoral my own positions are most of the rest of the year happily claim that in a war, any behavior whatsoever is excusable. Moral, to them, appears to be what I happen to like, and really, just about anything at all that does not cause me and my loved ones any trouble. All the posturing is a mile wide and an inch thick -- most people, it seems, would sacrifice any principle in a heartbeat and would never think twice about it. Even though I knew this already, I feel saddened by it. Earlier this evening I had a member of this new emerging class of torture apologists comment on a blog I contribute to. His comment consisted of misquoting George Orwell -- claiming he had said People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. (There are apparently a lot of people out there who put out image macros attributing this to Orwell. For the record, no, he didnt. The quote is from 1993 Washington Times essay by Richard Grenier who inaccurately claimed Orwell said it.) Even if Orwell had said such a thing of course, it would be a mockery of everything he stood for to presume it meant that he supported torture. This is, after all, the man who wrote 1984. However, it does seem like a good night for remembering Orwell, and a good night for remembering 1984, and so I do owe a small debt of gratitude to said torture advocate, off somewhere on the internet, even now doubtless explaining to people why it was moral for the CIA to torture a completely innocent mentally retarded man named Nazar Ali purely so his taped agonies could be played to one of his relatives to try to break him. So, let me present three actual Orwell quotations, all from 1984, all from the mouth of the character OBrien, that seem particularly appropriate this week. We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable. Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 04:00:35 +0000
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