Blog Against Torture Day? It's Always Blog Against Torture Day Here...

On my Live Journal one of my flisters, TK, made the following observation about torture here on Blog Against Torture day:

"The sad thing is, were there to have been such a day ten years ago, the assumption wouldn't be we were preaching against the US, but rather China, or North Korea, or Iraq."

You know, that's an interesting observation... just a few years ago when rumors of such things were starting to percolate into the national consciousness, my best friend dr_strych9, was one of the first people I remember to take this seriously.

It was part of the reason we started all this in the first place. It's always blog against torture day here on the mojowire...

That notwithstanding, myself, Hebisner, and a couple of our other friends did not believe this was happening. Common sense and common knowledge all argued against it... The U.S. was a signatory to a zillion international anti-torture conventions, it's generally accepted that torture produces questionable intel, it ran counter to nearly everything we were brought up to believe about the organizing principles of our nation...

Torture? The United States? No, that was just crazy conspiracy talk, just a degree of separation or so off of Area 51 and Masonic One World Government zeitgeist.

As each revelation has come out, from Bagram Airbase to Abu Ghraib to CIA Black Sites, etc... it's been a disorienting experience, like I went to bed America and woke up in the Bizzaro world "mirror-mirror" version... I keep expecting to see Leonard Nimoy in a gold lamay sash and a cheesy Lee-Paste-On goatee beard to appear and ask me for my agonizer...sorry, obscure Star Trek reference...

But perhaps the saddest thing has been to see our national reaction to this. Instead of righteous outrage verging on revolution to even the idea we had become this kind of nation, there was a kind of apathetic acceptance... Torture? Hey, as long as they keep the terrorists from interfering with "Dancing with the Stars..." then sure, what the hell... hey what's the latest Britney news!?

Oh sure, a few anti-social malcontents and the dirty fucking hippies were complaining, but you know how they go on... they're always complaining about something...

And this lackadaisical attitude seemed to be contagious in that it infected the legislative branch that seemed to be obsessed with doing anything other than exercising their Constitutional duty of executive oversight.

So... quo vadis? Where next? Frankly, I don't know. But what's happened in the last eight years can't just be undone. We can't just walk away from this. If I had "The Answer" I promise I would post if for everyone, but I don't.

But I think people speaking out is good first step...

mojo sends