Torture

A few random thoughts....

1. With the new info out, it seems clear that people were tortured. People died in our custody, as a result of interrogation techniques. If death isn't torture, what is?

2. As per 1, its obvious now that no dignified lawyer could have actually believed these techniques were legal.

3. Which means that the only defense left for the defenders (like Cheney and Rep. King) is that laws can be overridden given enough reason. But that is an extremely dangerous precedent to set. We might as well have one and only one law on the books: "Do whatever is best, in each case."

4. Which makes me think...it is rare when news items effect my philosophical views (though conversations with friends tends to), but these events have definitely made me think that pure act consequentialism is false, at the very least at the political level, but probably at the individual level as well.

5. Now before someone responds to these thoughts along these lines: "Preston, you bleeding heart. These are terrorists. The worst people in the world. They would kill your family in front of you in a heartbeat. They deserve to be tortured. I could give a shit about their 'feelings.' Cut their balls off if that's what it takes." Let me remind you that none of these people have been tried as criminals. Now sure, a few of them are definitely guilty. Most of them are probably guilty. But a lot (don't misread this as most) of the people at Guantanamo are most likely innocent, victims of being in the wrong place t the wrong time. Torturing suspected criminals? That's an even worse precedent.

6. With all of this in mind, I think I'm justified in saying I am ashamed of many of the leaders of this country.

7. Oh, and by the way--if you appreciate this new transparency and you think the public deserves to know this kind of stuff, don't thank the big media. Thank the ACLU. They're the ones who sued to get this info out.

Barack Obama - An Unimportant Issue

Ok, I don't know much about Barack Obama. To be honest, I think it is too early to do research for an election more than a year away. But a fellow liberal creampuff that I work with, Jim, pointed something out to me a few days ago. Everyone, on all sides, is calling him an African American. That is, a Black African American, since white people can come from Africa (see Dave Matthews). Now, for me, this is really a non-issue. Why should race come into play? But that is beside the point.
Race is a big issue to a lot of people, and sometimes maybe for good reason. I don't really know why, but I am sure there are good reasons, right? I don't know.
Anyway, that isn't the point. The point I want to make is that Barack Obama is only half black. His mother is white, and he grew up with her. Why is this important? Well, its not really--but isn't it strange about how much his race has been played up? It seems to me like if we follow through on our reasoning here the whole notion of races falls apart, which it probably should. Obama is 50% black, whatever 'black' means; but he is in the history books as being the 5th black senator in the United States. Now we don't want to call him white, even though he is 50% white, but we also don't want to just call him nothing, do we? Sure, we, as human beings don't want to. He is black to us, and that is that.
But isn't that a fucked up way of classifying everything too simply into categories? At risk of being offensive and making a crude analogy (God, I am sorry, I don't have this sensitivity thing down yet), isn't this somewhat like calling a bisexual person homosexual? They are just completely different. And as I have noted in my earlier post "Two Definitions of Racism", which no one was willing to touch with a 10 foot pole, I am not sure anyone even has a clear conception of what is means to be black. Is there a certain percentage of 'black' genes you have to have? And what the hell are 'black' genes? Maybe this is where the shift to "African American" comes from. But as I stated earlier, this conception is just as vague. Tons of 'white' people live in South Africa, and what would we call them if they moved to the United States and gained citizenship?
Or are we going for ancestral routes? In that case everyone is African-American. SO unless we are going to make "African American" mean something like "10 generations ago your family was living in Africa", African American collapses into 'black', and 'black' collapses into nothing.

Ok, wait, I got off track there for a second. So here is my point--unless someone can show me how these thoughts are way off, and make me look racist (its not easy for a white male to talk about race, believe me, its uncomfortable)--what I would like to see is the destruction of race talk. We are all human beings.


Side note: Is it stupid of me to talk about things like this on a blog? I mean, I guess they say future employers will Google me and maybe posts like this could get me in trouble? I'm not sure. So I guess at a later date I will delete this...no one quote me...anywhere...ever...about anything.