totally unsurprising secret US endorsement of torture

[jrtom]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/04/america/04interrogate.php

A few years ago, this would have been news.

Sadly, now it's to the point that a lot of people will say "it's all lies" or "it's irrelevant", and many more will say "yeah, we knew that already".

Where has our goddamned sense of outrage gone?

Comments

[karjack.livejournal.com]

Our outrage circuits blew out around the reelection.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

See, this is what I fear, in myself as much as in others: we're growing to expect crap like this so much that we let it slowly get worse without doing anything about it.

I mean, look at me. I'm bitching about this on a blog.

*stew*

[karjack.livejournal.com]

I think the constant outrage causing this wearying, gray depression sets in around the time we realize that no amount of screaming and making of demands is going to change a damn thing.

I'm still going to write my reps though and ask what they intend to do about it. Though, really, what -can- they do?

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

See my response below.

I know that my Senators are already opposed to Bush's agenda, and that my representative is more or less in line with it. I don't need to change the former, and I doubt I can change the latter. So in some sense all I could hope to do is to change my senators' priorities...which might be worth doing.

I gotta say, while I have as yet no major complaints about either Cantwell or Murray (WA senators), I miss Barbara Boxer from CA. She kicks ass.

[nancymcc.livejournal.com]

I imagine somebody has already coined "outrage fatigue." Now we can suffer that in addition to "compassion fatigue."

After all (says a very guilty party here) they are so much easier than outrage and compassion.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

I imagine somebody has already coined "outrage fatigue."

About 10,000 times according to a couple of search engines, yeah. *wry smile*

After all (says a very guilty party here) they are so much easier than outrage and compassion.

Or, to quote Spider Robinson, "Hope costs. Once you concede that problems can be solved, you have to get up off your ass. Despair, by contrast, is cheap, self-powering, eliminates unwanted guilt, and requires - permits - no effort."

[nancymcc.livejournal.com]

Truly quoteworthy. I think I'll print it and stick it on the wall.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

The context of that quote--both texual and locational--are each important.

The larger text is "Pandora's Last Gift". It's everywhere on the web (the reason why is below) and has now also been anthologized (in _User Friendly_, and maybe elsewhere, also).

It was originally a speech at a RadCon about 12 years ago; I was fortunate enough to be present. It got so heartfelt a standing ovation that the poor guy who spoke after him, an engineer who was presenting a plan to solve the air pollution problem, was practically ignored by comparison. (Everyone I talked to afterwards said that it was unfair that the second speech seemed like an anticlimax, because it really wasn't...it was just terrible timing.)

Anyway, glad you like it. :)