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Welcome friends, to the Carnival of Pat Boone’s Mind, and it’s many midway-like amusements and oddities.  Today we’ll be visiting the Museum of Metaphors for Negro Sexual Potency.

hoseofauthoritah.jpg
Now, let’s pay the man our 25¢ and see what’s inside this first tent…

The waterboarding of America

I was kind of hoping he’d bite the head off a chicken, but you pays your money, you takes your chances.  Anyway, Pat is a patriot, and believes that before 9/11, we as a nation never tortured, except when we did, and even then it was “always within humane limits – never the torture racks, lashings, beatings, burnings, nail-pullings, starvation, or sadistic mutilation practiced by so many other cultures and adversaries.  We’ve expected our military to extract and obtain essential information through intelligent, often covert, sometimes even psychological means.”

In other words, we weren’t like the Viet Cong in The Deer Hunter, we were more like the Nazis in Where Eagles Dare, with their monocles and cigarette holders, who tut-tutted about those uncouth beer hall louts in the Gestapo and sipped snifters of Napoleon brandy as they suavely interrogated their foes.

What happened? Something almost unprecedented. We were completely blindsided, attacked on our own soil, in our own airplanes and towers, and even in the Pentagon, in broad daylight. It was devastating, and after the first shock, it was obvious that if we did not act quickly and with almost no thought of normal restraint, it would happen again, and even more violently, and with even more catastrophic results.

While ordinary Americans responded to the attack by helping complete strangers find their friends and loved ones, standing in line for hours to give blood, and bringing food and water to rescue workers, our leaders met in the citadels of power, assessed the situation, and made the cool, calculated decision to panic.

We were at war, against an enemy with absolutely no moral compunction and with a demonic bloodlust to destroy us, our homes and families and way of life – and with even a religious desire to die while destroying us! It was a relentless waking nightmare, and it was real.

Well, it was actually a few thousand suicidal malcontents who’d pretty much popped their wad, but it was also a Willy Wonka Golden Ticket to do whatever the hell you want without being questioned by Congress, the opposition party, or the press, as long as you could keep the country thinking it was real.

Pat goes on to concede that yes, “in some instances some interrogators” tortured prisoners, but torture isn’t a crime unless you talk about it.  That’s the real crime.  It’s like Fight Club.

It came to be known worldwide because liberal media, abetted by a few political and military figures who didn’t seem to grasp the urgency of stopping the maniacal plots against innocent civilians, revealed classified information and screamed “TORTURE!” Having no clue about how to get to the essential information some other way, but perhaps imagining themselves in the position of the captive, they just condemned those who were actually getting the job done at least in part.

Anti-torture activists would have considerably greater moral authority if they’d stop imagining the effects of having water forced into your lungs, and instead put themselves in the shoes of a harried, frustrated torturer who hasn’t gotten a good confession all day, and it’s already 4:35 on a Friday.

Almost ignored in all the anti-American clamor was the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, confessed mastermind of the World Trade Center carnage, as a result of being “waterboarded” 130 times

– give or take 53 times.

– with no lasting damage at all – finally divulged information that thwarted the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge

– by morons who planned to melt the suspension cables with blow torches.  Not exactly the kind of terrorist plot you’d need Batman to foil.

and saved an estimated 10,000 innocent lives! So the technique, harsh as it is, proved effective.

And success — measured a certain way — is its own reward, so waterboarding our enemies, while illegal and unAmerican, is morally just.  However, if Pat decides that your individual health insurance is metaphorically torturing him, then you’re a war criminal.

And now, whether expressly intended or not, America is being waterboarded!

The nation – its economy and political body – has been strapped down, blindfolded and hosed. A new administration, empowered by control of both houses of Congress and the most liberal president in history, is immersing us all in a torrent of debt. While we gasp for breath and try to cry “Time out!” we continue to be flooded with staggering commitments…

But Pat, you already said if it works, it’s okay.  No tag-backs!

The American people have long opposed abortion, same sex “marriage,” universal, socialistic health care and a host of other ultraliberal causes; current polls confirm we still do.

These same polls also show that Reagan is certain to beat Mondale in the upcoming election.

But the waterboarding began, literally, within the first three days of this new administration. With no instigation from Congress, the freshman president picked up his new hose of authority

That sound you hear is Pat’s testicles reascending.   Anyway, let’s see what’s in the next tent on the midway…

And now, while we’re strapped down by the Democrat-controlled Congress, gasping and gulping beneath a flood of strong-arm tactics

Ah, Pat’s Secret Fantasies!

the “health reform” bill taking shape outlines a “minimum-benefits package” that will be universal – that is, required of every American’s insurance plan, whether provided by a private firm or by the government.

You know, the CIA could have saved a lot of time if they’d forgone the stress positions, the “walling,” the waterboarding, the sleep deprivation, and just sat Khalid Sheikh Mohammed down and calmly informed him that if he didn’t talk — right this fucking minute! — the U.S. government would pass a health insurance mandate and he’d be forced to buy a comprehensive policy with a low deductible.

But we’re not helpless yet, folks. We’re drenched and near-drowned and gasping for breath, but there’s a growing coalition of staunch Republican and “blue dog” Democrats in both houses of Congress digging in their heels and saying, “Wait! This is all too much, too fast! We need time to read and digest and consider this torrent of legislation. Mr. President, hold off!”

It apparently worked for KSM the 183rd time he asked.

And that gives us debt-soaked citizens a chance to rise up and gasp and spit and shout: “MR. PRESIDENT, AND YOU, TOO, CONGRESS! YOU WORK FOR US! NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND! WE VOTED YOU IN! AND WE CAN TAKE YOU OUT!

Remember kids:  Torture is a crime and a moral abomination, but only so long as it’s figurative.  In the real world, it’s still safe, legal, and effective.

STOP THIS WATERBOARDING!!”

Pat Boone is President of the Imaginary Human Rights Campaign Against Metaphorical Torture.

33 Responses to “Torture Isn’t Torture. Health Care Is Torture!”

Oh, my sweet Lordy-Gordy. I can’t decide if Pat is senile or just fuckin’ stupid. I am kinda leaning towards the latter.

Bill S, after due contemplation, I think I’ll go with stupid on this one.

I see that Pat is a fan of saying “literally” when using figures of speech. He has become, literally, a figure of mockery (a long time since!).

If I understand this correctly:

– a small band of religious fanatics were responsible for a reprehensible terrorist attack on US soil

– which so terrorized the US govt that they rounded up a lot of people (especially those of dusky hue) and did reprehensible things to them, whether guilty or not

– also, we started a war with Afghanistan ostensibly to capture or kill Bin Laden, only to promptly allow him to slip away but oh never mind because

– we also started another war with a second sovereign nation that had nothing whatever to do with 9/11 but dammit, the time was right & there was all that oil & the thing would pay for itself (besides Saddam was a bad man)

– both wars drag on for years and years with piss-poor planning pissing away lives (American & otherwise) in far greater numbers than those lost on 9/11

– but bringing health care to the masses, and thus bringing us up to speed with, oh, um, every other industrialized nation on the planet, is super-duper-bad and totally un-American because it’s totally okay for Americans to die because they don’t have sufficient insurance or are afraid of medical bills or what have you

(Meanwhile, spinning in their graves, let us remember when America led the world in pretty much everything, including bringing an end to WWII, our part of which went on for less than 4 years total, and during which Americans interrogated Nazis without torturing them, obtained vital information and saved untold lives in the process. And back then, don’t you know, the fate of the free world really really did pretty much hang in the balance.)

There’s a moral here somewhere, I’m sure.

Technically, Pat, you didn’t vote in this president or congress. The people who did actually want health care reform. So, you know, fuck you. Sideways.

and instead put themselves in the shoes of a harried, frustrated torturer who hasn’t gotten a good confession all day, and it’s already 4:35 on a Friday.

and who then decides WTF, I’ll just make some random-ass thing up.

and I guess the equivalent of a 9.11 every two months from a lack of health care is fine in Pat’s book since there aren’t any brown skinned folks involved nor ‘splodey things

and p.s. Pat, real organ failure (regardless of cause) does count as actual torture, even in Abu Gonzales’ book

You know, back in those golden happy years, I might have been, oh, I don’t know, taken aback, let’s say, that someone could write a column the first half of which says “waterboarding works and therefore is awesome!” and the second half of which says “OH NO HEALTHCARE REFORM IS LIKE WATERBOARDING IE THE WORST THING EVAR!!!!!111¡¡¡¡¡”

Those days are long gone. The Republican Party is now loudly and enthusiastically the Party of Dissociative Disorders. And yet, we’re supposed to respect this weirdass consensual reality where we pretend this is all perfectly normal.

Welcome to hyperreality, Republican-style.

I take offense on behalf of people with dissociative disorders (yeah, like anybody’s surprised.). I’m pretty sure the GOP is just hypocritical assholes.

I’m also sure Dr Mike would back me up on this, as apparently claiming to be mentally ill when in fact you are just a group of selfish pricks is like, the worst thing possible, this side of saying “vagina” in public, anyway. Certainly worse than waterboarding, which, until I manage to repress the memory, I recall some conservative referring to as “a vigorous face-washing”.

“These same polls also show that Reagan is certain to beat Mondale in the upcoming election.”

Actually, I think they say he beat Andrew Jackson. Because there was a time in history when Reagan did, in fact, beat Mondale in an election, but there has never been a time when a majority of Americans opposed “socialized medicine”.

Polls on the subject show a majority supporting an NHS-style system, even if it means paying more in taxes. That was true before Reagan became president and has continued to be true ever since, despite 30 years of conservatives trying to claim it’s an unworkable system.

I can’t follow Pat’s rickety train of thought and it’s not that I’ve just gotten older. He’s fucking weird.

“We’re drenched and near-drowned and gasping for breath”

Wow!! That image is really, really pornographic!! Bad boy, Pat, bad boy!

Y’know, there’s something cruel about exploiting the rantings of a feeble old man out of touch with reality. I’d almost feel sorry for Pat if he wasn’t, y’know, an asshat.

I don’t know, D. Sidhe. Are you really trying to claim that right-wing assholes, as a group, are mentally healthy? Does Glenn Beck, say, seem to you like a pretty together kind of guy with all his marbles?

I would absolutely love everyone who is against health care (especially the public option) to work for minimum wage, then get sick enough to miss work, while not having health care.
Oh Noes! What would they do?

Hopefully, die and decrease the surplus population.*

*probably misquoted, but you knew what I meant.

heydave, as far as I can tell, ol’ Pat indulged himself in that whole first bit about 9/11 and torture mostly so he could apply the waterboarding metaphor to Obama’s policy initiatives, with the hoses and the drenching and the gasping and stuff.

Glenn Beck is faking it. The man’s too coherent to be crazy, and he can control it when he needs to. The man’s an asshat who’s discovered a way to get money that doesn’t involve the gorilla suit. Honest to gods, I don’t even think Beck can blame a drug problem, he’s just got an act and he’s milking it for ratings. He develops an unsightly facial tic that drives him off TV, I’m happy to revisit the question. But until then, I think he’s faking it for cash.

As to the rest of them, Bill O’Reilly, for example, is clearly fucking crazy. But it’s hardly his biggest problem. He’s an asshole. If he weren’t a total fuckwit, the crazy wouldn’t matter so much. He might even have friends who weren’t Dennis Miller.

But I’m pretty sure my point was, or was intended to be, limited to the assessment that these people with wildly contradictory opinions as ideology dictates are not dissociative but are merely deeply dishonest, selfish, sociological pigfuckers.

I probably didn’t make my point clear enough, but I actually *am* crazy.

Yes, I have read your comments to that effect. Obviously, crazy≠assholish, but I really don’t believe that this shit comes ex nihilo. One’s personality traits, good or bad, have organic origins. If you say about a wingnut “he’s an asshole,” I will respond, “yes, but WHY is he an asshole?” Unless you believe that he’s an asshole because God ordained that it be so, I don’t think you can just leave it at that. This isn’t to say that all or even most right-wingers are actually diagnosable, but some of them clearly are, and if this were a halfway sane country in which we got them the help they needed instead of giving them radio shows and big bux, we’d be in much better shape right now.

(and goddamn: if you don’t think there’s something deeply wrong with Glenn Beck, even after that “GET OFF MY PHONE!” moment, I’d be really curious to know what WOULD be enough to make you think “that boy ain’t right”)

White Bucks Pat writes: What happened? Something almost unprecedented. We were completely blindsided, attacked on our own soil, in our own airplanes and towers, and even in the Pentagon, in broad daylight…

While we obliviously sipped our champagne and feasted on our caviar.

Or wait, were we were eating Twinkies and drinking Yoohoo?

I forget.

Nice one, Zhak!

“never the torture racks, lashings, beatings, burnings, nail-pullings, starvation, or sadistic mutilation practiced by so many other cultures and adversaries.”

Sure except for all the armies and police forces we’ve trained ourselves to do the same to their own people.

But Oh Noes! The people are gonna take Pat’s millions away! The masses are gonna tax him so they can stay alive!

What shall he do? Sell his house on the French Riviera? Pawn his yacht?

The injustice! To arms! To arms I say! Defend the millionaires for the sake of…of…themselves.

I for one, am standing at the ready to sacrifice myself and my firstborn son to a very preventable but untreated disease so that at least one millionaire can enjoy a worry free vacation at their private island.

(and goddamn: if you don’t think there’s something deeply wrong with Glenn Beck, even after that “GET OFF MY PHONE!” moment, I’d be really curious to know what WOULD be enough to make you think “that boy ain’t right”)

Michael Jackson. ‘Nuff said.

In order for me to believe Glenn Beck is crazy, I think I’d have to see it fucking up his life. Otherwise, I think he just likes the attention. This may be because I just don’t fucking like him and I think us crazy people have enough social stigma to deal with without having to be compared with him.

You’re surely right that many wingnuts are unwell in some way. But espousing two wildly contradictory viewpoints just to make debating points is not evidence of dissociation, just intellectual dishonestly.

Pat should stay away from that bukkake porn.

Another Republican grinds the dust from WTC into our faces, all so he can sanctimoniously lecture us on something which has NOTHING whatsoever to do with terror attacks. I clearly remember those Congressional GOP fuckers wailing and bawling like Mark Foley after his favorite boy filed for a restraining order, blubbering about “the lessons of 9/11,” and then offering $21B towards replacement of the $80B WTC (costs of cleanup not included). Nothing incenses us New Yorkers like getting chump change from a whiner.

Since I’ll never give any of them what they deserve — a hand-delivered crowbar of such great force and chronic repetition as to reduce them to the state the WTC’s inhabitants became in the moments of their deaths, all delivered while their Christianist theocratic supporters watch helplessly — ridicule will remain my only option. Bring it on.

After watching all of this develop in the news, on TV, etc. I wonder if actually teaching the Geneva Conventions and International Humanitarian Law (IHL) would make a difference in this discussion.

Maybe if we taught youth about torture and the Geneva Conventions in schools there wouldn’t be so much confusion about what it all means.
***There’s a petition out now– Protect the Vulnerable in War: Teach the Geneva Conventions– found at http://bit.ly/RCpetition ***

Think about it: do you think all of the people talking about torture learned about the Geneva Conventions before voicing their opinions? Sign the petition!

[...] World-O-Crap: Torture isn’t torture. Health Care is torture. [...]

many wingnuts are unwell in some way

They’re either pant-shitting authoritarian cowards or exhibit varying degrees of sociopathy. Either way, not people you want making any decisions for anyone else, let alone public policy.

As Pat so properly put the issue in 2006, if you are not supporting the president you are not patriotic.

Intellectual dishonesty? I don’t think the word Intellectual should apply, just plain dishonest. Remember, these people are usually (most of them) religious. Religion and Intellect don’t mix, should we still be getting moral guidelines from a 2000+ year old book that condoned slavery, misogynytism, genocide of non-believers, murder of homosexuals, Corporal punishment of rogue juveniles among other guidelines. As human beings we are evolving and thus should not be confined to following guidelines from such as fixed source that never changes.

The only decent song he ever recorded was “Friendly Persuasion”, and I still didn’t buy it.

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[...] There’s a Red, Under My Bed As many of you doubtless already know, it’s article of strongly-held faith amongst many of our friends on the Right that President Obama was not actually born in the US, and his birth certificate is a fake, and this fact is being covered up by both parties, as part of a gargantuan conspiracy to put Muslim Nazi Communists in charge of America and force us all to get gay married and have abortions and pray to Mecca five times a day and have all Christians euthanized by Communist National Health Care. [...]