We Don't Torture

As Laurence Lewis writes in The Daily Kos, "The United States tortures people. It isn't a matter of rogue agents and rogue government officials, it is systemic. The United States tortures people. One president may order the torturing stopped, but there is nothing to prevent another from ordering it resumed. Those responsible for torturing people are identified but not brought to justice. They are, in fact, given free rein to talk openly about it, to minimize it, to justify it, to continue to lie about it, and to act as if questions or criticism about torturing people is just another partisan political argument. The traditional media, the most powerful mass media, play right along. Some in the mass media all but gloat about it. The United States tortures people. It is known. It is not treated as a crime against humanity. It is normalized. It will happen again."

In 1981, the Au Pairs wrote a song about a prison in Armagh, Ireland that the British used to detain and torture woman prisoners suspected of being members of the IRA.  Different country and different cause, but same result: a civilized nation caught in the cognitive dissonance of believing that they were on the right side of morality, but at the same time maintaining that the ends justified the horrific means. The video at the top of the post is highly effective but contains an abridged version of Armagh that avoids the specifics of the British situation; the devastating, full version of the song is below.