Vanquishing The Beast, Ongoing Saga

Jillian tackles the torture issue in a way that satisfies. In dissecting an essay by Bush toady Linda Chavez on the subject of the destroyed CIA tapes, Jillian finds this:

So What exactly did we expect the CIA to do when they captured high-level al-Qaida operatives? Read them their Miranda rights, provide them with free lawyers and place them in a cell with cable TV?

To which the honorable Jillian had this to say:

No, you blathering, drooling, crapulous sack of dishonesty - we expected them not to torture people. It's the sort of basic expectation your average sane person has of their government. I know you don't hear people say it very often, but that's because it is such a bare-bones expectation of what a government will do that verbalizing it feels a little crazy. It's like how when people get married, they promise to love and honor, but you never hear people promising to, say, never use the living room carpet as a toilet. We just automatically assume that sane people will never do these things. Alas, when it comes to the Bush wing of the Republican party, our first mistake was in assuming they operate by the same definitions of civilization and sanity as the rest of us.

I believe that even those of us who follow politics somewhat closely, but much less the general public, are aware of just the slightest tip of the glacial iceberg that will ultimately be known of the sheer devastation that the Bush Assholes have brought upon us. Of course the fact that we know so little has much to do with how they operate, but it also has to do with how the political establishment operates, including the mainstream political media. We are in for years and years of a very difficult struggle.