1 out of 5 Republicans Agree: Rectally feeding suspected terrorists is a-ok!

[pbrower2a]

When I was a child in the 1960s, I would have never expected one Party to be so different in moral standards. Both parties believed in an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. Both believed that education was a good thing. Both had similar attitudes toward both public and private debt. Both held that the rules had to be the same for rich and poor (perhaps being somewhat less lenient toward misconduct in the well-paid professions because of the assumption of responsibility for physicians, dentists, attorneys, engineers, scientists, etc).

In the 1960s I would have expected Democrats and Republicans alike to have similar attitudes toward torture -- that it is something that one associates with evil people in the defunct Gestapo and the still-loathsome Soviet secret police. We associated torture with a stock villain of a movie who says

"Ve haff vays uff findink out" or "Ve haff vays to make you talk". 

Really, it sounds just the same with a fake Russian accent as with a fake German accent. When such words are ever spoken in some American regional accent... we Americans have a big problem. It does not matter whether the accent suggests Baltimore or rural Mississippi.



Think carefully. If 51% of the people in an organization believe that it is acceptable to threaten family members of the person interrogated, then does that suggest anything other than a pathological organization? If 61% think it acceptable to slam someone into a wall (likely good for broken bones)?

What is this group -- one of the classic organized crime syndicates? No -- that is too low an estimate.  Aryan Nations? The KKK? No -- it is the Republican Party. Since about half of the people of America with any partisan affiliation are Republicans, just think of what this means in police forces and the Armed Services. 

It is telling that elected Republican pols have been silent about reports of such behavior. They do not deny it; even those first elected to high office in 2010  and were not in office when Dubya and Cheney were messing up American badly. Republicans in elected office probably support such horrid behavior to a greater degree than Republicans not in political office.

By the way -- I am also  troubled by the 19% of Democrats who think it acceptable to threaten family members of someone under interrogation and by the 29% of Democrats who think it acceptable to slam someone into a wall during interrogation. 

[pbrower2a]

Again, I am not convinced at all that anyone in the Republican Party are actually the good Christians that they pretend to be.

Republicans will have the majority in both Houses of Congress. They will have plenty of opportunity to denounce torture in principle. They can distance themselves from the crimes of the Rove/Cheney/Bush administration. Adequate rejection of torture includes such simple statements as "This is all wrong, ineffective, and un-American".

[pbrower2a]

An aside -- Americans voted in people who, so far as I can tell, whole-heartedly believe that no human suffering is in excess so long as the suffering turns a profit. It's hard to see how economic and physical sadism could be well separated unless the question is who does the suffering. The Republican Party is the most right-wing party with a significant share of politicalpower within a Western democracy.

Authoritarian thinkers are cruel, ruthless, and reckless. They show fanatical loyalty to questionable objects of adoration.  If they are not the leaders or the brutal enforcers, they are the enablers -- the sorts who snitch upon dissidents as if such were the definition of patriotism.  

[pbrower2a]

I don't know whether a strong link between physical sadism toward criminal pariahs and economic sadism toward the economic pariahs has a clear link; I would expect one.

It will be up to Americans to reject a Party of Sadism in 2016 if such is shown of one of the two major Parties.