Tasing & Waterboarding
For at least a couple of years I've been reading, with increasing horror or disgust or something nasty like that, stories of police abusing their tasers. Too many people have been subjected to this twenty-first century style of police brutality, too many have died or been injured, too many have suffered outrageously while law-enforcement celebrates its discovery of "non-lethal" enforcement tactics.
This latest incident crystallizes some points.
Prison officer Walter Schmidt zapped visiting children with a 50,000-volt stun gun to give them a taste of life in a Florida jail. Two of the kids were knocked screaming to the floor with burns on their arms. One child went to the hospital.
"It wasn't intended to be malicious, but educational," said Schmidt. "The big shock came when I got fired."
[Mark Frauenfelder, "Prison officer surprised he was fired after zapping children with 50,000-volt stun gun", BoingBoing, 4 May 2009.]
I'm sure Schmidt felt quite clever about his "big shock" pun, but I am shocked that he was surprised by this outcome. Worse: it was reported elsewhere that some parents, when asked for their permission for the taser demonstration on their child, agreed.
Who could possibly think the "demonstration" was a good idea?
Is it just me or is there not a great resonance between "non-lethal [at least, most of the time]" use of the taser and waterboarding of political prisoners by the Bush administration who assured us that it was not torture because it caused "no permanent damage [most of the time]" to major organs, i.e., was "non-lethal [most of the time]".
What is the relationship between the Torture Administration and the recent poll by by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life that found that the more frequently one attended religious services the more likely one was to believe that torture is sometimes permissible.
I'm sure there are some deep conclusions to be drawn there. For the moment I'll be satisfied by noting that the "religiously unaffiliated" (including those atheists present) were the least likely to agree that torture was ever permissible.
I suppose we could talk yet again about that silly fundamentalist notion that without some god telling us what to do, atheists can't possibly have any morality, but it gets so tiresome repeatedly explaining to self-righteous people who refuse to hear the truth.*
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* I hate to step on a good exit line, so here we are in the footnotes. This observation reminds me of an incident from decades ago, when I was in college. I was at the laundromat in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, standing in front of three washing machines, patiently separating my laundry into whites, permanent press, and something else. Across the machines I was being watched by an oldish white woman who harangued me, going endlessly on and on about how youngsters like me were so irresponsible that we didn't even separate our laundry anymore.
For some reason this reminds me of a quotation I recently read–although it's more the inverse that applies–attributed to Chico Marx: "Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"
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on Tuesday, 12 May 2009 at 08.24
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"I was being watched by an oldish white woman who harangued me,…"
Now there's a class of people to fear.
"…the more frequently one attended religious services the more likely one was to believe that torture is sometimes permissible."
Including Unitarians?
Maybe attenders are more honest about it. History shows us that secular Leftist regimes will pull the trigger as much or more than me. Perez Hilton may do his tasering via pencil and paper, but the passion for martial slapdown looms large in his soul.