Book, I have probably given more time and thought to this subject than your average blogger or bloggee.

It would only be natural, then, for the synthesis to be more immediate on my part.

It is not a very large leap to go from understanding how people feel and how to manipulate those feelings, to learning how to manipulate people with pain and stress and psychological durance. It provides a good buffer against the lies and misinformation the media and the public latte sipping talking heads provide to you.

People like Neo-Neocon studied psychology to heal and help people with their problems. That is a noble endeavour. I, however, was far more interested in the weaponization of certain fields and concepts. I studied psychology to learn how people ticked, so that I could tear them apart, for my enemies were all… you guessed it, people and not animals.

It would benefit a lot of these anti-torture freaks to actually, you know, study torture before they talk about its “effectiveness”.

How is a person going to talk about the “effectiveness” of war and its attendant artillery and face to face killing, if they have not studied war, participated in it, or even thought much about the history of war?

It is very hard. A person that has not practiced in something, that hasn’t given much thought to it, and has not even studied the history of others attempting it so that they may learn from the “theories” and knowledge of others that have gone before, cannot simply pick up a new trade or skill and be “brilliant” at it. Not even the talented and gifted amateurs we call (Obama) geniuses are able to do that. Real prodigies, those with a natural attunement to music or atheltics, are rare and few and far between. I don’t think any of them ever go into politics. This is important because it renders null and void the “Smart Obama Politics”. You would need rare genius for that, and Obama is no genius. Also ,depending upon genius to save your bacon is the same as relying upon your absolute monarch always being benevolent. Not going to happen.

Well, that’s enough on that topic.

But it is also predictable, for the Left has fallen prey to using the same trick over and over. And predictability in war becomes the harbinger of ultimate defeat.”

Ymarsakar, you just brought back one of my most pleasant memories:

Carter: “Blabbety blah blah blah.”

Reagan: “There you go again.”

We need to start saying “There you go again” every time statists start in on their tired litanies.

http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2009/05/missed-anniversary-vous-les-americains.html

Regardless of fact or effect, (Is it true? Does it give aid and comfort to our enemy?) they take the snot-nosed high road of a sophomore ethicist, whose sneering superiority is outdone only by his lack of experience and total dependence on the very people he denigrates . The great paradox, well, contradiction, is that underneath all the theatre of moral outrage is a conscience the size of a news release.

Civil liberties, WMD lies, national security risks, not listening to generals on the ground, not surging troops into a meat grinder.

It works for them because it is an offensive operation that shocks and awes with its sheer audacity. Like a blitz, the enemy is caught off guard and annihilated before sufficient defenses can be prepared.

But it is also predictable, for the Left has fallen prey to using the same trick over and over. And predictability in war becomes the harbinger of ultimate defeat.

[...] even if they are not worried about falling into the twin vices of sadism and cruelty themselves as interrogators. [...] interrogators are there to get information, and oftentimes the best way to get information is NOT to inflict maximum pain. [...] The people who fear that “we will become the enemy” are themselves most likely of torturing, executing, and condemning to death millions of people, [...] These are the people who are most loud about their “fears”. Because what they fear is themselves. As they rightly should. For they are pitiful enough that they will fear themselves and doubt their own ability to make the correct choices [...] Those on an enlightened path have already faced our inner demons using any number of journeys or voyages or methods.

Or, as the author of the comic strip “Pogo”, Walt Kelly, famously opined in that strip, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

I think Ymar has nailed it, though I think the problem extends beyond leftists. There was an experiment some decades back where volunteers for a study were put in control of a “power meter” via which they could deliver electric shocks to another person in another room. The volunteers received the (morality-based) message that the responsibility for delivering the shocks belonged to those running the study… NOT to the volunteers.

Removed of the constraints of conscience, among the volunteers there was a large percentage who readily delivered shocks far in excess of those they were supposed to, both in duration of the shocks and intensity. (The subjects receiving the shocks were actually only actors.) If I remember the story correctly, those running the study were shocked, even dismayed, at how widespread among the volunteers this behavior was.

If this study is correct – and I think it is – then I think it does, in a sense, reinforce Ymar’s point: If you are in a position of power over other human beings and you do not approach your job with full awareness of the risks, knowledge of yourself and your own weaknesses, and with strict professionalism, you do run the risk of undergoing a psychological transformation where you become “more like your enemy”.

Such people, when confronted with the moral implications of their behavior, will likely be unable to offer any explanation other than shaking their head and saying, “I don’t know what came over me. I don’t understand.”

You hear anecdotal evidence of rogue guards in prison becoming harshly brutal themselves, despite the best of training. You have the example of the soldiers spinning out of control at Abu Ghraib (where most of the soldiers appeared to be utterly shallow followers, and were unfortunately led by an amoral leader who took them there, and was himself quite psychologically flawed…)

People like Jon Stewart are surface-ice skaters on the issue of torture. They haven’t spent time delving into the quandaries of running such harsh interrogation sessions; nor have they examined themselves deeply and asked the difficult, soul-searching questions about the risks of psychological damage to the authority running the session. They haven’t received training; they simply lack the professionalism that is required that gives one the best chance to avoid such a self-degradation.

Lacking that, and not having put forth any effort, they then project their own fears of inadequacy onto the professionals, and assume no one is capable of performing such a difficult job without “becoming like the enemy”. In that manner, they suffer from a failure of imagination, an inability to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and walk there for awhile.

But I think many of them also suffer from a weakness in their perception of human nature: They are convinced man is inherently in a constant state of readiness to fail.

Always at the very edge of giving into our inner demons and throwing ourselves off that moral cliff down into our personal hells. But thousands of miles away from ascending to that distant mountaintop where our inner angel stands resolute and pure – and lonely and alone. So close the inner demon, so distant the inner angel.

It seems to me that they believe this because they lack a strong foundation of religious faith that defines the way they think of their own behavior, that defines how they behave. They are irresolute and unsure of themselves because of this – and they are therefore at risk. And then assume we are all risk.

I say they lack a strong foundation of “religious faith” rather than “spiritual faith”, because, being somewhat of an elitist, I believe the vast majority of people require a community sense of religion rather than being capable of relying solely on the inner strength of a personal spirituality. There certainly are committed atheists who have made a spiritual journey and are strong and resolute in their moral foundation, as there are believers in a God of some sort who have made a similar journey. But like the pitiful volunteers in the “shock study”, I think most people haven’t. They require the constraints of a religious community to acquire that moral foundation and to behave well.

(Which, by the way, is my explanation for why a secular civilization so easily loses its way and falls into spiritual and moral decay, and into ennui and despair: Because most people, unfortunately, need to be surrounded by a religious community that reinforces their better natures.)

So those such as Jon Stewart who instantly convict – in their own minds at least – our professional interrogators of inevitably becoming torturing sadists and enjoying it, generally have a weak foundation themselves and fear their own reactions; lack a knowledge of the professional training involved to avoid that sad fate; and share a view of human nature that assumes we are all just one step away from demonic evil but miles away from angelic exaltation.

Your best point is the one where you say “people who fear that the US will fall into “evil” are the same people promoting Hollywood trash that partially motivated those like England to perform their sexual malfunctions.”

I had not thought of that before but I think you are quite right.

I hope you guest post here more often. BWs place is a first and last stop for me on my must-read blogathons…keep up the good writing!