Saving America's Virtue

“Elaborate care went into figuring out the precise gradations of coercion,” said David B. Rivkin Jr., a lawyer who served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. “Yes, it’s jarring. But it shows how both the lawyers and the nonlawyers tried to do the right thing.”
New York Times, August 25, 2009 "Report Shows Tight C.I.A. Control on Interrogations"

"How far can you go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?"
Dwight D. Eisenhower


This is that inevitable time in the normal course of human events when the details of America's interrogation techniques employed during the Bush/Cheney administration are finally being revealed. While Dick Cheney fulminates in the background about protection of the American "patriots" who carried on our so-called "War on Terrorism," details about the techniques continue to emerge relentlessly into the light due, if to nothing else, to humanity's endless fascination with the dirty, squalid details of mankind's apparently endless inhumanity to individual men.

Yesterday, in a written post, Cheney professed incredulity over the publication of recent media reports on enhanced interrogation techniques that involved, among other sterling means, threats to use electric drills in unspecified ways and rapes of either mothers or wives (as variously reported) by stating:

• "The activities of the CIA in carrying out the policies of the Bush Administration were directly responsible for defeating all efforts by al Qaeda to launch further mass casualty attacks against the United States. The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions."

The fact that he seems genuinely surprised and indignant that this information is now being dragged into the light of day demonstrates Cheney's inherent inability to understand the fascination that squalor holds on the minds of ordinary mortals and places him in the role of the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike attempting to hold back the inevitable flood of condemnation and disgust that will no doubt follow these disclosures. In undertaking the role of champion of the notion that bad behavior in the pursuit of laudable goals is patriotic, Cheney reveals why his presence (and those of his emulators) in our government over the last several decades has been one of the saddest chapters in all of American history.

The America in which I was raised believed, rightly or wrongly, that it was the greatest nation on earth, both in terms of power and of morality. Our focus then was less upon our status as a superpower, and more upon the "fact" of our innate moral superiority. I suspect that we took our belief in our own morality so much to heart that our neighbors frequently found us insufferable in our repeated assertions in this regard. Notwithstanding our pomposity, those assertions did have the effect of causing us to demand more of ourselves than we expected of others, and the resulting American ethic was such that we were required, as a people, to rise above the ordinary squalor and cruelty of life. We expected, and demanded, more of ourselves. And, notwithstanding their occasional amusement, our neighbors came to expect this behavior of us and admired us for it, as insufferable as we may have appeared to them at such times as we publicly wallowed in our own self-assertions of that very morality.

In other words, as priggish as we may often have seemed to the world during this era, there was a genuine sense in the world that America had truly raised itself above the usual muck and mire and was a shining example of what could be achieved by a nation that took to heart the notion that individual human rights were always to be protected against the tyranny of the majority's wishes. I believe that our occasional public assertions of morality were forgiven by the rest of the world as the excesses of a young democracy that had truly achieved something significant. We were more honored than reviled for our self-promotion for the simple reason that there was substantially more than a mere grain of truth behind it all.

Our perceived morality gave us standing in the world. More than mere standing, it lent us a dignity from which to promote our various policies - a dignity which was unassailable even as we occasionally made a laughing stock of ourselves due to an innate and relentless American habit of self-promotion. Our dignity was represented by Presidents who wielded our moral authority with care, if not always to best effect. Our image was represented by the likes of Dwight D. Eisenhower, a man who had earned his right to speak out against humanity's indignities the hard way. Whatever you may think of his effectiveness as President, his public image was unassailable and his warnings of a militarily industrialized future uncannily prescient.

Eisenhower's quotations are well worth reading by those of you who have relegated him to the dust-bin of presidential mediocrity. Whatever the truth may be as to his real-time effectiveness as a working President, this was a man who understood, first-hand, the effects of war on humanity and who routinely preached against the evils of untamed blood lust in all of its forms. Eisenhower was the very embodiment in words and deeds of America's self-perceived morality and, as time passed and we, as Americans, began to ridicule our own moral stuffiness, we distanced ourselves from his public image of moral rectitude. We did so at great cost, by forgetting the universal verity of many of his words.

Eisenhower could be as practical as he could be stuffy. In the context of the subject matter of this piece, consider this statement by our thirty-fourth President:

• "I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone."

These are the words of a man who equally understands the value of the high, long way and the dangers and self-delusions inherent in moral short cuts undertaken in the name of "patriotism." This was a man who was often criticized for taking an inordinate amount of time to make up his mind on critical issues, but who asserted that "I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem - and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?"

I am often dismissive of much of the criticism of my generation since I believe we added far more than we took, but I do believe my generation comes in for valid criticism in over-reacting as much as we did to 1950 American moral stuffiness. Some reaction was appropriate and necessary to save us from the smell of renewed Puritanism which permeated the era, especially in light of the fact that 1950's Americans openly engaged in the thoroughly hypocritical and inherently degrading actions of segregation while simultaneously proclaiming their societal morality. The generational uprising in which we engaged was long overdue and necessary from this standpoint.

What my generation was guilty of is nothing more than acting in predictable human fashion when faced with the realization that goals and actions don't match - we swung the pendulum from one extreme to the other, forgetting there was a midpoint upon which it might well be smarter to settle. Many of us reacted to the permeating smell of Puritanism by becoming drug induced and sex obsessed. One of the costs of this generational pendulum shift was for America to forget the hard-earned truths which were concealed by President Eisenhower's very stuffiness - that the moral high ground is always a position of strength when continually maintained despite the vicissitudes of time, even if short-cuts around our moral principles seem, in the heat of the moment, more likely to yield immediate results.

Dick Cheney is living proof of our failure to remember this lesson. As tight-assed as the man is, he is nothing more than the embodiment of my generation's failure to stop the pendulum mid-swing. In his ignorance and arrogance, he has confused his taking of short cuts in the name of patriotism for the will of the people. He has utterly failed to understand the historical lesson that persons in power who undertake activities of questionable morality with the excuse of being in pursuit of higher goals actually undermine the higher goals so proclaimed, actively lessen a nation's integrity - and, therefore, its effectiveness, in the wide world - and, in the long run, its very safety.

In short, Cheney is as un-American as any public official ever inflicted upon America. Give me, instead, the Kingfish, Huey Long - at least in his greed he was a splendid example of one of the least desirable aspects of American culture and, in the end, did no more lasting harm than any cheap criminal can inflict. And, he came to have some redeeming virtue in becoming the inspiration for one of America's more enduring literary classics, All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren. In contrast, Cheney is simply an unmitigated disaster. Cheney is no more than the latest heir to the American tradition of scoundrels who employ the big lie as a means to success. You can easily find his like in the pages of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the guise of the Duke or the Lost Dauphin. Would that he were as amusing or as transparent; would that he had been as harmless.

This is the time of year in North America when the sun's light reaches us at a more oblique angle and light softens from that of Summer's harshness as a consequence. Even as we welcome the softer aspects of Fall's light knowing that we cannot stop nature from its inevitable course, we should continue shining a harsh, Summery spotlight upon the interrogation policies of the Bush/Cheney administration, for it seems to be true that epiphanies only occur in a blinding light and an epiphany is what this country so desperately needs at this time.

During the Bush/Cheney administration America strayed far from the high, moral path which sustained us as a people for so many years, and there is no conceivable way back without an honest admission of our collective failure followed closely by the employment of an effective means to expiate the sins which resulted from our wandering. What form that expiation ought to take I will leave for smarter minds and a future time; for now, it is enough to remain focused upon the imperative need for an honest admission.

And, for there to be an honest admission of our failing, we must first endure the pain of a complete, undistorted, public revelation of the facts of our failure - something that among the present holders of senior government positions only Attorney General Eric Holder seems to comprehend, and his comprehension seems either to be limited in scope or practically compromised by the short-sightedness and predilection for shortcut-taking that are the hallmarks of everyday politics. I suspect it is the latter, since he seems intellectually up to the task.

It is a time for spotlights because it is a time for a national epiphany. Most of all, it is time for statesmen to return to the forefront of the national stage and for politicians to retreat to the wings.

Realities in the Arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates

News has been hard to come by in Brasil, but I've been reading a lot today and have to say that Henry Louis Gates acted like a moron... Tweet by brennonbortz to The Huffington Post

O WOW! I just saw Henry Louis Gates in LGA acting like a damn superstar waving to folk. Somebody tell his uppity self to stop. Lmao. Tweet by NaleJBonz to The Huffington Post


I have been watching the news about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. with great interest. As I have previously written, I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Gates last January and found myself not only charmed but very moved by his actions and words. He is a bright, effervescent man with a passion for history and a firm determination that all people are equal. In short, I found him an inspiration (see my previous post entitled "The Theory and Practice of Rainbows" for a contemporaneous discussion of my introduction to Professor Gates).

However, I wasn't present at the time of his arrest and cannot comment on what actually occurred other than to note that my impression of the man I met last January and the various descriptions of Professor Gates in the many blogs and commentaries discussing his arrest are wholly incompatible. Given the number of people in the blogs and commentaries with firm opinions about how he behaved that July day, I am compelled to assume that at the time of his arrest there must have been a crowd of somewhere between 50,000 to 100,000 in attendance outside of his Cambridge home. How this many people could have been forewarned of the event is nothing short of miraculous and must be an indication of the power of mobile electronics - nothing else could explain such a phenomenon. One wonders if its ephemeral organizers sold tickets to what could only be described as the first-ever "Racial Event Rave".

Since a crowd of this size is highly improbable and remains unreported by what is laughingly known as "the Press", I have to assume that none of those with a firm opinion about Mr. Gates (or about Sergeant James Crowley, the police officer involved, for that matter) were present at the arrest when it occurred. I also have to assume that none of these self-confessed expert witnesses are blessed by a higher power with paranormal observational abilities.

In other words, none of these bloggers and commentators have a clue what they are talking about, but they are uniformly firm in their resolve not to let their lack of knowledge get in the way of their having a firm opinion about what actually happened. Ignorance of actual facts is, apparently, no reason not to assume a version thereof convenient to personal prejudice.

I find this "ability" to intuit "facts" from afar to be greatly more interesting than the story itself. The events of that July day were nothing more than a high level replay of common, garden variety events which occur daily in this country when folks of two or more races have occasion to interact. Simply put, race is still a destabilizing factor in this country even though we have spent the last several decades working hard to eliminate it as such. While the simple fact of Mr. Gates' arrest is proof that we have yet to succeeded in achieving a race neutral society, the reaction to the arrest by all of the know-it-alls and true believers is a far more telling measurement of the distance yet to travel toward that goal.

I say this simply because one can only know the Truth of something unseen and unobservable through the strength of one's own convictions and beliefs. All of us have a belief structure which we apply to what we see and hear, and, using that structure to make sense of our sensory input, we arrive at conclusions that are personally meaningful. We use that belief structure to interpret matters which occur before our very eyes, and we also use that belief structure to interpret that which we have been told about but have not seen.

In doing so, sometimes we reach conclusions that are insightful, but more often we simply reflect our lack of understanding, lack of empathy or lack of knowledge. If there is one single lesson which all of us can learn as a result of Professor Gates' arrest, it is to think before publication. In days of yore, becoming published was dependent upon others printing our words, and they did so only after subjecting us to editing. Today anyone - yes, even I - can publish without another's permission, much less another's editing. If that statement doesn't scare you, you know not what you are about to do.

That so many could swear that they know the truth of the events of that day or, more tellingly, that so many could characterize Mr. Gates' behavior in some manner when they weren't there to observe his behavior for themselves (often using words or phrases dripping with the prejudice long displayed during our national history of racial discrimination) demonstrates that racial prejudice is alive and well in America. When so many can look from afar through their personal lens of verity to find Mr. Gates acting "uppity" (in the words of NaleJBonz), I can only conclude that that racism persists immediately below the crust of our good manners and eagerly awaits any opportunity to manifest its ugly self.

Not only is racism alive and well in our country, but the level of our debate on the subject has yet to pass beyond sophomoric. While I have long felt that we were making progress toward a race neutral society even if we weren't yet perfect, this debate has made me reconsider how far we have really come. Admittedly, much of the commentary I have read is not of the type set forth above and I do not mean to denigrate everyone who has commented. However, all too much of the commentary is of the type that assumes either (a) that Professor Gates was guilty of something (loud, disruptive behavior, lack of respect for the police, uppitiness) or (b) that Sergeant Crowley was guilty of something (lack of respect for blacks, stupidity for not accepting the fact that Gates was in his own home, racial profiling).

I am certainly not against anyone having an opinion about something they haven't personally witnessed - if I was, I wouldn't be writing this blog entry. I am not against anyone drawing a general conclusion from these events as I, myself, am doing. As to the event itself, my conclusions are that it is very likely (a) neither man was at his best that day, (b) the matter should have ended when it was confirmed that Mr. Gates was in his own home, and (c) the police showed less than perfect professionalism in the manner in which things were handled. In fact, I think President's Obama's characterization of the entire affair as "stupid" is the best summary of events to date for the stated reasons.

But my beliefs about the matter are as peanuts when compared to the outpouring of stereotypical conclusions on the Internet about the participants themselves by people who were nowhere in the vicinity of Cambridge on the day in question. Forget the events of the day; treat them as only the backdrop to the enormous, resulting outpouring of raw sewage on the subject on the Internet. Consider, instead, what that outpouring means to us as a society. What it means to me is simply that we still have a long road to travel; we cannot yet be at the half way mark to a race neutral society when there is such conclusive, massive, public evidence that stereotyping remains rampant in many people's consideration of events unseen or unexperienced.

As I have written this, I have wondered about my own lack of posting of stereotypical comments about Sergeant Crowley. In fact such commentary exists and I have read it and found it equally disheartening. And, I considered posting examples of such commentary since is as disturbing to me as the quotes posted above. I have not done so, however, because I do not know Sergeant Crowley. I have, however, had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with Professor Gates and I have the privilege of having a childhood friend of his as a friend of mine. I posted the above quotes not to give them prominence or credibility, but simply because the opinions they express about Mr. Gates are so contrary to the extraordinary man I met last January. I have no similar basis with which to compare Sergeant Crowley.

Consider these quotes as my muse for the purpose of this posting - a dark, sinister, ugly muse, but a muse nonetheless.