Our courts suspend basic civil liberties for suspected terrorists
and pockets of our military practice torture on suspected
terrorists. It seems the term “suspected” loses its
importance when placed next to “terrorist.” These
irrefutable facts don’t bother many people as much as gay
marriage does, judging by the Election Day results (men
or women stacking themselves in two-person, loving piles:
bad; men being stacked forcibly in large piles because
they don’t like being invaded: apparently, not as
bad). If reduced civil liberties and the less-mutilating
forms of torture don’t bother you—when applied to suspected
terrorists—that’s your prerogative, and I’ll at least join
you in abhorring the confirmed terrorists.
No
doubt, you’ll be happy with President Bush’s new nominee
for Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, who gave his opinion
on torture in a Department
of Justice memorandum, dated August 1, 2002. In
it, he concludes that interrogation techniques can be “cruel,
inhuman, or degrading,” as long as they “do not produce
pain and suffering of the requisite intensity to fall within
Section 2340A’s proscription against torture.” His
view of the “requisite intensity” allows for a great deal
of suffering:
Physical
pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity
to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such
as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even
death . For purely mental pain or suffering to amount
to torture under Section 2340, it must result in significant
psychological harm of significant duration, e.g. lasting
for months or even years…We conclude that the statute,
taken as a whole, makes plain that it prohibits only extreme
acts.
It
appears that the stance on torture of our nominee for Attorney
General can be summarized as follows: If you wrap
it up before the month is out, it’s OK. If it drags
on a little longer, just make sure all the organs are in
place when you’re done. I hope I’m wrong about Gonzales,
but his words seem pretty damning.
On
a different tack, two cases of voter fraud in the past election
need to be investigated, not because they affected the outcome
of the election, but because voter fraud is unacceptable,
no matter who perpetrates the crime. Two troublesome
events occurred on Election Day
1.
Some electronic voting machines in Broward County, Florida
counted backwards, so that the official vote count went
down when people voted.
2.
Election officials in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio noted
that Bush won by 4,258 votes, even though only 638 people
voted there.
Let’s
get the vote count right, so that we don’t revert back to
the Tammany Hall days; also, I don’t want to see four more
years of finger quotation marks when liberals say the word
“elected.” There’s a petition
you can sign if this bothers you. If you voted
for Bush, you probably should note that, because your opinion
likely will have more weight.
On
a lighter note, I left the house two days in a row, which
is rare these days. After several days of venturing
only as far as our curb, Lynn and I made a bold move:
we had a noontime round of minigolf. We purposely
waited until a rainy weekday to ensure that we were the
only people on the course. Our golf game is rusty
and we didn’t want to worry about holding up antsy kids
or surly teenagers on awkward dates. With our round,
we received twenty video game tokens apiece, but we’re too
out-of-the-loop to enjoy the current generation of video
games, so we spent nearly all of them on skeeball.
I got quite good, scoring a 630 near the end—three near
misses away from a perfect score. Our bounty of skeeball
tickets reached the hundreds, but after looking at the selection
of whoopee cushions and finger-cuffs, we didn’t feel like
cashing them in. We looked for a kid that might appreciate
the tickets, but the only person in the place was a teenage
boy who was cutting class so he could shoot at buxom Nazis
in sunglasses.
The
next day, we attended a movie—only our fifth in the past
twelve months. The past four were Fahrenheit 911,
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Lord
of the Rings: The Return of the King and Finding
Nemo. We stuck to our pattern of kiddie fare (or propaganda)
and saw The Incredibles. As Tivo owners with
Turner Classic Movies, we don’t seem to have much need for
dramas on the big screen.
Unfortunately,
we weren’t as clever as we were on the previous day:
the strategy of seeing a midweek matinee doesn’t work if
you choose a holiday. I don’t remember getting out
of school for Veteran’s Day on a Thursday, but there were
plenty of kids spoiling our plans of a 1:00pm matinee.
Luckily, the 3:20pm show wasn’t sold out, so we had ample
time to eat at one of the few Rubios in Northern California.
After a few fish tacos, we killed some time at Barnes &
Noble, where we came across a photo
collaboration between Anne Geddes and Celine Dion that—while
not as troubling as torture or voter fraud—makes me shudder.
It’s a series of pictures of Celin Dion dressed as a flower,
holding other people’s naked babies. On the babies’
heads, someone has placed rubbery hats that look like the
film on the top of Jello. I think this might be the
beginning of the New World Order predicted in The Matrix.
As
for The Incredibles, I highly recommend it if you’re
in need of a couple hours of escapist fun. Unlike
most superhero movies, you don’t need to be bothered by
silly looking suits or a loose interpretation of physics
because the digitally rendered world helps to suspend logic.
The movie has a great look, is clever and features the voice
of Sarah Vowell, the eminently talented writer and radio
personality. My only complaint is that the Incredibles
aren’t real, because we could really use their help in Iraq.
Mr.
Lewis can be reached at jeff@babblog.com.
Copyright
Jeff Lewis, 2004 |
