12/06/2004

Torturing White People:
Let us say, and why not, that in 1995, after the Oklahoma City Bombing, the United States government decided to use any means necessary to break up and destroy any radical terrorist cells in the nation. Maybe we could even pretend that Timothy McVeigh wasn't captured. (The Murrah Federal Building attack was so stunning, so horrific that when 9/11 happened, several people who had no access to PDBs about Bin Laden asked the Rude Pundit if he thought it was the work of the same type of white supremacist terrorism. "No," the Rude Pundit answered, having seen the planes driven into the Towers on CNN. "White Americans don't plan suicide attacks. Too much ego.")

Let's say that the government declared "war on domestic terror" and the military, working with local law enforcement, went into compounds and farms in the Upper Midwest and Northwest, to South Dakota, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, and mass arrested anyone who was linked to Aryan Nations or White Aryan Resistance or name your favorite "stupid fucking backward ass losers who blame everyone but the white people who actually have power" organization. And in this sweep of short-haired white males and the white women who enable them, the local cops decided to pick up everyone who's ever looked at them crossways. Farmers, janitors, motorcycle gangs, all swept up and sent to the newly established prison at Guantanamo Bay. And maybe some of 'em were just thrown into prisons in South Dakota, Idaho, etc., etc., Packed 'em in there. Shaving the heads would be a quick task for most of 'em.

You get where this is going, this "fun with analogies" tale. We get pictures of all these suspected terrorists, white people one and all, with electrodes on their nuts. We get Red Cross reports about the way in which these evil white motherfuckers are subjected to routine humiliation, psychological torture, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, the usual shit. The government would justify it by saying they have to do everything they can to prevent another Oklahoma City. They're our own citizens and aren't subject to the Geneva Conventions, the administration would say. They come up with legal justifications in the form of memos. When they're ordered to give the terror suspects hearings on their charges, the government sets up kangaroo military tribunals. As the Rude Pundit said, by this point, you get the fucking analogy, right? (And he's strived to divorce this from any politics - this ain't about "What Clinton couldn't do that Bush is allowed to do" or any such bullshit.)

Do you think, for a second, that if reports were that large groups of non-French white people were being routinely subjected to torture at the hands of our government (and, let's be perfectly clear, anything the government does is in our name; therefore, this is you doing it, too), that if photos of bloodied, battered, leashed, sodomized, dog-bitten, nude white people had "surfaced" that we would ignore it? That we'd just sit back and relax at the notion that the good and godly government knows what it's doing when it comes to torturing the white terrorists who, after all, blew up the Murrah Federal Building? That the media would give scant attention to the white people who are being deprived sleep in order to force them to give information about shit they know nothing about? That we'd look at those pictures of pyramids of naked white asses, shinin' in the flash of the camera lens, and think, "Fuck them, they killed children"? (The sad, sad, stomach-churning truth is that so many of us wouldn't care, we'd think they must deserve it, we'd "trust" the government.)

Here's what's going on: you know all those movies, like Lethal Weapon, Rambo, etc., etc., where the American hero is chained like a dog while men in uniforms, usually either with Russian accents or Middle Eastern or Asian skin, approach said American hero and tell him, "Tell us what you know," and when the American hero says he doesn't know anything, they beat him, or threaten to rape his wife, or turn on the electricity, or thrown water on him to wake him up, or whatever. You know the films. They're calculated to make you wanna see that torturing motherfucker get the worst possible death. Yeah - drop kick 'em on the spiked fence. That'll teach 'em to torture Bruce Willis. Well, reverse it, motherfuckers. Change the context.

'Cause what's going on right now is the opposite. The people chained up are Middle Eastern. The uniformed young men walking into the room are American. Now, do you think maybe the Middle Easterners who learn of this shit don't want the worst possible death for those who perpetrate the torture? And if you can abide this torture, if you don't give a shit about what's being done in your name, then you deserve whatever America you are allowed to have, not whatever America you can make.

Christ Weary Update:
So far, over 100 tales of abuse at the hands and words of the faithful have arrived. Keep the stories coming of your confrontations with the religious right. Send 'em to: rudepundit@yahoo.com.