Trump Promotes Torture

- Guardian


Have you personally ever experienced torture prior to fair trial or other well tested and long established "impartial" procedures of "justice" that many people in society recognise as necessary to maintaining general order among human beings? If so, can you describe your experience of torture? Did it hurt, and did you scream or cry? What was the aftermath of that torture? Did you experience any chronic pain as a result of tortures that had been inflicted on you? Was the functioning of your organs (aside from the functioning of your brain) observable as altered in any way, following the tortures inflicted on you? How would you describe the effect of the torture on your ability to hold a job and provide for yourself and any dependents you may have, to relate to others in your family and acquaintance, and generally function according to the expectations of society?

Maybe you have not experienced torture yourself, but you may have been close to someone who has experienced it. Was there anything about their ability to function in a normal or expected way that you noticed had changed after they had been tortured?

What do you think Trump is referring to when he says "more than that"? What are some examples of things that he could mean? Could he be referring to rape, which is often described as one of the most commonly perpetrated "war crimes"? Or maybe he is thinking about attaching electrodes to the genitalia of those selected as suitable for torture, and electrocuting them until they sustain some burns at the site where the electrodes are attached? It's just very difficult to figure out what he means by "more than that", so I'm just trying to imagine what kinds of things he could mean... since there are so many different kinds of violence that could be considered to be "torture". Maybe he just means a more gentle type of torture, something like strangulation?

What does it mean that Trump stated that torture is effective, and then subsequently stated that it doesn't matter whether or not it is effective? It almost seems as though he was "correcting" himself, as though he realised that he had "lied" when he said that it "works". Did he realise that he had "lied", or was he "covering up" after himself for some other reason?

 

In the context of this particular matter, I can understand why you would be afraid for the future of your child, because his approach to it is so filled with uncertainty. The issue of torture is clearly very important, because laws have been passed against it. And yet the candidate is comfortable assuming that these laws will be somehow undone, so that torture is once again possible. How the laws will be undone, and the consequences with the international community for the revisions of the law, is not clear. What kinds of torture will be permitted, are also very unclear. Whether or not torture will achieve any meaningful purpose is not clear either, and the candidate seems to realise that it is not clear. So I think that when the candidate is comfortable approaching something as important as this so blithely and with such a profound lack of clarity, it seems natural that there would be many other very important areas of policy that would be as unclear. The future with Trump seems so uncertain.

I'm truly not meaning to insult anyone at all by saying this, but what I find most striking about the candidate is what appears to be a very limited range of educational outcomes that he has achieved for himself. He seems to be unable to approach important issues with coherent thought or with consideration to complex or multiple perspectives. He does not seem to have understood the possibility that alternative perspectives can be valid, or to have internally obtained the ability to apply alternative theoretical perspectives to complex issues. His education appears strikingly rudimentary. It is easy to imagine that he has never read a book, his literacy is so stunted.