Dear Miss Eliza: The Inhumanity!
Dear Miss Eliza,So I’m in the Bush administration… not one of the big guys, I just make the coffee. But I’m… you know… ambitious. I want to make myself look good, so I’m trying to come up with cool ways to get around this McCain torture bill that just passed… you know, in case this unitary executive branch thing doesn’t turn out to hold water. Got anything good I can use?
[name deleted for protection]
Dear nameless,
Hmmm, how can we get around this issue of being cruel and inhumane? Well, in order to be cruel and inhumane it has to be cruel AND inhumane, so if you destroy the argument that torture is one or the other, you’re all set. So…
Lets start with what it means to be humane or inhumane. Everywhere you go you hear people arguing about humane treatment of animals right? And why would it make sense to be treating animals like humans? So humane can't be describing the animals which means it must be describing the caregivers. So humane must be a description of the one acting, and not the one being acted on. Then if the one acting is acting human-ish, he’s being humane. Well that makes sense.
And what does it mean to be acting human-ish? That would be displaying qualities that are distinctly human, like putting faith in the unseen or paying $15 for snacks at a movie or running a red light. It is showing creativity and imagination, and thinking outside the box.
Therefore, the more creative the form of torture, the more it proves that you are indeed being humane, which by definition means you are NOT being INhumane, (for you grammar nuts out there, a double negative is perfectly acceptable as long as you capitalize the negative parts) so you’re good.
Of course this means you will have to stay away from conventional form of torture, so no pulling off fingernails or toenails or reading Vogon poetry, or threatening of family members (or dismembering of said family members) because those have already been tried and hence, no innovation required, which is inhumane.
In fact (And Bush will love me for this) I’m not even going to go into those forms of torture which would be considered creative because as soon as I name them then you didn’t have to think of them yourself. This means that you are not using your imagination, and are being inhumane, which means you’re right back where you started: the unitary executive branch.
- Miss Eliza
posted by Sarah Eliza @ 3:23 PM
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