Rack ’n’ Roll, Baby

The greatest generation was a bunch of pussies.

by Steven Wells

Since then, of course, we’ve tortured like billy-o. We tortured the shit outta Vietnam. And under good old Ronald Reagan we had the (still operative) School of the Americas at Fort Benning, where we trained the fascist scum of the earth to murder, rape and torture the shit out of South and Central America.

In fact if it hadn’t been for that do-gooder liberal Jimmy Carter and that immoral sleazebag Bill Clinton (why do we keep electing these pussies?), the U.S. would’ve maintained a four-decades-long reign as the world’s top torturer. (As it is I reckon we’re still No. 1. Yay.)

So why is it that whenever news of a My Lai or an Abu Ghraib or a Guantánamo leaks out—or there’s yet another news story about the Bush administration kidnapping foreigners and flying them to third countries to be tortured—we all act so surprised. Us? America? Torture? Really? Are you sure?

It’s like Groundhog Day for imbeciles. Uh, yeah, us. The Spanish Inquisition, Jack Bauer, the Gestapo, us. Torture. It’s kinda what we do. As opposed to those scaredy-cat liberal bastards the Swedes, Jesus and the Smurfs.

There’s a Norman Rockwell painting called The Discovery where a shocked little boy in his jimmy-jams discovers his dad’s Santa Claus outfit. In a poster for a symposium titled “Shocked! Shocked!! Just How Many Times Can a Country Lose Its Innocence?” (held in New York on Oct. 6) the Santa suit was photoshopped out and replaced with Abu Ghraib torture pics.

There are really only two ways to cure torture amnesia. The first is to stop torturing. But that would mean breaking our addiction to morally bankrupt born-again Christian idiot presidents, and that might be asking too much.

The second is to embrace torture, accept it as an essential part of the American way, turn it from a vice into a virtue and bring the torture home. The Care Bears, Barney and a digitally resurrected Mister Rogers should be used to sell kids torture at an early age, and the Miranda warning should read: “You have the right to remain silent until we rip out your fucking fingernails.”

Hey, some people say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one.