MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY--Our Priestly-President, Richard Cheney, hath spake yesterday with a journalist/admirer about thee War on Terrorisme (sin), and let us know he still doesn't believe water-boarding is torture. After all, if George W. Bush and the President say it is so, then it is so. If they reject something, that's it, no-further-discussion. There's the rub: journalistic-access to the bosses. Scott Hennen should lay-off the brown-lipstick, it looks like shite. Great, Scott (great Scott!), you got your coveted interview with the President--but at what cost? Your very soul, naturally. You feed him leading-questions like in this exchange:Q: I've heard from a lot of listeners -- that's what we do for a living [Ed.-as well as draw a paycheck from the Bush administration], talk to good folks in the Heartland every day -- and I've talked to as many who want an increased military presence in Iraq as want us out, which seems to be the larger debate, at least coming from the left -- cut and run [Ed.-since they can't say it anymore, we'll have our press-shills say it], get out of there. One fax said, when you talk to the Vice President, ask him when shock and awe is coming back to Iraq. Let's finish the job once and for all. And terrorist interrogations and that debate is another example. And I've had people [Ed.-How about some names?] call and say, please, let the Vice President know that if it takes dunking a terrorist in water, we're all for it, if it saves American lives. Again, this debate seems a little silly given the threat we face, would you agree?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I do agree. ... [Ed.-Yeah, I bet that was hard.]
Scott's job was easy since all of his questions were prepared in-advance for him. Man, what a gig! He didn't have to do anything bu show-up, and it looks great on his resume! The whole inteview is like the above-excerpt, and an insult to even the lowest-intellect (George W. Bush). Waterboarding is considered torture by virtually everyone on Earth, excepet by the Bush adminstration and their Middle Eastern and Asian allies (and the red-haired step-children, North Korea, Russia, China & Turkey). Basically, the worst human-rights violators think water-torture is acceptable and that the Geneva convention and other international treaties can be ignored. Or acceptable in 1600s colonial-America under the Winthrops, or during the Middle Ages (or the Ottoman Empire). If you spoke-out in church in Massachusetts Bay, or if you were a woman who spoke out-of-turn to their husbands, you could be 'dunked' in water, simulating a drowning-sensation (often a real one). It was like drowning, and we know it was also applied to accused-witches. If you didn't fit-in with the Puritan-ideal, you could be next. Falling-asleep in church could earn one corporal-punishment, like floggings on the stocks, whippings and even dunkings. Adultery--or simply sleeping-around--was punishable-by-death. Winthrop notes in his diaries the outcome in the case of a Mary Latham, 18-years-old, who slept with a married-man:And yet some of the magistrates thought the evidence not sufficient against her, because there were not two direct witnesses; but the jury cast her, and then she confessed the fact, and accused twelve others, whereof two were married men. Five of these were apprehended and committed, (the rest were gone,) but denying it, and there being no other witness against them than the testimony of a condemned person, there could be no proceeding against them. ...They were both executed, they both died very penitently, especially the woman, who had some comfortable hope of pardon of her sin, and gave good exhortation to all young maids to be obedient to their parents, and to take heed of evil company.
For the accused-witch, the alternatives were death...and death. If you didn't answer the Puritan authorities' questions, they just kept dunking you, over-and-over. If you answered their questions, they executed you. This was all to enforce the Old World concept of religious-uniformity, a time when Church and State were joined. The Bush administration has made it patently-clear they are at war with the division of Church and State, so waterboarding should be no-surprise after that. Eventually, they'll run-out of foreign-victims and come for the rest-of-us. The Patriarch's appetites must be sated, but so must the crowd's. One important-feature of this kind of power is that the leaders rarely reflect the values they are inflicting on others, so consider the obvious-examples. When Reagan referred-to America as the 'City on the Hill' (a new Jerusalem), he was quoting Winthrop's speech of the same-title. How rampant-consumerism and defense-spending keeps us pure from the evils of the world is beyond-my-ken. Like Winthrop, Reagan's ilk probably sincerely believe that America has been chosen for a mission in the world by deity, a refuge from the aforementioned-evils--excepting pedophilia, it seems. It's ironic that people like Anne Hutchinson & Roger Williams were expelled from the colony, as they merely founded a new one that was religiously-tolerant--Rhode Island.
But, at least Winthrop provided for the early Masschusetts Bay colony--he even sold a manor to feed-them during the first-winters. It should be noted that this charity had a temporal-price, and it was control of colonial governance. Through the colonial-juries, most accused-adulterers, sinners and interlopers were tried and executed, and the jurors knew whose hand was feeding-them. It was Winthrop. Winthrop was not an aberration in his use of torture to enforce a Puritan order, the first Governor of the Bay colony--John Endicott--went so far as to advocte the torturing and execution of Quaker-interlopers. Endicott also insisted on religious-conformity, and was actually worse than Winthrop. Accusing others had its rewards, often a kind of empowerment and a rising-through-the-ranks once an opponent had been accused and executed. Their property was frequently forfeited to their accusers and the courts, a wonderful facet of the Reagan & Bush years that we still have with us from the War on Drugs (really a domestic war on Americans). If a Puritan is interested in anything, it's what everyone is doing behind closed doors, a thread that has continued throughout our history--J. Edgar Hoover being the finest-example of this impulse.
There is an entire-generation of religious fanatics in America today who would love to populate a new-spate of these religious-juries and general pogroms. Some these individuals prefer enslavement under a father-figure who can decide things for them, rather than genuine liberty and the responsibility that comes with it. The first responsibility if tolerance. Underneath the canopy of modernism, technology and hype, America is still a primitive-culture. It's a small-wonder that the puritanical Bush dynasty finds so much in-common with the medieval House of Saud, as their religious-laws mirror those of Massachusetts Bay in the early-1600s. They must be jealous of the theocratic-powers they wield in Arabia, just like John Winthrop did over 300-years-ago (only-worse), and they haven't bothered to hide this lust. Coupled with this is Winthrop's delusion that America was somehow the 'last-stand' for Anglo-culture, a mirage that continues to haunt our foreign and domestic-policies. Oddly, even freaks like George W. Bush believe the United States is the more than just the 'policeman of the world', we're supposed to be its salvation. It is an incredibly wrongheaded notion that is dying a slow-death in the dust of Iraq, but it is dying:
The signal illusion from which America has to awake in Iraq and everywhere else is that it serves God's providence or (for those with more secular beliefs) that it s the engine of history. In Iraq, America is not the maker of history but its plaything. In the region at large, America is not the hegemon but the hesitant shaper of forces it barely understands. (Ignatieff, 06/27/2004)
The 'Interview' With a Puritan Vampire:
John Winthrop (most bios whitewash his life):
Thee National Delusione:
An Article By a Descendent of John Winthrop:
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