*accusers. Including some people known in the movement.

They “had to” only in the limited context of a TV show. They had options. For one thing they could have told the guy, “listen, if the kid dies you’re going down for a whole lotta time. If you tell us where the car is, we’ll arrest you for theft and we’ll get the judge to give you a reduced sentence because you realized your mistake, were contrite about it, and cooperated. Hell, you’re 50% of the way to ‘rehabilitated’ already.”

In fact, the scenario I outline above is so plausible and simple to accomplish that I have difficulty believing that the situation actually happened, or that there were such stupid cops that they didn’t simply negotiate a de-escalation of the scenario.

In Asimov’s “Foundation” series Hari Seldon says “violence is the last resort of the incompetent.” I’m not sure he was right about that but I’m damn sure that violence is nearly always a result of lack of imagination.

Innocent lives might be lost if the US doesn’t have a single-payer government-sponsored socialized medical system. Therefore, any violence is justified!

It’s simpler than that — they’re just teaching nationalism: anything to protect the fatherland is OK. Because, even though the rulers are clearly portrayed as corrupt (and they are!) they are the rulers, and therefore must be protected, damn the torpedoes.

What always pisses me off is how the “bad guys” are always cardboard cut-outs. They’re bad because Allah, or whatever. Because of the things they do (“bad things”) but there’s never an explanation attached to those bad things. You know, like the kind of “explanations” we are seeing coming from Washington and the CIA — you know, how those guys in Washington have loads of justifying reasons for what they did? So do the terrorists. But that’s never shown in the TV shows. Because moral relativism or something.

I’ve often thought these TV shows were just propaganda. It’s always these heroes who could save the world just in the nick of time if only that pesky ‘due process’ was out of the way.

A good reason to question Harris’ cost benefit analysis on torture. He thinks this torture thing can be neatly contained and confined to very, very special cases. Once you have people who torture people, for ‘good enough’ reasons you will find that the ‘good enough reasons’ will likely expand. People in a position to torture who think it’s justified will resent that others got a pass and not them.

Another problem is stating ‘innocent lives might be lost if we can’t torture’ – the argument will be made that any other restrictions on what the government can do must be lifted in the name of safety. This is a reason why well-defined rights for citizens and restrictions on the authorities matter. The cops might be able to catch more criminals if they didn’t need warrants or probably cause, but the damage of a police state should be enough to discourage that.

I suspect Harris believes that he’s simply more ‘rational’ about this than others. He’s confusing the emotional distance he feels from this issue owing to his privilege with greater objectivity.

Another way of looking at that is: a country that is willing to torture “enemies” may eventually be willing to torture its citizens. So rational citizens ought to oppose being part of a country that does that, unless they like the idea of being tortured. By the way, that’s why politicians should oppose torture. Dick Cheney, were he in the hands of ISIL, would have absolutely no basis to complain when they started “enhanced interrogation” on him, because he’s already established that he thinks it’s an acceptable way for people to treat eachother.