Torture stand key for compassionate politics
“It’s not about them – it’s about us.” With those words, Sen. John McCain won my undying gratitude.
Excusing practices like indefinite detention, torture and denial of basic human rights, the Bush administration has pointed to the alleged badness of the people we have locked up. McCain broke the spell of that sophistry with a seven-word statement. He reminded Americans of who we are – or who we are supposed to be. We are supposed to be the creators of a new set of standards in the world. We’re the ones with the Bill of Rights, the beacon of freedom to a corrupt world.
McCain’s words brought back to me a conversation I had years ago with a friend who had been something of a kleptomaniac. She excused her habit by telling herself that she only stole things from big stores and she wasn’t really hurting anyone. Finally she quit.
Why? “I did it for myself,” she said. “I finally realized that I did not want to be that furtive person. I didn’t want to be a thief. Every time I stole something, I was hurting myself.”
My friend cured herself. Not all individuals, families or societies are that strong. Sometimes it takes the voice of one respected person to bring us around.
On occasion I’ve had to do this with my own kids. I see some behavior that cries out for correction – flagrant disrespect, dishonesty, callousness toward another’s feelings – and I say to them: This is not who we are. You may see this sort of behavior in school, or elsewhere in your world – but that doesn’t make it OK.
“But Mama,” they would say when they were still young, and they’d follow up with a description of the provocation. Doesn’t matter, I’d say. You don’t let them pull you down. You can call them out, you can defend yourself if you have to, but you don’t need to throw away the rules. Anyone can lash back. It takes guts to show a person a different way.
McCain understands this. Above anyone else in Congress he has the credentials, since he has been subjected to the worst. No one can accuse him of being a wimp or a softie. I would like to think that his stand represents a turning point, a place where Americans can shake themselves awake and realize how far we have strayed from our ideals under this administration.
Just as our treatment of foreign detainees reflects our own character, so does our treatment of our own prisoners. The arguments over the death penalty parallel those about the treatment of foreign combatants. I’ve long argued that when we become executioners, we damage ourselves. Here we are, not in the vanguard of human rights, but among industrialized nations, we’re bringing up the rear. Newspapers all around the world last week were full of stories about America’s 1,000th execution.
We seem to be a nation bent on revenge, now disguised with the euphemism “closure.” In the name of closure, we allow the righteously bereaved families of murder victims to lobby for death – even when it’s very unclear that they have the right guy. As a society, it seems, we’ve lost the capacity to distinguish between grief and bloodlust.
There are hopeful signs, however. Last week Virginia Gov. Mark Warner had the guts to commute the death sentence for Robin Lovitt, who was scheduled to be that 1,000th person executed in the United States since 1976. (Unfortunately, another condemned man in North Carolina quickly took his place. Protesters gathered from all over the country outside Raleigh’s Central Prison.)
Tough-guy California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has agreed to hear arguments in the case of reformed gang leader Stanley “Tookie” Williams, scheduled for execution this month.
And since art leads the way for life so often in this country, the world of TV provided another spark of hope as fictional President Mac Allen commuted a death sentence in this week’s episode of “Commander-in-Chief.”
Politics, along with its accompanying ideologies, runs in cycles. Could it be that right-wing, pseudo-Christian intolerance is finally giving way to a more mature, more compassionate, more emotionally disciplined view of ourselves and the world? Is revenge on the run?
I fervently hope so. And if it’s true, we are all deeply indebted to John McCain.