Activity

Found on my internet rambles this morning: “The narrative the subject of torture artfully distracts the public from the very essence of why torture is employed in the first place. The target of the act is not the individual being tortured; the target is the public itself. The objective is not to uncover truth, but rather to buttress suppositions and lies so that the public can be persuaded to follow a desired path. For this purpose torture is highly effective. For whatever reason, groups of people in the moment can be reliably sold most any premise, from witch hunts to a modern casus belli, when there is a person in the flesh offering confession. This is even more true when there is a line of confessors. The tradecraft of tyrants then shifts the narrative to the debate over whether the same truths (which are actually fallacy) could have been uncovered by others means. The promoted fallacy is assumed true while the debate is shifted to tactics and urgency. Students of the Change Management Process learn the importance of the sense of urgency for evoking change. The excuse for torture is most always expediency, when in fact, urgency is just the cover for the desire to hook the public on the fallacy. The passing of time removes the urgency and enables historians to see the witch hunts for what the were, but when the public is in the moment, caught in the call for urgency, and unarmed with knowledge of history, (regrettably) torture works.”
From here: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/05/links-5-13-18.html#comment-2967248