As I was pouring over my usual blog suspects this morning, I read a post over at This Modern World by Jeanne d'Arc about the hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay. I would encourage you to pop over and read the whole thing, because I'm curious as to whether your response to it was the same as mine. Don't worry, I'll wait
till you get back....
Well, what did you think? Disturbing, right? An expose of how the guards force-fed prisoners on strike, often brutally, coupled with a reminder of the number of innocents rounded up and kept indefinitely, as well as the lack of due process in this War on Terror. One would think that such an explosive story would put the nation into a state of righteous fury (or at least indignation), calling for accountability and a more lawful process to be followed in order to prevent such abuses of justice. Which brings me to the point of this diary: we're not nearly as furious or indignant as we should be as rational human beings, because we're being, by degrees, programmed not to be.
More below.
Desensitization or, in psychological terms, Graduated Exposure Therapy is a process whereby a patient is exposed in gradually increasing increments to a feared situation to better overcome the fear.
From the wiki on GET:
Such therapy would typically begin with a low-intensity exposure to feared situation (i.e. planning a trip in public transportation, which would induce a relatively low intensity fear reaction) and gradually derive small steps of increasing intensity until the goal situation can be comfortably faced by the patient (i.e. taking public transportation independently). This type of process is better known as an "exposure hierarchy". Intermediate steps may be added between increments in any case whereby the patient experience an overwhelming discomfort.
Peers or when appropriate, the therapist, may be employed as aids to the patient in decreasing anxiety levels when extreme difficulty is encountered.
When I read the post about the Guantanamo prisoners, my first thought was "my God, that's terrible!" And then I realized that I had heard all of it before (except for the force-feeding part--that was new). I hadn't forgotten about it, but neither had I done anything to rectify the situation or publicize the inequity of it -- no LTEs, no contact with my congresscritters, nothing but some bluster to friends over how horrible it all is. After reading this again, and reflecting on my reaction, I began to feel more and more like the proverbial frog in the pot. And as I realized this, I also recognized for the first time that there was an incident in our past where the US and the world was less like a boiling frog and more like a cow getting stunned before the slaughter. I'm talking of course about the Holocaust.
Few within the US knew about what was going on in the camps -- and those that were told (by Jan Karski, for example), refused to believe it. When the news reports started coming into people's homes, I imagine it was not unlike the cow getting stunned. The sudden unveiling of all of this information, all of the horrors, all of the death and brutality and dehumanization, must have been among the greatest shocks to anyone's humanity in the 20th century. And it all came at once. There was no desensitizing oneself to such extreme crimes against the souls of others, not when it comes at you all at once.
The current conflict is much different. Imagine if we knew nothing about Guantanamo, never heard of rendition, you think Abu Ghraib is something you eat with hummus, the thought of torture was nary expressed, indefinite detention never crossed your mind, wiretapping in the US was still a classified project, and Lyndie England came home without fanfare, largely unsung, never a household name. "Iraq War Grief Daily Witness" wasn't even a popular tag on dKos. Now imagine the conflict is declared over, and we are suddenly exposed to everything that has occurred over the past four years. Would you be shocked?
I would argue that you would, as would we all. And yet we are not.
Each time a story breaks about something the US is doing that is either unconstitutional, immoral, or illegal (or all of the above), we are being exposed to a feared situation in gradually increasing increments. What is the fear we are being made to overcome? There are several: fear of losing the spirit and letter of our national identity; fear of becoming that which we fight against; fear of our own government's power. Each time we discover a new scandal, a different puzzle piece of excessive measures, we soak it in, along with weeks of spin and justification from administration officials whose sole purpose is to get us to accept the necessity of it. "We do it to protect you." "We do it because they want to harm us." "We do it because we need information." Later, after these rationales have been absorbed, they begin to change: "We do it because the Geneva Conventions don't apply." "We do it because we were given authorization by Congress." "We do it because the 4th Amendment means what we want it to."
"And we do it to protect you."
Imagine now the reverse of the previous scenario, where we learn about all of our government's misdeeds at once. Imagine if Germans learned one small new aspect of Der Fuhrer's plans every month or so, up to and including some aspects of the Final Solution. Imagine after each new bit of information, Hitler and Goebbel's gave rousing speeches to spin and justify their actions, repeating their reasons for weeks. Of course, this did happen to an extent in Germany throughout WWII, but imagine that here in the US we also learned about each misdeed in gradually increasing increments, and also were subject to endless rationales within the Reichstag. Would the shock have been the same?
Now, I'm in no way suggesting an exact parity between Hitler's decisions and Bush's. That song's been sung far too often. (One could say I've been desensitized to it.) But I have to wonder just how far we as a nation are willing to allow ourselves to be taken down this road before we recognize that the parallels have grown to the point where Godwin's Law is no longer a joke. That concerns me greatly. Not just because of what it means for our nation, our standing in the world, or even our Constitution. It concerns me because of what it means for my soul. And for yours.