![\"torture\"](\"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/torture.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIn its most heinous forms, torture consists of confining a helpless victim, who is subjected to physical pain and torment, emotional abuse, and various other degrading humiliations.\u00a0\u00a0Prohibited by both international and domestic laws, the torture of suspected \u201cterrorists\u201d is nonetheless now widely condoned by most American citizens (or so it seems).<\/p>\n
A kind of\u00a0\u00a0\u201ctorture-of-the-week\u201d riveted the audience of the popular TV series\u00a024<\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0The disturbing film\u00a0Dark Zero Thirty<\/i>\u00a0rationalized and depicted graphic torture\u2014and was praised by critics and the public alike.\u00a0\u00a0Why, so many observers have asked, do Americans today tolerate (or even approve) of the illegal torture so routinely administered by their own government?<\/p>\n
Of course, Americans have long been desensitized to violence.\u00a0\u00a0Everyday life is in itself brutalizing to any humane sensibility.\u00a0\u00a0The average U.S. employee is stripped of her dignity on an almost-daily basis: penalties for lateness, nit-picking \u201cperformance reviews,\u201d reprimands and unfair demands, the ever-lurking danger of the \u201cpink slip,\u201d mandatory overtime, and so on.<\/p>\n
Without strong union representation (increasingly rare in the retrograde U.S. workplace), the individual often feels trapped and demoralized\u2014with few (if any) options for escape.\u00a0\u00a0Yet although a job, with all the daily frustrations it entails, is often humiliating, the un-employed person is even deprived of whatever modest status is conferred by \u201cworking.\u201d<\/p>\n
In short: human beings, to the extent that they still can defiantly assert their \u201chumanity,\u201d resent being treated as\u00a0objects<\/i>\u2014objects to be \u201cemployed,\u201d worked with maximal \u201cefficiency,\u201d and then discarded.<\/p>\n
What do such frustrated, beleaguered Americans feel?\u00a0\u00a0Quite often: resentment, even rage\u2013and a desire for reprisal.\u00a0\u00a0But who to blame?\u00a0\u00a0Why not suspicious \u201cforeigners,\u201d such as \u201cjob-stealing\u201d immigrants or \u201csubversive\u201d Muslims?\u00a0\u00a0Angry, demoralized Americans may thus\u00a0deny<\/i>\u00a0their sense of humiliation\u2013and\u00a0displace<\/i>\u00a0their vindictive rage, from their corporate overseers onto conveniently available scapegoats (like \u201csuspects\u201d held in indefinite detention).<\/p>\n
As described by Freudian psychoanalysts, such humiliated individuals may seek to reverse their psychological status from victim to (vicarious) perpetrator\u2013through a potent \u201cidentification-with-the-aggressor.\u201d<\/p>\n
From the demeaning feeling of being a \u201closer\u201d\u2013in a winner-take-all economic system\u2013 one may vicariously feel a satisfying surge of \u201cpower-over\u201d those detained, harshly \u201cinterrogated\u201d and stigmated (as possible \u201cterrorists\u201d).\u00a0\u00a0Let us not forget the grinning, even exultant faces of the perpetrators at Abu Ghraib\u2014\u201cempowered\u201d to dispense abuse and degradation\u2013instead of receiving it.<\/p>\n
________________________<\/p>\n
William Manson<\/i>, a psychoanalytic anthropologist,\u00a0formerly taught social science at Rutgers and Columbia universities. He is the\u00a0author of\u00a0The Psychodynamics of Culture<\/a>\u00a0(Greenwood Press).<\/i><\/p>\n