Like you, and like nearly everyone, I’m mystified by the School of Rationalized Torture embedded in our “war on terror,” especially since torture has been discredited as an effective technique by virtually all interrogation professionals. And that makes me even more mystified by its unwavering proponents.
Tucker Carlson, the boyish host of MSNBC’s “The Situation,” is perhaps the bluntest and most visible (as visible, that is, as ratings-underachiever MSNBC can manage) advocate of this tortured school of thought. You know Tucker. By all appearances he prides himself on thinking that his political thinking is loaded with tough, practical thinking – the hallmark of rationalized torture’s defense – and that his tough, practical thinking penetrates wimpish liberal thinking.
Carlson backhandedly praised torture to yet another of his incredulous guests the other night, saying he didn’t understand why torture has such high negatives. If it works (ignoring, once again, that it doesn’t), what’s the problem? he asked.
That’s pretty much Carlson’s thinking on everything. Nuances, schmuances. It’s all black and white. Forget that torture violates U.S. law, offends the Geneva Convention, ensures reciprocal treatment of our own fighting forces and upends every code of ethical behavior in the Big Book of American Values. If it works and it’s in our national interest – whatever “it” is – we should feel free to do it, is the manly Carlson code.
There’s nothing wrong with whatever works – just as, one gathers from Carlson’s argument, there was nothing wrong with Japan’s practical expression of national interest in sneak-attacking Pearl Harbor.
There’s also a logical but laughable extension of Carlson’s thinking, a corollary that nevertheless avoids the rhetorical laughableness of reductio ad absurdum simply because it’s so close to Carlson’s original argument.
Suppose you’re driving to work one morning, fretting about how you’re going to pay the rent next month. You’ve known for some time it would be an impossible financial hurdle. You’ve tried every which way to come up with the cash and each has failed you.
Then – wait, what’s this? – “it” dawns on you. Why not employ the Carlson school of rationalized anarchy? All that’s important is that whatever you try, works. Be practical. Legalities and ethics are mere niceties compared to that, and only a liberal weenie would worry about such things. And you’re a real, practical mensch, just like Tucker.
So on your way home that night, you stop off at the neighborhood convenience store and stick it up. Well done. You now have a few hundred in cash: in short, the rent. No need to torture yourself about your crime being a crime. Whatever works, remember?
The analogy is simplistic, but so is the thinking of the Tucker Carlsons of this world.