Sherry Chandler » Schooled by 24
Schooled by 24
Of all the incendiary passages in Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side, this is the paragraph that almost brought me to tears (after all these years of outrage and frustration):
By September, military officials held a series of brainstorming meetings in Guantánamo about how to crack through the resistance of detainees such as Qahtani. One source of ideas was the popular television show 24. The fictional drama was written by a Hollywood conservative who had no military or intelligence expertise whatsoever. But on Guantánamo, as everywhere else in America, its macho hero, Jack Bauer, who tortured his enemies until they talked, was followed with admiration. On 24, torture always worked. It saved America on a weekly basis. In conversation with British human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, the top military lawyer in Guantánamo, Diane Beaver, said quite earnestly that Jack Bauer “gave people lots of ideas” as they sought for interrogation models that fall. Beaver explained that even in Guantánamo, “We saw it on cable . . . It was hugely popular.”
I have never seen an episode of 24 and hope never to see one but I can tell you that I’ve encountered no idea so appalling as the notion that those who are protecting this country cannot discriminate between fiction and reality.
Which reminds me of what Max said in a comment the other day
Commentary last night revealed that little American History is taught in Schools today; probabilities are these same scenarios will be repeated.
A little study of literature might help, too.
All of which also connects to this wonderful rant from Avedon:
There was a time when it never even crossed my mind that the lessons of the First Great Republican Depression could be forgotten. This illusion probably lasted even past my recognition that the lessons of Nazi Germany were being forgotten as the people who lived them were dying out. After eight years of watching our own government repeat the steps the Nazis took to consolidate terror in Germany - and having to listen even to liberals who insisted it was over-the-top to recognize the pattern as it occurred - it should come as no surprise to me that many people still don’t get that we already knew what RepubliCon economic policies bring. But I don’t think it’s just the erosions of time. I think moneyed interests have always worked to suppress the memories of lessons of the past, throughout history, and that’s why conservatives have worked so hard in the modern era to weaken publicly-funded education. That’s what David Horowitz is for - and he’s been remarkably successful. Did you know that under Reagan, with Horowitz’s help, civics classes have been mostly stamped out of schools? American children are deliberately being deprived of the kind of education that was available to me in my ordinary public school classrooms as a kid. (And even that education could have been more thorough. I was well into adulthood before I understood that George Washington Carver was a good deal more than just a peanut farmer.) It isn’t lack of money that’s doing this - it actually costs money to re-write textbooks to remove important material on the American Revolution and make schools replace better textbooks with these new, neutered versions. And laws against media consolidation existed because all of this had happened before, even in America. And I imagine that there were always people who claimed that the latest newfangled device made the old restrictions obsolete way back when, too. This is hardly the first time that people have resorted to magical claims to justify behavior that flies in the face of clear material evidence.
The 30-year gutting of our public school system is a national shame and so is the elitism that has those of us who can pulling our own children into the sanctuary of private schools at the expense of those who can’t afford such a thing.
And I’m not advocating for vouchers!
After all, most of the people involved in the Guantánamo fiasco were probably educated in one elite institution or another. They might have profited from a little exposure to the reality of public schools.
Possibly related posts:
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Leave a comment