Actually I think I do know better than you what you think about this, and if you were honest with yourself you'd admit it too. just like all of us on this list. Not about everything, but this in particular.
I also think you are mistaken about the source of your belief that you don't care if the wicked are punished -- it is not that you would not care if you had the power to make the torture stop, but it is because you (and we) are powerless to make it stop. If we could bring the torturers to justice, we would do so gladly. As it is, the wish the have the wicked punished is no more idle than the wish to have the torture stop.
Your rejection of justice is similarly either self-deception or abandonment of political hope. Justice is no more abstract or remote than any of the other values that you regularly invoke, and it is the fuel for the anger and outrage that are necessary for political action. It is powerlessness again that makes you give up on justice -- that is, in effect, resignation to a fate of permanent subordination, a boot in a human face forever.
--- Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
>
> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> >
> > > Carrol Cox wrote:
> > >
> > > "I want torture to stop -- but it's incidental
> to me
> > > whether someone is made morally responsible for
> its
> > > occurrence."
> >
> > No, you don't.
>
> Well, what can I say. You know more about what I
> really think/feel than
> I do.
>
> > This is the sort of silly claptrap that
> > liberals and leftists feel obliged to pronounce
> > because they think that retribution (channeled
> > revenge) is ugly.
>
> Not ugly. Quite understandable. But sort of silly.
> It falls under the
> heading of closing the barn door after the horse is
> gone.
>
> > It is ugly, but it is justice and
> > virtually everyone, including you, really accepts
> its
> > moral, psychological, and social necessity.
>
> I'll skip the first (moral). As to the second, yes
> -- momentarily, and
> there are contexts in which following that momentary
> urge is probably
> reasonable. As to the third, I am in agreement, but
> within the context
> of rejecting the moral or psychological necessity.
> Had a revolutionary
> movement actually emerged in the '70s, and had a
> Popular Committee or
> whatever come to power in Chicago, it would have
> been reasonable to try
> & shoot Hanrahan, not for the sake of justice but
> for the sake of public
> trust in the new regime. And at the time I was
> rather pleased that he
> broke his arm or something trying to tackle a
> Weatherman on the streets.
> (The only useful thing any Weatherman ever did!) But
> it's sort of silly
> & a waste of energy.
>
> If punishment/justice _is_, under a given set of
> circumstances,
> socially/politically necessary, and only if, then
> o.k.
>
> > It's time
> > to stop lying to ourselves. You want see the
> torturers
> > jailed or executed, the same as all decent people
> do.
> > You would not think it was OK if the torturers
> were
> > just to walk away from their tools, leaving the
> > prisoners unchained and the doors of their cells
> open.
> > That would be good, but it would not be right.
> What is
> > right is that the prisoners go free and the
> torturers
> > are punished proportionately.
>
> An unreal situation, and I'm not enough of a
> novelist to create the sort
> of thick context which would make such an instant
> cessation of torture
> realistic. Things happen as part of a process. In
> _most_ contexts that I
> can think of abstractly, in which the _power_ to
> punish the torturers
> exists, punishing them would probably not generate
> anything except some
> sullen family members and friends of the torturers &
> only temporary
> satisfaction, if that, of the tortured. Socially
> undersirable.
>
> I frequently feel the strong urge to "get" someone
> for something or
> other, and I'm not claiming I don't. But really,
> it's only a passing
> urge. It gets boring. I'm feeling such an urge right
> now re the fucking
> president of DePaul U. Guthrie is good here:
>
> I was right there in Boston the night that they
> died,
> I never did see such a sight in my life;
> I thought the crowds would pull down the town,
> An' I was hopin' they'd do it and change things
> around.
>
> I hoped they'd pull Judge Thayer on down
> >From off of his bench and they'd chase him around.
> Hoped they'd run him around this stump
> And stick him with a devil tails about ever' jump.
>
> Put the name of DePaul's president in for Judge
> Thayer and the sentiment
> is just right. But that sentiment would/will ebb, &
> the desire for
> Finkelstein to get a place in some faculty somewhere
> is a hell of a lot
> stronger, or at least more lasting.
>
> Justice makes a nice slogan on a poster or in a
> short speech to a forum,
> but it is really a bore and a distraction over the
> long run. The stanza
> following those quoted above, and the end of the
> song:
>
> Wash this tequila down with gin
> An' a double straight shot of your black Virgin rum.
> My ale bubbled out an' my champagne is flat,
> I hear the man comin', I'm grabbin' my hat.
>
> Still pissed off, but pointing to the
> present/future: the continuing
> power of "the man" and the need to respond -- "Im
> grabbin' my hat" is
> nicely open-ended.
>
> Carrol
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
____________________________________________________________________________________ Need a vacation? Get great deals to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel. http://travel.yahoo.com/