- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
YES! Everything you just said.
By all means, Graner is culpable for his actions. But the many people in our society who condone harsh prison sentences and conditions with almost sadistic glee can only do so because they don't believe that 'criminals' are humans like themselves. They explicitly write them off as 'sociopaths' as some in this thread have already done, or 'psychopaths', or 'criminally insane', whether they know what any of those terms mean or not. Knowing that you yourself are capable of doing heinous things if put in the right situation, especially if you aren't a morally deliberate person (as most of us really aren't, even if we act morally in non-extraordinary circumstances), should help to put a damper on such ravenous hatred and contempt for the 'other'; the 'bad apple'.
