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• Tuesday, October 7, 2008 12:52 PM

  @ ondelette: There you go again, psychologizing.

  What I'm seeing is a mix of things: (1)a desire to differentiate yourselves fundamentally from those who end up being jailers at places like Bagram, (2)a desire to promote arguments that make you eligible to make choices for other adults, (3)a desire to link torture to authoritarianism, and a (4)desire to understand torture in terms of other forms of abuse.

  1. I haven't done any such thing, nor do I even desire to. It is you who are taking the position that you can discern other people's motives for engaging in argument with you.

  2. The argument that childhood trauma affects adult behavior? That is hardly a controversial argument. In fact, I doubt that Shapiro would disagree with it. Should we be able to make choices for some adults? Surely. If we do not, some adults will certainly prey upon others. To say we shouldn't make choices for some adults would mean to open all the prisons and let out a multitude of people guilty of nothing more than using drugs and also a multitude of people who are going to commit armed robbery, murder, and sexual assault. You favor the bad guys not being held at all responsible?

  3. If you mean solely to authoritarian regimes, then no. If you mean do I think Dick Cheney is an authoritarian who has been responsible for much of U.S. policy that has resulted in torture, then yes.

  4. Yes. Why not? What you fail to realize is that you resolutely refuse to look at other forms of abuse and consider how they might affect inclinations to torture. You also refuse to look at whistleblowers and rebels who do not go along with the agenda. The mere existence of these people refutes the idea that the situation alone determines choice.

  In my opinion, I see a whole elephant in the room and am looking it over. You have ahold of the tail and are yelling with all your might that that means that you understand the elephant and that, by inserting a thermometer in his rectum, you can discern from his temperature his temperament.

  Also, in my opinion, you have resorted to the sort of personal attack on AI and me that indicates that you are losing the argument. I will leave you to AI. Perhaps he has more patience than I. Today, I do not have time to reread Chapter 16.

  Perhaps I will engage you again someday if I discern that you ever have any inclination to look at the other person's arguments in good faith.

  You strike me as a sort of True Believer. Yes, that's psychologizing.

  —AKA Smith Read AKA Smith's other letters
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