There's literally a world of difference between an average Joe in Wassilla and someone like Gonzales.

Average Joe is just that, someone who might feel victimized by the changing world around him, including the real threats. He can barely see beyond the city limits.

Gonzales is a trained lawyer (one from an elite law school; and, how he got in, I'll never know!). No offense to lawyers, but they are trained to split hairs, obfuscate,, delay and temporize until the sun goes down and comes back up.

You could "analyze" Gonzales's utterances in the WSJ as self-absorbed drivel.

However, it is just one more example of a public, legal defense at work.

That's what lawyers do.

What they're really complaining about is that they don't like their views to be aggressively criticized.

I also think that complaints about tone - and the current vogue in decrying The Very Confusing And Elitist Bad Thing Called "Irony" - can be a neat passive-aggressive way of dismissing an argument. One was sarcastic, one was dismissive, one employed irony or some other rhetorical trope which makes the complainer feel insecure about their own writing chops... and therefore the whole argument can be dismissed.

Caveat commentor, I like to say.

The intricacies of law codes spin circles round my head. Perhaps those such as yourself who've kept an eye open (both of them) on torture and other abuses, are closing in on tired old attitudes, fraught with too many excuses. Keep up the good work.

I agree, and it's more than chauvinism. It's simply another way to beat logical thinking out of people, to railroad through the public domain any barbarism that the foreign policy establishment wants.

The earlier parallel I made with the ridiculous accusations of "moral equivalence" was quite serious.

The discussion environment in this country (and really in probably all countries, certainly in all countries with which I can closely follow debate) are so poisoned by this dedication to the propagandistic needs of whatever establishment system there is that it's often impossible to simply speak in logical terms.

I wish it were not necessary to reference other evil powers to argue that some action is wrong.

If people were grown-ups, and this weren't a PR-bombarded system, you could simply explain why torture is wrong (I mean, presuming you had to).

But no, that's not enough. That gets you blank stares.

'Cause then you have to add the baddies in to get the moral point across.

I.e., "And that's what the Nazis / Soviets / Chinese / Romans / whoever did, so it's really, really wrong."

And because you've now associated an action (say, torture, which should clearly be recognized as wrong on its own) with some broadly if not universally recognized baddies (Nazis, Soviets, Saddam, etc.), then for a lot of people that's what's needed to make the leap. "Oh, right, it's bad because those baddies did it," seems to be the code.

But the propaganda establishment developed an inoculation against such improperly unpatriotic Americans who dared resort to baddie-reference to point out shifting / nonexistent / hypocritical standards: To make such a comparison meant that You Hate America, by engaging in "moral equivalence" comparison.

So, if you happen to try to beat into someone's head the clear wrongness of an action, and then you make a comparison to "see, though, the baddies did it, and we thought it was wrong then," then they respond that YOU HATE AMERICA BECAUSE YOU THINK WE SAME AS BADDIE, WE NOT SAME AS BADDIE, YOU THINK WE BADDIE BUT WE NOT BADDIE, YOU BADDIE and then they're happy because the debate has gone to sh*t.

(1) I always find it odd when people come and lecture me about incivility given that I avoid almost completely the conventions which civility-shrews complain of most -- cursing, or refusing to refer to people by their formal names and titles

-- GlennGreenwald

Yeah but, I'll bet you have to wear out that 'backspace' thing doing certain replies. I know I do, and, as everyone can see, it doesn't always work. Blame it on my keyboard.

If you interpreted that as a lecture, then my apologies.

You misunderstood me. When I referred to "those delivering civility lectures," I wasn't referring to anything you wrote (at least nothing that I can recall your having written). I was just using your point about professional tone and your argument about "attracting more flies with honey than vinegar" as a jumping off point to make some observations about this topic.

but now it is rolling in its grave in complete agony.

Just when you think you've heard it all.....

Readers may recall that the Daily Show sent a correspondent up to Wasilla shortly after Palin's selection, to take the pulse of the real Americans there. Relevant in the present context is the fellow in the bar who explained to the interviwer that the real victims of 9/11 attacks were average guys [Joes?] like himself. He conceded under questioning that people actually died in New York, but didn't recant his position that the serious consequences were to people outside the area, like himself.

This level of self-absorption, whether by a former AG or a fellow in a bar who presumably voted for George Bush as a prospective libation companion, deserves a bit more analysis by credentialed medical types, in my humble opinion.

Very good points. I've always been amazed at how the people most willing to be ruled by fear after 9-11 tended to live in places that no terrorist would even dream of attacking, while the coolest heads tended to come from New York City, some of them having been in the immediate vicinity of the attacks themselves when they occurred.

Among other things, this reveals the purely psychological nature of the post-911 period - it's called "terrorism" for a reason - and the degree to which the fear of attack is completely divorced from the actual likelihood of experiencing that attack. One theory (I do not discount others, and this is only a theory) is that many people in more remote areas that would likely never be attacked often have better-developed imaginations about "the enemy," having little to no contact with genuine threats or even people of different origins and walks of life.

To some degree, I also think much of the "fear" many people in remote areas say they feel is false or at least inflated, a psychological crutch to justify a desire to attack the designated Enemy. Further evidence of this and the prior argument is that more open-minded denizens of less populated areas don't profess the same fear of attack and need for retaliation.

By the way, all this reminds me of this:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/country_music_stars_challenge_al