Torture

There's no other word for it, is there? The Mukasey appointment, approved yesterday despite the man's refusal to acknowledge the simple truth and with the connivance of a pair of Democrats I had previously admired, is but one more instance of our craven capitulation to the venal abuse of power on the part of Bush and his administration.

How did we get to this point, in America, where we allow ourselves to be led around by the nose by a man who apparently lacks the honesty to acknowledge what is plain to the world? "The United States does not torture," he repeats like some crazed mantra, as though by their repetition the words might somehow be believed. A man of this kind would surely in previous generations have been hounded out of office. Instead, our elected officials seem mesmerized into letting him have his way at every turn, and we are condemned to stand by and watch this cynical dishonoring of the most basic of human standards, the most basic of principles on which this country was founded. We have surrendered ourselves into the hands of men without conscience or consciousness, men who lie and abuse the power with which they were entrusted, men who ignore our will and spit in our eye with impunity.

How did this happen? How does it continue to happen that this man and his crew of bullies and liars work their will in a world that increasingly despises them? I am disgusted. I am disgusted with myself, who continue to sit here and blog, as though that were some significant action in the face of a government--my government--that ignores the plight of the poor, the sick, and the needy not only in our own country but around the world, and instead makes needless war and squanders the country's wealth on those very "weapons of mass destruction" it deplores in the hands of others. How does it happen that the voices of reason and conscience are belittled and ignored?

Enough for now. This morning, I woke with more than my usual share of outrage. What's a Buddhist to do, in such a dire circumstance? Breathe? Await the forces of karma to set things aright? Smile the smile of the Buddha?

You see what I mean?