Paranoia - The basis for Tortured Logic on Torture

As you might expect from my previous writings I have been highly concerned about how the Bush administration justified torture and used torture, thus breaking US law and the Geneva conventions. The logic behind the justification for torture is, quite frankly, tortured. One central observation I have made is that those who are excusing the use of torture seem to be using several quite primitive psychological maneuvers to justify their beliefs and actions.

Lets start with my premise that I have explained previously in this blog, that so called “conservatives” – really those who believe the ideology fostered by the “neo-conservatives” (Dick Cheney, Elliot Abrams, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Crystal, Pearls, and the rest) have a paranoid personality structure.

My further thoughts on this topic have revolved around the emotion of fear and how fear guides a person’s thoughts. It has become clear to me that the primary justification for using torture is based in the idea of protection from harm. We have seen example after example of administration officials using fear to rouse the masses toward agreeing to whatever they want to do (the impending mushroom cloud, ticking time bomb, weapons of mass destruction, evil doers comments, etc.) What is interesting to me is that we generally look at these kinds of comments as “using fear” to mobilize others. However, what is not really discussed is that, in fact, the person who is using this tactic is also likely to be experiencing a fundamental fear that is guiding their actions and reactions. Sometimes we assume that those who are “on the other side” of an argument, especially if they are in positions of power, are consciously manipulating for ulterior purposes. However, it is much more likely that the ideology behind the “manipulations” is based in an underlying paranoid character structure (based in the emotion of fear). The paranoid character is oriented toward self-protection from a world he/she perceives as dangerous, hostile, and specifically targeting the person. This kind of ideation stems from very primitive (that is early life and even in “collective” or “inborn” or “temperamental” fear) experiences. For example, take an infant who, because of very early life physical problems (that is in the very earliest days of life) developed an underlying belief (wholly unconscious) that the world was not a safe place. The pain an infant experienced because of the physical problems could not be understood by the infant and was experienced as something that he/she needed to protect himself/herself from. It is not understood by the infant that this pain is coming at him/her from inside his/her own body and therefore not coming at him/her from the “outside.” The infant has little cognitive structures or experience to understand this, and therefore uses primitive psychological mechanisms to “make sense” of it – that is “integrate” it into his/her experience. The integration of the experience involves primitive psychological defensive maneuvers to cope with the overwhelming fear/pain. Maneuvers such as projection - that is externalizing blame inappropriately onto external sources.
The paranoid character structure is, therefore, oriented toward this kind of externalizing of blame. As the person’s cognitive skills (language and reasoning skills) develop the projections become much more sophisticated and involve logical gymnastics in order to protect the individual from this underlying fear/belief that he world is a dangerous place. Part of these “gymnastics” are designed to prevent the person from understanding that it is he/she themselves that is the container of the problem. That is, the person is now hurting themselves. Thus, you get the kinds of projections that we have seen from right wingers/Bush administration and other governmental figures. That is justification for wrong actions based on “it kept us/me safe.”
My contention is that right wing ideology is based in this kind of psychological process. So here are some justifications for the use of torture that I have read recently:

1. Torture provided information that led to the thwarting of other terrorist attacks - that torture works so it is justified.

2. “Ticking time bomb” justification

3. If your child was being held and you captured one of the kidnappers you would torture the person to get your child back – This reasoning proves my point exactly actually. The basis for this argument is that when it becomes personal you devolve into a primitive mass of impulse driven behavior. While this is likely to be true for almost everybody. (We have seen this process also when people like Nancy Reagan hypocritically favor stem cell research when their loved ones get sick with an illness (Alzheimer’s) that might be cured by such research). The fact remains that it is precisely because human beings are vulnerable to the primitive acts the follow primitive emotions that we have laws that make our society civilized. Devolving into impulse driven behaviors when you are afraid does not justify breaking these laws. Therefore, even if you “tortured” the kidnapper and rescued your child, you would still face criminal prosecution for your own behavior. Or lets take a common moral dilemma – your loved one needs a medication to save his/her life but you don’t have the money to get it. You break into a pharmacy and steal the medicine. Under the right winger’s logic the thief should not be prosecuted for breaking the law because his/her actions are justified by the same reasoning behind the justifications for torture (you did it to save others or save yourself). A civilized society could not function if that kind of reasoning was used to derive laws/morality.

4. Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats knew about it too so its OK. What is interesting about this one is looking at right wing web pages. The most read stories on pages such as “realclearpolitics.com” are the attacks on Pelosi’s veracity around the torture issue. Whether or not she knew about the use of torture has nothing to do with whether or not torture is morally justifiable or legal. The right wing’s use Pelosi to distract from their own failures is one of the purest forms of paranoid projection that has been on display. That is – you target something outside of yourself to blame for what is basically your own fears. There is a fundamental lack of higher functioning “ego” (in the psychoanalytic sense) in these kinds of psychological maneuvers.

5. Here are some quotes from comments I found on right leaning comments pages:

a. “Dems have lost the ability to think critically. All info dumps into the hopper of political calculation for the purpose of re-election. The Country's best interests are not in the calculation.”
My Comment:
This kind of comment is clearly a projection. To believe that the other does
not believe that what they are doing is in the “Country’s best interest” is to dehumanize the other in order to devalue him/her. You might disagree with the policies of the other, but to question their motivations is an example of the kind of primitive thinking I have been talking about.

b. “They don't ask whether or not if our society is inherently better than
dictators, communists, Nazis, or anyone else. They don't look at the results and entertain the entire question. They don't ask how the greatest Republic to ever exist needs to be protected....because they somehow believe that we're just as good - or bad - as everyone else out there.” --
My Comment:
The “they” in this quote are liberals. It is clear from this kind of thinking that one
justifies actions based on fear – the need for safety, and the continuing notion that because we (or I) am great – you are not. The quote’s last sentence actually states this kind of thinking very clearly – the belief that because one questions their own beliefs or behavior means that you are equating yourself with others beliefs and behaviors. We see this kind of rationalization all the time – that is the basis for the left’s frustration with being labeled “unpatriotic” by the other side. This conflation of the expression of thinking about how one’s actions might be problematic with the very problematic actions of others is a great example of the paranoid position.

c. “Interrogation, "enhanced" or otherwise is not torture. The discovery of information from enemy combatants which may save the lives of civilians, our own or allied armed forces is justified. The absolute hypocrisy of the current administrations "ends justify the means" approach of socializing our economy while failing in the most pronounced way in dealing with our most heinous enemies would be laughable if not so tragic. Having witnessed first hand the "Tiger Caging" techniques of some SE Asians on their own countrymen (who had long passed the stage of any further disclosure) be assured that the harmless technique of "waterboarding" that many of own elite units use as a simple training exercise is benign. What part of "they talk but are not harmed in any way" don't some understand?”

My Comment:

I have heard this last statement made by many criminals who justify their actions – burglary, robbery (if no one is physically harmed), even a sex offender who states that the sex with the 12 year old was consensual. This type of psychologically primitive thinking is fraught with serious problems and leads to the justification of all kinds of atrocities. The above quote is also interesting in that it blames the Obama administration for “ends justifies the means” process when in fact it was Dick Cheney (and then many other bloggers/commenters) who actually used that reasoning to justify torture – He stated that they got the information they needed to save lives and therefore torture was justified. In addition, a person’s tendency to take a very small instance and blow it out of proportion is contained in this quote. While it is true that the Obama administration is clearly using the financial crisis as a way of instituting changes in the relationship between government and the governed, it is a complete exaggeration to say that these changes indicate a desire to become a country based on socialist ideology. Again this is the kind of conflation of two disparate notions that is evidence of the paranoid position.



d. “God you people make me sick. Darin is spot on, you and yours have no
problem with the murder of the unborn in the most barbaric manner yet flagellate over our "treatment" of Khalid Sheikh Muhammed. The mastermind of 9/11, the barbarian who hacked off Danny Pearl's head while and bragged about it. You miserable hypocrites make me sick to my stomach.
Perhaps we should petition the government to release photos of the remains off those who jumped out of the WTC, or maybe show the video of KSM murdering Danny Pearl, or perhaps you bastards should be made to sit down and watch a doctor suck the brains out of their unborn child.
Hypocrites!”

My comment:

This kind of justification completely ignores the contextual aspects of the
situations and instead conflates completely separate issues to justify the
mistreatment of the demonized party. This quote basically speaks for itself – just
think “I am terrified” as you read it.


I could go on and on taking these kinds of statements and linking them to the basic premise I have been expounding upon.

The press and the left should not get caught up in whether or not Pelosi is telling the truth about what she was told or what she knows. The fact is that if she knew about the torture and she did not speak out about it, she should also be held accountable for her moral and legal failures. While it is true that by speaking out at the time she may have been breaking national security laws as well – that is that she could be prosecuted for exposing state secrets, it would still be her obligation to place herself in legal jeopardy to expose another much worse crime against us.

The blogs and the comments all miss the point that we do not object to torture out of concern for those who were tortured (these guys deserve whatever pain and suffering they have been put through and worse). The concern is about ourselves and how we perceive ourselves as a people. It is out of a deeper patriotism that we object to these breaches of the law for any reason, not the kind of superficial patriotism that is directed by all or nothing and concrete thinking. While there might be a reason to do what you can to prevent catastrophic trauma (a nuclear attack for example), there is really no reason to justify it based on a hunch or based on fear. The problem is that this kind of underlying fear, largely hidden from the individual who experiences it, and hidden from those surrounding him, leads to irrational acts of paranoid self protection that harm us all.