Andrew Sullivan’s writing is marked by a tendency to draw extreme conclusions from sharp and insightful observations about real-world phenomena. One of his dispatches this week is a case in point of how this can go wrong, as he matches a fine analysis of the right’s tendency towards authoritarianism — a proven fact in the age of Trump — with an alleged tendency of the left to an equivalent zealotry. By my reckoning, there’s a world of difference between the mainstreaming of proto-fascism into the Republican Party — which controls all three branches of the federal government — and, say, people on the left defending the rights of transgender people to full equality, or even at a more adventurous extreme asserting that there’s no fundamental difference between the sexes. Sullivan seems to have convinced himself that progressives have been driven to extreme positions by the rise of Trump; but my own observation is that progressives are by and large fighting for basic American values like equality and freedom from fear. Liberals as a whole aren’t fighting to defeat Trump so they can turn around and force their fellow citizens in red states to all bake cakes for gay weddings and dress their toddlers in gender-neutral colors; they’re collectively fighting to defend basic rights across a broad spectrum of areas, from voting rights to protecting the environment. Sullivan tends to ascribe an intellectual uniformity and extremism to a group far more diverse and conflicted in its specific goals, out of a desire to find some nonexistent parity with conservatism.
This said, there are also times when Sullivan’s identification of the deeper consequences of certain topics is spot on and deeply heartening. His essay this week on the many, many acts of torture committed by the CIA, and enabled by Gina Haspel, Donald Trump’s pick to head the agency, is Sullivan at his best. After describing the abuse of prisoners in graphic and affecting detail, fully establishing that there can be no doubt that these were acts of torture, he ends with arguments that not enough people make, but which are essential to understanding the heinous crimes committed in our name and the evil of a president nominating Haspel as CIA head:
It would amount to a full-on endorsement of torture by the United States, and a signal to the entire world that it can be justified. This is a profound threat to human rights globally and to the long tradition of American warfare, initiated by George Washington no less, in which the use of torture has always been regarded as exactly the kind of barbarism America was founded to overcome. It would be the final nail in the coffin that used to be the West.
Maybe in the era of Trump, that coffin is already covered in dirt. But if senators want to retain any semblance of the notion of American decency, if they are to honor the countless men and women in the CIA and military who for decades have resisted the impulse to torture, if they are to respect those who fought the torture-states of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and if they also want to remember those Americans, like John McCain, who were once subject to exactly the kind of torture Haspel authorized, they will vote down the nomination. If this line of defense falls, we are truly lost in a vortex of self- perpetuating evil. We will have abolished something deep and essential in the soul of America.
Overturning a basic tenet of human rights that the United States honored for literally its entire history, at least until the evils of the Bush administration, should chill every thinking American. To institutionalize this evil exception by appointing one of its prime enablers as head of our premier intelligence agency would be to bring it out from the shadows into avowed U.S. policy. As Sullivan suggests, this betrayal would mark a turning point in the history of the entire Western world, trading democratic progress for a turn to barbarism. Worth adding to Sullivan’s indictment is the fact that this is happening not in the midst of a crisis or its aftermath, as was the case with 9/11; contemplating a defense of torture now is as cold-blooded and calculated a choice as can be imagined — torture for its own sake, torture as a principle of governance in a time of relative peace.
One of the most powerful weapons in democracy’s arsenal is the delegitimization of torture. Torture is the cornerstone of anti-democratic control — the capacity to inflict violence on a helpless human being. It is the most extreme form of violent repression; it isn’t the state defending itself against armed resistance, however morally wrong that might be, but against someone who is already a prisoner of the state. If you can torture, all other forms of lesser force are also allowed; and the ability of a government to use force against its own citizens is always an enemy of democracy. If people can organize and meet without fear of physical harm, then fighting for and defending democracy is so much more possible than otherwise, because then numbers and moral suasion are that much more powerful. This is why I still have so much hope for our country: so long as we can organize and act democratically, we can defeat Trump and move ourselves forward.
So if the United States truly believes that democracy is a universal value, then in the most self-interested sense, we gain nothing from engaging in a practice that allows authoritarian regimes the cover they need to commit torture against their own people. American advocates of torture, in fact, stand revealed as enemies of democracy; not only democracy abroad, but at home, as well, because how long will it be before the mentality of abuse of helpless prisoners begins to seep back into domestic politics?
If you have not done so already, please take a few minutes to call your U.S. senators’ offices, and urge them to vote against both Haspel and fellow torture advocate Mike Pompeo as secretary of state. An outpouring of public outrage can make a difference.
