Admittedly there could be debate aplenty about when the torture mindset became the nation’s core ethos, though I would argue it has always been so, implicit in the (white) “founding fathers” endorsement of slavery and the genocidal extermination of aboriginals. But one can hardly quibble about the moral imbecility of the destruction-by-abandonment of African-American New Orleans (which polls indicate is supported by about 75 percent of the Caucasian population); or of the euthanasia-by-neglect-and-abandonment obvious in Clinton’s “welfare reform” (again with white support of about 75 percent); or of the hatred of minorities and poor expressed by U.S. healthcare, public transport and education policies in general. Indeed any honest scrutiny of our national history will reveal dozens of such examples, not the least its morally imbecilic tolerance of lynching (federally until 2005), proof of the extent to which large factions of the population openly supported serial murder against those who had failed to pass the test of popularity on the bully-dominated schoolyard of U.S. society. Given these roots, the torture mindset is merely its logical, predictable harvest.

But continued suppression of these facts — even from analysts as otherwise astute as Mr. Eidelson — is essential if the public is to be kept ignorant of the now-undeniable truth that government and governance in the United States have but one purpose: the propagation of capitalism, or more specifically, the absolute protection of the tiny, mostly hereditary aristocracy that owns or controls the nation’s wealth and, concurrently, the total subjugation of all the rest of us. Thus public approval of torturing foreigners accused of “terrorism” clears the way for public approval of torturing dissident citizens at home.