While we often are seen in the context of what sets us apart from elder generations, millennials, regrettably, have a startlingly status-quo outlook on the use of torture.
Half of Americans believe CIA torture following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was justified, according to a Pew Research Center poll released this week. In 2011, Pew found that about the same number of millennials believed government use of torture against suspected terrorists was occasionally justifiable. That finding came in the context of reams of survey data showing a generational split on many major issues — same-sex marriage, marijuana use, gun control, the list goes on.
Apparently, despite the Senate Intelligence Committee’s so-called Torture Report suggesting otherwise, one in two Americans is cool with torture occurring in their name. Perhaps attitudes will shift as more people digest the contents of that report, though our collective attention already appears to have shifted elsewhere. We torture people and it doesn’t really work, so it all appears to be sadistically carried out in our names. Oh, what’s this about that Seth Rogen movie?
The specifics of the Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA interrogation practices are horrifying. Beyond the revelation of what we already vaguely understood to be true, the report goes further and asserts that torture of our enemies had become commonplace and the nation that fancies itself the city on the hill sodomizes suspects as a means of inflicting great pain through a procedure now popularly known as “rectal feeding.”
Despite the heinousness of the acts themselves, we also learned the procedures are not understood to have benefits when it comes to gathering intelligence. Worst of all, the report was greeted with a blank stare, with a collective shift of attention to a wreath thief and the hacking of a movie studio. It appears we inflicted excruciating pain on our supposed enemies by torturing them in a variety of different ways for no reason — a revelation we met with a collective shrug.
Petty criminals and hackers, I suppose, are easier concepts to engage with than the bottoming out of the last remaining tatters of what we once fancied as American exceptionalism.
Honestly, I am surprised to find such an overlap of millennial and popular attitudes toward torture, especially considering how socially and politically progressive the generation has generally proven to be.
I would be curious, too, to find out whether there is a divide in attitudes between older and younger millennials — a demographic breakdown that does not appear to exist in present polling. I am curious, because I imagine there to be a difference in attitude between millennials who came of age during the Bush presidency and those who came of age afterward. There are those in our generation who saw brutal and obtuse extensions of power by way of unilateral war and all of the messiness that accompanies it and those who have only heard about it.
Late last weekend, former Vice President Dick Cheney, who famously avoided the draft five times during the Vietnam era, took to the political talk shows to defend waterboarding, over a week of consecutive sessions of sleep deprivation, rectal feeding and other ghastly articulations of torture. Making a similar round of appearances, John McCain, who served in North Vietnam where he was tortured as a prisoner, argued strongly against its moral acceptability.
Perhaps a similar division exists in the millennial generation.
I am curious to see how opinions will settle as a result of the fallout from this report, though I am not sure of what, ultimately, to expect. Among millennials and other Americans, the response to this report has been startlingly subdued, with attention drifting elsewhere.
But as our minds wander, my hope is that we remain aware somewhere in the back of our minds that people have been sadistically brutalized in the name of our safety — even though we know that these tactics don’t work.
Some will argue, as I have already heard, that we are in a time of unprecedented stability. That has got to be worth something, no? While I appreciate stability, is a stability built upon rectal feeding, waterboarding and other torturous exercises, all carried out in our name with the awareness they won’t bring us any closer to credible intelligence, worth pursing?
Here lies the city on the hill. Behold our ideals and ignore that we continue to drift further and further out of that orbit and into one only Dick Cheney appears comfortable defending.
Alex Steed has written about and engaged in politics since he was a teenager and is a former candidate for the Legislature. He’s an owner-partner of a Portland-based content production company and lives with his family, dogs and garden in Cornish.
