Left, Right, and Centered

You know why Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Gonzalez, and the CIA got away with torture?  Why none of them will ever see the inside of a courtroom, let alone a jail cell?  Because in a lot of ways torture is as American as apple pie. 

Yesterday, Bernie Madoff, who is 71 years old, got sentenced to 150 years in prison.  I’m not going to argue with the sentence.  It’s probably no more than a couple of months for every life he utterly destroyed.  But they’re not going to put Madoff in a federal minimum security camp like most non-violent white collar criminals.  Nope, they’re going to send Bernie to the big house, maximum security, those places you see on the weekly MSNBC specials where guys covered in skull and dagger tattooes beat and rape guys like Bernie with the fervor and frequency of rabid racoons, and have no remorse or fear about doing so, because there’s nothing else the prison system can do to stop them.  Madoff’s victims not only agree with the harsh sentence, they wish it could be worse.  One of his victims noted that Bernie will “go down to the depths of hell” once he leaves prison the only way he can.  How very Christian of him.  You know Christianity.  That’s the religion where their god is a victim of torture, and all non-believers are committed to even more grievous and horrific torture in that quaint eternal version of maximum security, hell.  With that kind of belief system dominant in American culture, is it any wonder that guys like Cheney considered waterboarding little more serious than a fraternity prank?  You know, the quality of mercy is not strained…it’s freaking nonexistent.  And Bernie Madoff, who ruined lives but never took one, probably won’t last a year…which will put a sick smile on a lot of faces.

BW