Barbarism in the American Soul

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

18 April 13

t is an odd day to be looking out at Our Nation's Capital, cherry blossoms lost in the murk and the gloom, from the steps of the Senate side of the Capitol building. It has been an odd week in Our Nation's Capital. It has been a week in which the national government, responding to the will of practically nobody, has determined on its own that our society will tolerate a level of violence in it that is beyond the reach of the national government to do very much about. Moreover, it has been a week in which, by means subtle and overt, the national government has determined which types of violence our society must tolerate in order to remain the freest country in the world. It has done so quite on its own. It has done so against the expressed will of the vast majority of the people out in a country as expressed in the only way they can, now that elections have been determined to have very few real consequences in regard to the levels and types of violence that our society must tolerate in order to remain free. They have told the pollsters, over and over again, because, as far as the violence in America is concerned, the pollsters are the only people listening.

Earlier this week, the report of a nonpartisan commission was released detailing the fact that, in contravention of international treaties freely signed, and in contravention of over 200 years of formal and informal precedent, the United States enthusiastically constructed and ran a regime of torture in the wake of the attacks of Septenber 11, 2001. The 577-page report's description of the violence that the national government committed in the name of its people was quickly devoured by the endless news cycle created by the murderous bombing of the finish line at the Boston Marathon. Then, on Wednesday, as a perfect statement of what the national government of the United States believes that the people of the United States will have to tolerate in order to remain free, the Senate refused even to vote on the diluted Manchin-Toomey compromise on regulating the country's firearms. We congratulate ourselves on our ability to take events like Boston in stride. We congratulate ourselves on recognizing that certain forms of barbarism are intolerable in an advanced democracy. But given a choice truly to take things in stride, to be as indomitable as we say we are, by maintaining our principles in the face of that barbarism, we allow the waterboard and the black site to replace the rule of law, wink at barbarism by memorandum, by legal opinion, by political sophistry.

The bomb goes off and we vow to move heaven and earth to catch the barbarian. We take all the wounds onto ourselves. We bargain for time-shares on Golgotha. We congratulate ourselves on making so measured a choice. Then we go back to slaughtering each other on the streets because that's what we have to tolerate on order to remain free. We are a curious people that way.

I wish I believed it was just all about money. Then Gabrielle Giffords, Michael Bloomberg and the other millionnaires lining up on the other side would have a fighting chance. I wish I believed that it was just all about power, and the threat of losing elections, because then the money now lining up on the other side could even the odds. But I don't believe it is. There is a strong, coherent bloc in this building that believes that a certain level of violence is so inherent in this country that it is shielded absolutely by the Constitution, and that it is so essential to who we are as a people that to try to control it - let alone eliminate it - weakens our national institutions and blights our national character. There is nothing Machiavellian about this. It is what people believe is part of what makes America what it is. It is an essential article of faith. It is unshakable. It is implacable. And it is triumphant.

Make no mistake. That is what was determined down there this week among the bright, white buildings. There is a barbarism in the American soul and we must protect some of it by law. To root it out is to endanger our lives on the one hand, and our liberty on the other. We must tolerate the barbarism of the black sites to stay alive, and we must tolerate the occasional mass shooting in order to maintain our liberty. We will find the barbarian who killed and maimed the people along Boylston Street in Boston because his barbarism was not sanctioned, nor was it sanctified by law. That is the simple basic equation of where we are right now.

Gabrielle Giffords was told this. The families of the children of Newtown were told this. The 91 percent of the American people who want something that they now have no hope of getting were told this, The president of the United States, fairly shaking with impotent anger in the Rose Garden, was told this. We are a violent people. We are an armed people. We are a people intent on permitting mayhem and slaughter. We are a people intent on providing the means for mayhem and slaughter. And because of all of this, we are a free people. It is an odd day to be looking down at Our Nation's Capital, where barbarism has become so tailored and manicured, and so utterly unremarkable. We might as well speak honestly about it. We might as well speak about it here.