{"id":2443,"date":"2016-04-28T16:22:22","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T20:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/?p=2443"},"modified":"2016-04-28T20:32:08","modified_gmt":"2016-04-29T00:32:08","slug":"2443","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/28\/2443\/","title":{"rendered":"The Torturable Class"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WormoldBeatrice: <\/strong>Are there class distinctions in torture?
\nCapt. Segura: <\/strong>Some people expect to be tortured.\u00a0Others are outraged by it. One never tortures except by mutual agreement.
\nBeatrice: <\/strong>Who agrees?
\nCapt. Segura: <\/strong>Usually the poor. In your welfare state you have social security, therefore you have no poor. Consequently there you are untorturable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

-From ‘Our Man in Havana’ by Graham Greene<\/p>\n

Dignity.<\/p>\n

Does a person\u00a0have to earn<\/em> dignity? Or is dignity something we just\u00a0have, something we’re entitled to as human beings?<\/p>\n

It isn’t a theoretical question. I realized recently it’s been\u00a0nagging at\u00a0me almost every day through this already-endless\u00a0election season.<\/p>\n

I’ve spent most of my life holding my nose and voting for the lesser of two evils.\u00a0This year, I’ve been following Bernie Sanders, though\u00a0this blog isn’t really about him.\u00a0It’s about a different sound\u00a0I hearing behind his\u00a0policies and programs, one that I hope\u00a0will survive and grow regardless of the fate of his candidacy.<\/p>\n

That is, that we’re all of us in this together\u00a0and all of us entitled to be treated like creatures with dignity.<\/p>\n

The other candidates, like almost every politician of the last thirty years, come from what I think of as a post-Reagan point of view – if you haven’t ‘succeeded,’ it’s your own fault, so why should we worry about you?<\/p>\n

Trump’s boast that he could shoot someone in front of cameras and still get votes seemed fanciful once, remember? Now, it’s inarguable. On the other side of the coin, the un-powerful in this country (it helps if you’re\u00a0black) can be shot in front of cameras without consequence.<\/p>\n

This has nothing to do with\u00a0government, by the way. Have you tried calling for business\u00a0support lately?<\/p>\n

Want to hear someone laugh? Just say ‘Your call is very important to us.’<\/p>\n

Every aspect\u00a0of the ‘support’ experience reinforces the impression that you are of absolutely no importance to the company\u00a0that took your money.<\/p>\n

\"The

The Tobacco Chiefs: Trust Us – Smoking Doesn’t Cause Cancer.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The wealthy and powerful can create pharmaceuticals that kill, airbags that kill, powerplants that render their surroundings uninhabitable, investment instruments that wreck the economy of the Western World and walk away with a slap on the wrist.<\/p>\n

Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House, was just convicted of sexual abuse against an unspecified number of teenage boys; he got 15 months in prison. If he\u00a0was some\u00a0inner-city gym teacher, preferably with white middle-class students testifying against him, want to bet what kind of sentence he’d have gotten?<\/p>\n

As Graham Greene would have understood, we now have a torturable class. I’m sorry – we now are<\/em> the torturable class.<\/p>\n

And that’s where Bernie Sanders is truly\u00a0different.<\/p>\n

\"freedomHis\u00a0programs don’t make distinctions\u00a0– they help\u00a0everyone<\/em>. They’re based on the concept\u00a0that every citizen is deserving of decent treatment, whether that means getting into college based on merit instead of financial ability, making\u00a0healthcare decisions based on medical need\u00a0rather than maximum\u00a0profit for insurance and Big Pharma, imposing jailtime because\u00a0‘you did the crime’ instead of ‘you were born unfortunate (and are destined to remain\u00a0that way).’<\/p>\n

His\u00a0ideas grow out of the idea that ordinary people’s lives matter, that they’re not just guinea pigs offered up\u00a0to the highest bidder.<\/p>\n

The Republicans and Hillary Clinton may differ wildly on policy and style – I do think there are real significant differences between them – but none\u00a0of them challenge that ‘Us Against\u00a0Them’ world that Reagan created. Sanders’ worldview does.<\/p>\n

And in the end, that worldview is what’s\u00a0going to matter. Whether or not Sanders takes the Democratic nomination this year, millions have heard this message and we’re\u00a0not going back. We\u00a0may vote for Hillary or Trump in November or we\u00a0may stay away from the polls altogether\u00a0but, longterm, we’ve been reminded that\u00a0we are full citizens, entitled to have our grievances heard and our needs met, human beings with dignity, not animals consigned forever to fight over the scraps on the floor of the cage.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bernie Sanders’ ideas grow out of the concept that ordinary people’s lives matter, that they’re not just guinea pigs offered up to the highest bidder.
\n<\/p>\n Continue reading →<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,216,5],"tags":[263,264,268,266,265,267],"class_list":["post-2443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything-else","category-on-the-street","category-the-world","tag-2016-election","tag-bernie-sanders","tag-economic-inequality","tag-human-dignity","tag-our-man-in-havana","tag-torture"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2443"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2459,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443\/revisions\/2459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}