Speaking of which…

…from Gitmo (that’s “Club Gitmo” for all you Rubber Hose Right fans of Rush Limbaugh’s laff off at the Bush-created Torture Regime) we find illustrated for us one of the most pernicious facts about state-sponsored regimes of torture: the fact that it creates a class of people who enjoy their work and like to do it is on their free time. Indeed, as the former Soviet Union demonstrated, such a class of people find ways to network and continue exercising the power the state once gave them–even when the state collapses.

But, of course, that could never happen here. We are safe from all the ills that plague other, fallen, people. This is America! The City on the Hill. The alternative to the Kingdom of God. We can, as Bobby Jindal happily agrees with Barack Obama, do *anything*!

By the way, am I the only person who thinks it extraordinarily weird that a supposedly well-catechized Catholic, on the eve of Ash Wednesday is spouting secular messianic boilerplate about the Infinite Potential of Us Americans? *Is* there any clearer message of Ash Wednesday than, “No. You *can’t* do anything. Apart from Me, you can do nothing. Repent!”

The message of Ash Wednesday is not “You rock! You’re Number One! Way to go! With determination and grit, you will bootstrap yourself out of this jam that Those People Over There got you into. You can do *ANYTHING*!”