Has there been a long, slow coarsening of our foreign (and domestic, maybe) policy?

[Stinky The Clown]

Foreign policy used to couched in (what I shall call) diplomaspeak. The international version of two House guys who hate each other referring to their opposite as "my good friend from East Bumfuck". It was political correctness in the extreme. We never threatened war; we suggested there would be "grave consequences".

In the 2000 presidential cycle, we were still reasonably genteel about things, although some coarsening of the language, even then, was evident.

Then 9/11, when, it seems still to be true, "everything changed".

How jarring was it to your sensibilities to hear presidential candidates debating how fast they would "capture or kill" certain bad guys? I can tell you that I found it very jarring.

I'm not sure the policies being espoused by any one candidate or another was substantively different from what had been the norm for decades and longer. But the rhetoric used to describe it sure was. Everybody who was anybody was all about killing bad guys. And not in nice ways.

Rest assured, most of these surely people knew more than you or me that we were torturing. There is simply no way they could not have known, if not by direct testimony, then surely in off the record, back room conversations at "the club".

And still they coarsened the dialogue.

We should be very much unsurprised that we find ourselves today - still - debating torture.

We really should be ashamed ourselves.

And we really are not.

[PDJane]

1. yes, but the change started earlier.

As they did with everything, the bush regime just rushed the destruction.