Welcome to the Evil Empire!
The CIA has confessed (again) that it tortures prisoners, and the reaction from the mainstream press is to whitewash the news. Everything that Hannah Arendt said about the banality of evil is being put onto full display right now in America.
Part of it might just be outrage overload. I've found that after almost seven years of watching the United States careen from being a flawed superpower down towards the pit of depravity that so many of our self-proclaimed moral leaders desire that about all I can summon up is some sort of vague horror instead of the spitting outrage that I was feeling a few years ago. Some of that is that it's easier to feel outrage when there might be an alternative (my two alternatives of hoping that the Democratic party would gain control of part of the government (and developing an idea of how to govern) or fleeing the country have been quashed by (a) the Democrats continuing their now-generation-long streak of reflexively cowering whenever a Republican says “boo” and (b) the Tories taking over the Canadian government as well as my family refusing to leave this sinking ship) but I think it's more that my body is just tamping down the outrage to keep my heart from exploding. But in any case it's pretty shameful that I just watch this without grabbing tar, feathers, and an warehouse full of rail, going to Washington DC, and setting up a *free* rail-ride outside the capitol building.
(via Micheal Froomkin)