I read a an article this morning about musicians who are banding together to lobby for the close of Guantanamo prison after learning some of their music may have been used to create discomfort and to intimidate prisoners. I get this, as a liberal minded ACLU supporter I am down with being opposed to torture. Imagine the horrors of being subjected to Rage Against the Machine for 72 hours. Loud rock music is for enjoyment, not an instrument of torture. The issue at hand though isn’t the music, it is that these prisoners were being tortured. Well, not tortured, tortured. They were just sort of made uncomfortable because their religious beliefs prohibit music. Which is completely understanda . . . no, wait. You know what, this is the dumbest fucking thing I’ve heard in a while.
I am against torture; I have no problem making that clear. I am also against war, suicide bombings, hijacking planes and flying them into buildings, beheading journalists and lots of other activities these prisoners have been accused of committing. Despite the fact that we have arrested and refused to charge detainees currently in Guantanamo, which is itself a human rights violation, there is still the troubling little fact that they are possibly in league with the Taliban and therefore participants who actively planned to murder innocent civilians.
Torture is wrong, but so is murder. When the game changes, so too must the rules. The husband tells me all the time that I want to live in a dream world. A utopia where guns, militaries and wars are all outdated. I want to live in Star Trek: The Next Generation where life on Earth is peaceful, we have no poverty or need for money and no bigotry or hate crimes, but I live in a place where people keep murdering one another and where genocides aren’t all that unfamiliar. So, sometimes it takes a little more to get to the truth. I’m not advocating we go all Jack Bauer on the enemy, but when your opponent is willing to die for his or her cause, threatening jail is not going to do the trick.
Waterboarding is bad, but not as bad as ripping out fingernails or shock treatments or chopping off limbs. Yes, torture is barbaric, but does often get the job done as despicable as it is. So let’s go back and look at this musical torture again. It’s loud music. That’s it. Loud and to some people annoying music, and although it was played for long periods of time at excessive volumes, no one has suggested or proved it was played at a volume high enough to shatter an eardrum or cause permanent, painful damage. So what we’re left with is akin to listening to whatever music you hate the most at a high volume for 2-3 days at a time.
Tom Morello of the aforementioned RATC and Audioslave is quoted as saying, “The fact that music I helped create was used in crimes against humanity sickens me." Well, I suppose my Grams could make the argument that your music in itself is a crime against humanity. I know I agree if the artist in question is Britney Spears or any one of the emo bands floating about with too much makeup and greasy hair hanging in their eyes. Still, listening to Brit-Brit isn’t exactly real torture, despite how painful it is for me to listen to her. At this point, it’s a scary world and people want to do brutal and terrifying things so if some loud music is capable of gaining valid intel, then I’m not all that upset about it.
I’m more upset about genocides, forced female circumcision, hate crimes and a slew of other truly heinous crimes against humanity. If a few Pearl Jam sessions played loudly could have stopped something like the Cambodian genocide from happening then I’d have gotten out my boombox “Say Anything” style and blasted whatever it took to make them stop swinging babies against the trunks of trees. I’ll always protest torture, but let’s just make sure we’ve got our protests ranked hierarchically according to most damaging. Darfur, yeah that’s pretty bad. Loud music, um okay not nice, but not the worst thing we could do. Sometimes in our efforts to protest everything and anything that is not 100% altruistic we lose sight of the reality. Today’s reality is a war with no clear lines and no discernible rules. What’s worse, the extreme oppression and torture of the populace ruled by the Taliban or some mildly uncomfortable methods to extract intel leading to the capture of the oppressors?
Tom Morello really said that? At the risk of being accused of ranting, Tom, you're unbelievably talented but YOU MUST GET A GRIP. Crimes against humanity my ass.
ReplyDeleteWould I hate it if someone made me listen to the Barney theme song (also on the "torture" list) for 3 days straight? Sure. Would it kill me? No.
Would it violate me in any way to hear that song for 3 days, even though I do not believe Barney's universal contention that "I love you, you love me" and I object to his blatant plagiarism of "Knick Knack Paddy Whack?" on moral grounds? Again, no.
Would it deprive me of basic human necessities such as food, water and shelter? Well, maybe food due to loss of appetite, but that's about it. So let's stop with the drama, Tom, and go back to writing music, shall we? And weren't you supposed to be reuniting the original RATC lineup? Focus, man, focus.
And Ame, I'd be holding up the boom box next to you if it would stop any of the horrors this world holds. I have little sympathy for the concept of protecting criminals against things that they may find offensive but not harmful. Here are some of the things I find offensive: images of starving children who have no hope or access to a better future, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, footage of 9/11, terror attacks in Madrid, Indonesia, London, Iraq, etc., the recent legalization of raping and/or beating your wife in Afghanistan, and a million other things that truly do demonstrate harm to other humans. If no one is going to protect my "delicate sensibilities" from being exposed to those images and that knowledge, then the prisoners probably won't melt from a few days of Deicide. Honest.