I'm sorry. But I really can't sum up any of the outrage for myself

Sure, I do understand why others may find the discovery that the United States government has sanctioned torture as an official policy quite disturbing. After all, it's a little jarring to eventually realize that you've been ruled by monsters. So, I can't blame anyone for being upset about it.

It's just that none of this is any news to me. Not just the torture part, that was obvious when Bush and Cheney were in office and defended the use of water boarding and other torture techniques. That should have been a clue that things got much worse. Of course, they were. Only the willfully blind never saw it for themselves.

But even before then, the clue that America creates monsters has always been there. All you had to do is see how this nation has sanctioned crimes against people of color within our borders, on its own citizens and across the planet, both first hand and by proxy throughout history.

The list of atrocious acts by America, where no one has paid any price is long and harrowing... From the murder of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, to the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, to the murder of activists and innocents at home and abroad. When you have a government intent on climbing up the rungs of power, while regarding human life as meaningless, those are the things that could happen.

The commodification of power renders little regard for things like human rights and empathy.

When they're done in your name, it can cause you to be blind to them. But they've always been there and the response have always been the same, no one pays the price. No one has ever paid the price, if you're not sure why then you only need to look at how we regard ourselves as more important and better than any other country and and other people. No one ever pays the price for these crimes because America's supreme sense of entitlement, which is powered by white patriarchal supremacy, will never allow it to happen.

Perhaps I'm being harsh in criticizing this country for all of the crimes that it has committed. But there are the bones of millions of silent victims of America's crimes lying everywhere. America itself is a nation built upon those bones. And when asked why, we're always going to disregard our own criminality and say that it had to be done for our own common good. No one has paid. Manifest Destiny, our doctrines and entitlements wouldn't have it any other way.

Our sense of entitlement judges only others and exempts our own atrocious actions, because as victors, we take the spoils. If you're wondering why the United States is still the greatest and most invasive military, economic and cultural force on this planet, just think about the general exemption that such an exalted status has granted us. We are still, for lack of a better word, an empire.

Empires in power answer to no one.

By the way, if you would like America to change, the most direct answer would be that we should no longer be an empire. Of course, such a demotion carries with it risks. Such as we will no longer have any control over how our own criminality is punished. That would be left to others. Of course, we may consider such a thing unfair, given any lingering sense of entitlement. However, the harshest consequence from the loss of our imperial status would be that we'd be susceptible to the predations of others. That is, of course, would depend on how well we're protected by ourselves and our allies. (Just look at the so-called "Special Relationship" that we share with England to see how that works. It should be called "Partners in crime" instead).

If you're wondering whether or not America will ever lose the protections of empire, just be secure in the knowledge that empires usually fall from within. Just look around you right now... It's already happening.

It may not completely happen within all of our lifetimes, but it will. Until then regard the lack of punishment for crimes of things like torture as a sign the our empire is still in power.

When it does change I'm sure that we'll notice it right away.