Softening the aversion to torture

Fear factor to me looks like a show designed to paint torture as "entertainment". I myself cannot watch that show,it's too sick,sad and abusive.It makes me sick inside.

I look at all the torture in movies,in"comedy" video games.All this dehumanizing,embarassing shaming videos, it's abuse set up as"humor" and I really don't have to wonder anymore why people are numb to the horrible suffering,immorality and blowback implications of torture at Abu Gharib. What you find funny or 'entertaining' these days says alot about your character. Rome had "fear factor" too,it was the colloseum.

Fear factor and shows like that desentitizes people psychologically to seeing people tortured. It's a step by step desensitation process. First it was horror movies,then crime shoes,now it's torture live,done to "volunteers".Shows like Scare tactics make sophisticated psychological gaslighting into just a prank.Remember the"bumfights" tapes where assholes got homeless people to beat each other up on camera for food? Is fear factor all that different? No one condsiders the bad effects on a person's emotions of seeing people dehumanized terrified,sick,sexually abused and in pain pretending and fascinated by it as if it was "entertainment".

Look at all the jokes about pedophiles,these days the kids are always couched as if they should lay down take it,or that they were just having fun, while the pedo is presented in almost a positive light.When did pedophilia become funny? I don't think it's funny _at all_.What about comedians talking about how they got the shit beat out of them as kids as if that is _funny_...? It's sad to me.
When did child abuse,torture,rape and trauma become grist for TV comics? When did America become so callous to suffering and abuse?


In an abusive home when an abusive father beats up mom that is seen as trauma to a child and it effects them for years..
On TV domestic violence is now seen as "entertainment? Little kids like 3 years old or so have trouble telling what occurs on TV from what occurs in real life.And it looks like morally stupid Americans are not only emotionally not in touch, they seem to have that problem of distinguishing reality from fantasy and it effects thier moral character in the worst ways.

That is why the bully pundits and manipulative propagandists dominate what becomes "entertainment" and news.. By making torture into a prank it diminishes the victims humanity,it discounts thier voices and it makes thier need for human rights and the right to not be abused look unnessary or even whiney.

When we can stomach the pain and humiliation done to "volunteers" on fear factor.. It is so much easier for a desensitized moral and ethical idiot with no ethics or emotional intellegence beyond himself to rationalize and stomach the torture at Abu Gharib,like a person with conduct disorders,authoritarian disoders,bully or narcissist can.
They are being trained to not relate tto the traumattized as equal human beings like himself.


To me it is a desire of milions of bully minded people who want to abuse people and get away with it,manifesting..In life the bullies among us form gangs and terrorize others.That is thier pattern they seek positions of power so they can be cotrrupt and untouchable they have hurt whole nations in thier persuit of control. This sociopathic desire to harm has worked into the general populace producing a discionnected wavelength in a hive mind way..TV is a tool to desensitize otherwise ethical Americans to accept torture,rape,pedophila,and abuse as something other than what it is, and remove thier sense of ethics and shut up thier empathy for victims until they become mortified. They either become bullies or bystander moral relativists who will not be able to articulate the revulsion they feel,the rightiouis indignation and outrage, they won't have the confidence or courage to stand up and say to a bully that torture is wrong and say why it is wrong,and stand up for the hurt and suffering with any backbone..

There need not be a evil secret cabal to do this to a Nation ..All it takes is alot of self serving sadistic sick assholes who can twist people's ethics, Bullies with entitlement additudes who steal trust, who are of like minds with similar conduct disorders,overweening ambitions,control issues,narcissism.emotional retardation, and authoritarian personalities who are enabled to get away with it by a nation of passive, sold out,cowardly,self serving,dishonest,empathy stunted,traumatized, unprincipled,ignorant,willing to delude themselves, bystanders..
All it takes for evil to florish is for good people to do NOTHING.

I SMOKE ROCK!

Damn, that's a really good observation.

Now we are paying the price.

I love the show (IMO the best show on TV), but can see how some see it as propaganda. The flip side of this is that things aren't always what they seem, as there's usually a twist. One season had Bauer foiling a plan to start a needless war in the ME (no connection to real life there) for the benefit of oil companies.

I agree with your broader point, but also think that the internet, blogs, etc are helping to inform more people than was possible before.

If these people could somehow put the person they love the most, in the shoes of some of these torture victims....maybe it would make them realize what is really happening.....

But I agree...these shows are designed to get us used to torture...turning our country into a mass of sick twisted souls who view this crap as *normal*....

then on the flip side you have the fundies screaming about thier perception of *evil*.....oh wait...maybe it isn't really the *flip side* part its all the same sick screwed up thinking.....yeah, I think it is all the same ....sigh.......


We need to speak up when we see whats really taking place....we have to take a risk and speak up!!!!


edit to add we have been brainwahsed for a long time now...they are getting more & more brazen about it and more people are seeing the truth- finally...now we have to act on that truth!

right and wrong,are inverted
Pc has been inverted from it's orginal intent of curbing verbal abuse to a tool to destroy the voice of honest true moral outrage at people who are hypocrits and bullies.
The fundies have made good become synominous to immoral hypocrasy.
Liberal is made into a cussword.
How did these words get so twisted and so redefined??
How did torture become"good fun"

If you see something wrong everyday and nobody cares,it beomes normal a part of the landscape.Denial is easy.
Soon you forget about it and as you put it out of mind it affects you more because your unconsious takes it in..When I was a kid I saw a woman with her leg cut off on TV it freaked me out.Now when I see rotting bodies on TV ,murder,rape,I don't react to it the same way,because I too have been desensitized..
Murder is everyday,rape is everyday,torture disatser and abuse is everyday.
It has effected me and desensitized my sense of outrage.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2949121&mesg_id=2950577


* and cronies have changed the meaning of words...
bad=good
wrong=right

"Christians" are now thougth of as right wing fanatical fundie nutcases instead of decent people of faith....science & technology have been elevated to almost godlike status in the US and those who have faith & belief are made to feel the fool.

There are many reasons we've reached this point, but it is going to take us one heart at a time to change it. We are driven by fear and fueled by hatred. I am so sad to see my country turn into what is has become.