No, I will not play nice, motherfucker

Dear Professor,

I know you just gave me an A- on my presentation. And, you know, yay. But you included this in your evaluation of my presentation:

Also, when discussing a topic that has great interest and passion, you need to be careful that your responses remain professional and substantive. There is a fine art of learning how best to channel this passion without losing some of your credibility with the entire audience, to include those that disagree with you. This is not say that you were not professional or substantive in your responses, only that there were times when I could tell that you were tempted to lift off the venear of non-partisanship. While this may have been personally satisying, it would have lost some of your credibility with the audience.

Excuse me?

OK, I have a couple of points here.

First, I have to say, fuck you.

Second: fuck you.

Third: WHAT????

"Personally satisfying?" Pardon me? I fight these fights because is it "personally satisfying?" Who the FUCK do you think you are? Our project was about a proposal to keep the CIA from rendering prisoners to other countries to be tortured (which is against domestic and international law, so, we were not exactly going out on a limb here). I don't argue that we shouldn't torture people because it is personally satisfying. I argue this point because I am a human being who has not lost my humanity nor has a broken moral compass.

And why the FUCK should I engage with people who don't agree with me on suchlike issues? Why should I be nice and "non-partisan?" Because first off, being against torture should NOT be a partisan issue. That veneer of non-partisanship I was tempted to lift off? Is not a veneer. It is the heart of the issue. The fact that whether we should torture or not has become a partisan issue so certain people can score cheap political points at the expense of breaking (almost always innocent) human beings is an entirely new and disgusting development.

When the United States ratified the Convention Against Torture, the President said:

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called "universal jurisdiction." Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.

And which President was that? Ronald Reagan.

Secondly, anyone who thinks we should torture? Doesn't deserve my engagement. I am not going to try to have a professional, substantive discussion with them. Why? Because that gives their views WAY too much credit. It makes them seem like they have a legitimate take on the issue, instead of the truth, which is that they are just horrible fucking people. In my favorite Thers post, he says:

Actually, I curse online as a conscious choice. Back in the early days of blogs I used to go into comments sections and try to, you know, persuade conservatives that, like, the proposed invasion of Iraq was perhaps not such a great idea. And what happened was, after a colloquy that sometimes lasted literally weeks at a time, what resulted was my interlocutor politely informing me that we would "agree to disagree" and that he (almost always "he") had quite enjoyed "breaking a lance" with me and that he fully expected me to join hands with him and sing a solemn hymn to Comity and then we’d go light a candle upon the altar of Civilized Discourse.

And, privately, I was thinking to myself, this is fucking insane. A lot of people are going to die for no rational reason, and here we are acting like we’re all hot fucking shit because we don’t say "fuck."

And you know what I did next?

I started to say "fuck" quite a lot, and I began to tell the people who were deliberately fucking up my country and causing a lot of fucking pointless carnage that they were a bunch of fucking horrible sociopaths and that I fucking hated them.

And it’s been clear fucking sailing ever since.

I am not discussing issues rationally with people who are clearly not rational. It's not like us discussing things will get anywhere, what with their irrationality. I am not responding to a worldview that includes killing millions of innocent people or involves torturing other human beings with a thoughtful, nuanced response. Because what happens when you do that? You end up with Overton window problems that completely throw off the discourse, allowing things that were previously non-partisan to become partisan, and you enable it. You enable it.

And then we also have to talk about your complicity here. Because you know who I trust least in the class, Professor? You.

You work for the CIA. You've been working for the CIA for the past ten years, while it has done some REALLY APPALLING SHIT. You never mention this. You never locate your bias, but believe me, it shows. I mean, we are quite a few decades into post-modernism now, Professor; the idea that anyone can be "objective" has been roundly, by study and by scholarship, debunked. So, the fact you don't locate and admit where your bias could be? Means it is everywhere.

Let me contrast this with how my counterterrorism professor handles this. He has litigated for the DOJ 90% of the cases in our casebook. And he is very upfront about it. He puts it right out there. He will tell us which cases he litagated, which cases he won but they don't sit right with him, which cases he litigated because it was his job but he thinks the DOJ was on the wrong side. And he owns when he thinks he was on the right side. And because he owns his bias, he acknowledges it, it isn't the big elephant in the room. He knows he can't be objective, but he doesn't then teach his class like he is, while all the while his views are infecting everything he is teaching.

Whereas you? Don't say a damn word about the fact that there are probably some serious conflicts of interest. So here's my question, Professor: why do you think you don't have to own that? Because in the way you argue certain things, emphasize certain points, dismiss certain ideas, it's clear you are not objective.

But also, it makes me wonder what you were doing at the CIA, Professor. It is known that the CIA wrote plenty of legal memos about whether the torture they were doing could be legally justified. And you work as a lawyer for the CIA. So did you write any of those memos? Did you see others writing those memos, but didn't really openly disagree, because you were practicing that "fine art" of of inclusion? Were you attempting to be "non-partisan" and therefore didn't call anyone out? Did you keep your mouth shut because you were a "professional?" Because if you either participated in such things, or allowed them to go on without getting angry and yelling and causing a big ruckus and saying the word fuck a lot, not only are there no Civility Awards for you, but you are complicit. There is blood on your hands, sir. Because the sad fact is, those who did not raise holy hell, those who did not fight back, those who were practicing the "fine art" of engaging politely? Those who still practice that "fine art?" Are responsible for this:

Chris Bartlett / Detainee Project from Chris Bartlett on Vimeo.

And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. Shall I go on? And these links are all the work of your employer. This is on YOUR hands and conscience, Professor. You enabled this. All the while feeling, no doubt, very self-satisfied that you were objective and non-partisan and comported yourself properly.

So you think I give a fuck about my credibility?

Listen, Professor, thanks for the A-, even though I know the - is because you saw me "tempted" to take down the idiot at the back of the room with a "partisan" argument, even though I could have refuted it with a cold, hard fact (after all, even facts have become "partisan." As Stephen Colbert says, reality has a well-known liberal bias). But, frankly, you can keep the mantle of the "professionalism."

I'll prefer instead to keep the blood off my hands.

Fuck you, again,
Gayle