Two examples:
1.On Monday, December 15, TPT in Minnesota aired “Torturing Democracy,� an account of the use of torture by the United States government. The producer, and critics of U.S. policy, had hoped that this documentary would air before the November elections. Stephen Segwaller, the person in charge of programming at WNET, is quoted in the New York Times as saying, in response to such criticism, “I suspect that when we air it and other people air it there will be some criticism, attacking its motive rather than its content.� Thank God for the audio recorder and the opportunity to hear people’s real words. Try living inside that sentence for a few minutes. Also consider how that sentence might have been crafted accurately, “Critics of an early airdate, before the election, will say that our motive was _____; critics of a late airdate, after the election, will say that our motive was _____.� If you actually lay out those two criticisms, one may look stronger than the other. But the thing he said amalgamates all criticisms: “You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.� The issue this evades: who’s doing the damning?
2.The documentary highlights the guidelines for torture, which have to do with avoiding certain horrific results – organ failure, death. One communication says, essentially, “If they die, you have gone too far.� This is I think a basic error: guidelines have to be independent of their goals, otherwise they cease to be guidelines and become the advice, “Do what makes sense to you.� Consider a book for bridge engineers that said, “Make sure the bridge doesn’t fall down unexpectedly.� One wants help from experts to identify the early stages of catastrophe, so as to avoid catastrophe. This is a pretty elementary mistake – to undertake to provide guidelines and then, at the last minute, to pull up and not provide guidelines. People should be criticized for doing that, in authoritative memos.
I am sure that some people will be annoyed at this point, because they think that there is something terrible about guidelines for making people hurt, that the whole enterprise is devilish. It will seem trivial to worry about bad sentences, about incoherent memos, when lives and sanity are at stake. I want to say: it is very important to look at the particular moves by which the train derails, the moments at which something important is given up. The broader criticisms will come in hindsight only. At the moment that an event is unfolding, someone is confronted with a quote or a memo that feels funny, and has the choice of either worrying or not. That’s when something can still be done. It has to be one function of education to acquaint people with the feel of slipperiness, by a thousand examples. Unfortunately, we have a thousand examples in public life. (We likely speak a few, every day, also.)
Everybody repeat after me, “Sir, could you explain that once more. I don’t quite follow.� This is not the bravest thing a person could say, but it might be just brave enough to stop a train that’s just starting up. I think it is important for ethics to highlight the possibility of slightly braver than ordinary actions, like asking for clarification.
In The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene pictures a priest about to be executed, having the thought, “It seemed to him at that moment that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage.�
One other point: there is such a thing as a moral community. People who run things have aides and advisers and deputies to help them not get caught up in intoxicating mistakes, to look for the slippage that suggests that something is about to go wrong.