3 ms·
"Torture" is one of many words that, when people discuss it, they are speaking subjectively by default. It's totally reasonable to do - there is nothing wrong w
by happytoexplain 5y ago
"Torture" is one of many words that, when people discuss it, they are speaking subjectively by default. It's totally reasonable to do - there is nothing wrong with having an opinion that somebody did something that does not meet some legal definition of the word, unless you are saying it in court. There are certainly words that are closer to the objective legal side of things by default in conversation ("copyright infringement"), but in general, using a word non-legally does not necessitate using it dishonestly, as you are implying ("to get an emotional response"). The legal argument is perfectly reasonable one to talk about, but it would be unreasonable not to recognize that both arguments are perfectly valid and interesting, despite potentially having opposite conclusions.
Sorry, that was a long way of saying that legal != moral.
- belval 5y agoThat's fair (it's unfortunate that this is a repost from yesterday as I think my wording was more nuanced before), but that's not what the article says, they specifically call out that they chartered flights for the CIA to move captive to an actual black site. This is the ambiguity that I called clickbait. The immigrants being deported were allegedly mistreated during transport, that's true. That mistreatment can we likened to torture (I disagree with that part but for the sake of the argument) but the author bundles actual "legally defined" torture with what you call "moral" torture and that's were it becomes clickbait. In a formal fashion: - Group A was transported by C to be D - Group B was transported by C to be E - The headline claims A was E which is wrong unless D = E My claim is that D (mistreatment of migrants likened to torture) isn't equivalent to E (actual black site torture).