New Poll Shows Americans Are Total Idiots, Part Zillionteen

Starting to think it'll never happen

It's always fun slash super depressing to check in on what U.S. Americans "think" about "stuff." Sometimes they have good thoughts -- like that Republicans are petty petulant obstructionist swizzle dicks who should do their damned goddamned jobs. Good for you, you Americans who think that, you are correct! Sometimes, however, Americans have terrible thoughts that are bad and wrong and terrible. For example:  

Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe torture can be justified to extract information from suspected terrorists, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, a level of support similar to that seen in countries like Nigeria where militant attacks are common. [...]

The March 22-28 online poll asked respondents if torture can be justified "against suspected terrorists to obtain information about terrorism." About 25 percent said it is "often" justified while another 38 percent it is "sometimes" justified. Only 15 percent said torture should never be used.

Sigh and groan and other exasperation sounds. It seems our children and their idiot parents isnotlearning. Back in 2014, after we learned that our government tortured the actual fuck out of some folks, worse than we even knew before, and we had to learn what "rectal feeding" meant and have been drinking bleach ever since, a poll showed 51 percent of Americans thought raping prisoners with hummus seemed legit and A-OK. Didn't matter that torture is not an effective method of gathering intelligence.

So it's refreshing to know that in the year-and-a-halfish since then, Americans have made like Dead Scalia and binge-watched even more episodes of "24" and still think torturing people is fine and dandy and peachy keen, at least if it's for a good "justified" reason, like "I'm so scared of the terra-rists hiding in the mosque under my bed!" How else are we going to defeat our enemies if we don't rectally infuse their buttholes with food stuffs and do waterboarding, which isn't even torture, it's just "enhanced interrogation," which is torture, actually, just spelled with more letters.

Side note: Neither spelling works, and they just makes us look like assholes. Hey, maybe they don't hate us for our freedoms; they hate us because pureed nuts and raisins up the ass can really sting!

But whatever. That was before Paris got terroristed and Brussels got terroristed and San Bernardino got terroristed, and Donald Trump gave everyone chubbies about torturing bad guys because that's how you Make America Great Again. If we start doing torture right now, right this second, maybe we'll prevent the next terrorist attack that 64 percent of Americans think is going to happen in our own country in the next six months. (We assume that terrorist attacks on various Planned Parenthoods don't count.)

So while there are no new studies showing that torture is effective after all -- because it still isn't, FYI -- fuck it, it works on the teevee and it feels like a good idea that makes us piss our pants a little bit less. That's good enough for most of us, apparently. God bless America.

[ Reuters ]