Seeing the sort of lynching photos you're talking about when I was somewhere around junior high age was completely horrifying - the kind of thing that makes you want to stop being a human and be anything else instead, just so as not to be associated with creatures that would do such a thing and then congratulate themselves for it. I'd end up driving myself crazy with wondering who was worse - people who think their monstrous acts are just and right and exhibit the evidence proudly, or those who at least show enough awareness of the wrongness of their behavior to try to hide their actions. Which makes Nazis morally superior to lynch mobs, and it's obviously fucked up to have the Nazis on the side of the angels in any argument.

Anyway, lynching snapshots aren't the only thing that made me a fatalist and cynic, but they certainly contributed.

I think what we Americans probably hate more than promoting or committing injustice is actually looking like people who promote or commit injustice. It's kind of bad to do it, but it's worse to be called on it.

I've long operated under the assumption that all governments/military organizations use torture when they believe it is warranted. The idiots at Guantanamo are being censured not so much for the mistreatment of prisoners, perhaps, but for taking pictures and getting caught.