poll: a third of Americans are supercilious, sadistic freaks

Or, a new New York Times/CBS News poll finds that Americans by a wide margin oppose all torture. . . that’s another way of looking at it.

IS TORTURE EVER JUSTIFIED?
Yes, sometimes: 35%
No, never: 56%

The poll also has Americans standing by our international treaty obligations:

IN TREATMENT OF POW'S, THE U.S. SHOULD...
Follow international agreements: 63%
Do what it thinks right, regardless of what other nations think: 32%

Now, technically, those in question are not POWs, but something we have taken to calling “detainees”—it’s hard to know whether the pollsters understood that—but the result still stands.

Still, both questions—or their answers, really—beg this question: Who are these roughly one-third of Americans who think it’s OK to torture or do whatever the fuck else we want, regardless of law or treaty?

Oh, yeah.

But besides them?

For more about our tortured times (and our tortured Times) see today’s capitoilette.