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Chapter 3: The Torture Machine

It is not the critic who counts or how the strong
man tumbled and fell, or where the doer of deeds
could have done better. The credit belongs to the
man who is actually in the arena, whose face is
marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives
valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and
again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great
devotion, and spends himself in a worthy cause.
And if he fails at least he failed while daring
greatly so that he'll never be with those cold and
timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt

It is said that all things are possible in torture. A person can
be killed, maimed, or driven insane. That is why so many people have a
morbid curiosity about the subject. That is the idea behind the terror
the mere prospect of torture engenders in the man on the street. And
of course that is what propels that father of terrors - human
imagination - into working such deviltry within our minds, blinding us
with fear even before torture's first blow approaches.

Nobody escapes this fear, not even the Stoic; his fears, like all
his emotions, are up to him. Thus human fear is an integral, indeed a
functional part of the torture phenomenon. The efficacy of the whole
mechanism is wrapped up in it. And that makes cool headed analysis of
it, the taking apart and examining of it as would Teddy Roosevelt's
"critic", the abstract thinking your way through its elements and
their powers and limits, - - and experiencing it, taking it as "the
man who is actually in the arena" takes it, two entirely different
matters. When it comes to torture, analysis is sterile without
anecdotal accounts of how it is to take it. And anecdotal accounts
alone force thoughtful readers to see it only through the frenzied
eyes of a person engulfed in irrational as well as rational fears.

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