Culture came to Main Street but not escapism.

When things got complicated in the third act they also got up to date.. The Chinese interrogators  wanted information. The lovely Liu refused to tell them what they wanted.

Puccini's operatic solution: they would threaten her with torture.' We have ways of making you talk'. The Milan audience perhaps smiled indulgently. That Puccini !. An operatic solution to move the plot along.

Waterboarding , I thought but Liu beat them to the punch.

What's happened to us?  How did we get to a place where the highest levels of our government approve something that ten years ago we'd have scorned as a medeival practice or hokey theatrical plot device?  And criticism is classified  at best as a sign of almost culpable  immaturity and more likely as unpatriotic indifference to the welfare of  our troops overseas.

In years of living abroad where, frankly, things were often better run , I could still think fondly of our government as one that was fundamentally decent. Today that seems mostly to depend on which torturer is in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel

Even Puccini couldn't have dreamed up John Yoo.

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