In the legendary science fiction movie "Forbidden Planet," the plot is very simple.  A highly evolved race of beings (the Krell) on a far away planet mysteriously disappeared without explanation.  This species had evolved to such a state of knowledge and technical skill that they were able to harness immense  power to materialize their every want and need using only telepathic control of that immense power - "without instrumentality' as the movie explains.  The mystery of why they disappeared is unraveled when a group of human astronauts arrive on the planet to rescue another group of humans who found the planet years before.  The rescuers are at once attacked by some impossibly powerful "creature."  It seems that the last surviving human from the first landing, Morbius, had tapped into the system that the Krell had created.   He had the telepathic command of that great creative power.   The rescuers puzzle out that, as the dialogue reads:

Rescuer to Morbius: Like you, the Krell forgot one deadly danger... their own subconscious hate and lust for destruction.

Morbius: The beast. The mindless primitive. Even the Krell must have evolved from that beginning. And so those mindless beasts of the subconscious... had access to a machine that could never be shut down.  The secret devil of every soul on the planet... all set free at once to loot and maim... and take revenge and kill!

My poor Krell! After a million years of shining sanity... they could hardly have understood what power was destroying them.

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I submit this for your consideration as you and I try to puzzle out the phenomenon of Bush, Cheney, the torture policy and the rapid collapse of the foundational precepts of our culture.  Of course we can continue to diligently examine the thoughts of those who wrote our Constitution and review the history of our past treatment of enemies and even look to religion, philosophy and ancient history to find clues; but perhaps we need to step back and see that Bush and Cheney may be  hard to fathom because they reside inside each of us.  They are the "mindless primitive" that most of us conquered in our formative years and placed under the firm control of our higher selves.  Control it we did, but we could never destroy it.  It is always there, in the shadows, and now in our forgetfulness we have allowed it access to the power of our civilization. 

It may not then be a problem of us vs. them.  Rather it may be a matter of one part of us saying "No" to another part of ourselves.  Growing up the first time was not easy.  This will not be easy either.