There's power in cruelty. There's strength.

That fact is appreciated by every high-school jock shoving the put-upon, the grace-challenged into lockers, leaving their nerdy victims nursing painful scars much deeper than sheet-metal doors can ever tear. And as much by tony mavens snubbing the unfashionable and bad bosses humiliating underlings. Cruelty is locked in an elegantly infantile jig with status, since part of the privilege of exclusivity is providence to savage the common. And more than that: Cruel dismissal underlines stark differences of social and political elevation; it's not just about pleasures of sadism, although that's a huge part of the attraction. It's statement.

By spitting in your face, I prove to the world I'm a winner. Or, at least, not a loser. (It's probably more appropriate to keep this in negative dimension.)

There's something in human nature that can't exult unless someone else agonizes. There but for the grace of God... go I.

We've degenerated, as a society, to the point where we mistake blithe cruelty for strength. We like it. We laugh when others are bluntly insulted. David Letterman has made a career of this - and, evidently, pulling rank and bedsheets on young staffers and secretaries. It's bracing to see strangers "put in their place" - even though we know nothing about them, nor whether they deserve derision. We enjoy perceived enemies getting their just desserts, even if those criminal fiends are toddlers and schoolchildren in Gaza and Falluja.

The bully is compelling. In his abuse and torment, he tells the world he can stand alone, he can turn others into whimpering flunkeys, he can spit on the rules and push people around. ...A prince or princess.

I don't believe it took seven years to get Khalid Sheikh Mohammed out of the clutches of our cesspit torture dungeons and into a civilian courtroom merely because we had quibbles with his battlefield status or because we wanted to send a message to wannabe terrorists that no coddling, lily-livered courtroom saints would let them off easy. I think widely known personalities in the Bush Administration threw terrorists and innocent "collateral" into cells and tossed the keys simply because they enjoyed doing so.

We make our enemies suffer. In decisions made by officials in the highest reaches of government - by men and women who had absolutely no faith in our Constitution and legal system, and in fact despised them - we've adopted standards of savage war lords and Stone-Age tribes.

It's difficult to feel sympathy for Khalid. He's accused of masterminding 9/11, and even eight years out, that horror is still branded deep in us. But that's not the point. Should we revert permanently to Dark Age methods of criminal apprehension and justice, then Mohammed did more than help knock down the buildings in New York and Washington, and kill the passengers in that lonely Pennsylvania field. By denying him the justice that we claim defines us, we allow him to accomplish the ultimate objective essayed by him and the rest of the wilderness fanatics: The destruction of the United States. We are, after all, a system, not a border on a map. We're not a race or a king or a stamp in wax. We are a collection of laws, an approach to liberal enlightenment and self-government. We're a piece of parchment called the Constitution. We deny the human rights of anyone, no matter how odious, and we burn into cinders that thin document.

The battle is in doubt:

Last week, another federal court ruled that the courts have no jurisdiction over matters relating to the practice known as "extraordinary rendition" - kidnapping a person in U.S. custody and sending him/her to a prison in another country.

In a seven to four decision in the celebrated case known as Arar v. Ashcroft, the appeals court for the second circuit in New York wrote, "If a civil remedy in damages is to be created for harms suffered in the context of extraordinary rendition, it must be created by Congress, which alone has the institutional competence to set parameters, delineate safe harbors, and specify relief. If Congress chooses to legislate on this subject, then judicial review of such legislation would be available."

Our entrenched viciousness infuses much of what should make us better, as well. I wonder, sometimes, if affluent opponents of heath care aren't spurred by a compulsion to degrade those they consider lesser mortals, "underserving poor." Now... I'm not referring to our political class, public office holders; if single-payer proponents could offer them money and whores, they'd rave about the nobility of socialized medicine - on that we can have no doubt.

It seems our gods are mean and relentless and must be served. Sometimes I wonder if, when Congress and the past couple presidents dropped to their knees to swallow every demand of the financial industry, they didn't secretly relish a hatred for all us chumps out here, that they indeed wanted us to suffer under skyrocketing interest rates and unregulated fees that strip to the bone meager resources.

This is the morality of the playground, of immature hecklers and backbiting pecking orders of prom rivalries and cheerleader tryouts. We're one fart joke away from fading into obscurity, an unmourned victim of Peter Pan complex writ large.

Maybe... if we then die, we'll rise to the sky to dwell forever with the Lord of the Flies.