In the wake of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s torture program, I’ve heard and read a lot of discussions that start with a question whose premise could be summed up as “there are bad guys out there, and what if torturing them can help save lives?”

This question doesn’t need to be answered so much as rejected and shamed as the utter bullshit it is. Torture is immoral and abhorrent to any notion of civilization, and if that’s too fancy for you, it’s illegal in this country and a war crime everywhere in the world. So the question is irrelevant. It’s like asking “what if murdering someone does some good?” or “what if there’s some value in racism?”

The question is not only irrelevant, but it’s predicated more or less on this assumption: that terrorists are inhuman monsters with evil agendas that they will only reveal if we show we’re willing to be even more brutal than they are. And that somewhere, there’s a ticking bomb, thus giving whatever pummeling we choose to administer even more moral force and urgency. It’s a question that comes from watching too many bad movies and TV shows.

And finally, it’s a question with a simple answer. Torture does not work. It doesn’t yield actionable intelligence. This is a widely accepted consensus view in the intelligence community.

Here are some better questions to ask in the wake of the Intelligence Committee report. I’d like to hear some powerful and respected voices asking these questions:

Shouldn’t the words “enhanced interrogation” make us all deeply ashamed of the culture of euphemism that corporations and politicians have fostered? Shouldn’t every “journalist” who ever used those words to describe torture make a public apology?

Have we become so cynical and jaded about our government that we really don’t care what atrocities it commits, as long as we’re “free”? And does “free” just mean free to be left alone to munch on tacos and watch TV?

Why are we so afraid of terrorism? I was eight blocks from the World Trade Center on 9/11 and I saw the towers fall right in front of me, and later I ran through the smoke and debris to safety, and I’m not afraid of terrorism, or terrorists. They’re criminals, that’s all. Find them and arrest the fuckers. Why are we making them into some existential threat? Americans used to have some balls — what happened to us?

If we allow torture to be a policy of our government, what exactly makes us different from “the terrorists” anyway? Our good intentions? Our self concept as noble and good people?

Are we going to do anything about the CIA? It’s a government bureaucracy, just like any other. Are we going to continue letting it do anything it deems necessary, including deceiving two branches of government? Why is the CIA off limits to a thorough housecleaning? Are we simply afraid of the CIA? And if we are, is this still a democracy?

This program was authorized at the highest levels of the Bush administration. The names of the people who did so are not a secret. Why is it so unthinkable that they should be prosecuted for war crimes? Why can’t that idea even be floated in the mainstream media? Is it because they are powerful, and more to the point in our celebrity-bedazzled culture, famous?

Why is it that many conservatives, usually so quick to paint everything in stark black and white, good and evil, right and wrong, suddenly see the issue of torture as one big gray area? Right-wingers are always talking about “accountability.” Why don’t we hear any of them using that word in this case?

Why haven’t Democratic leaders been much more visible and staunch in their opposition to this? Why didn’t they loudly call out President Obama when he essentially caved on the issue by issuing an order rescinding the policy and then kicking everything else about it under the rug? Why are Democrats now vocal about the report but largely silent about Obama’s lack of leadership on this issue?

Is it because politics in this country has become nothing more than a sport, with fans rooting for their team regardless of what it does, as long as their team is perceived as winning? Is the conservative silence on torture, or worse, defense of it, simply driven by the fear that it might be bad for Republicans? Is the Democratic position (if there is one) driven by the same cynical calculus?

Those are the questions that I’d like to hear asked in public, but the really tough questions are the ones we should be asking ourselves:

Do we kind of like the idea of torture? Have we been fed so much revenge-fantasy pop culture that we’re into it now? Do we feel so powerless and small, are we so full of impotent rage, that the idea of some righteous CIA dude giving the works to a swarthy foreign guy in rags makes us feel just a little better about the world and ourselves?

Or are we just not paying attention to any of this? Is it just more news and information we can’t really use? Do we think it has nothing to do with us, so fuck it?

And so is torture — the deliberate infliction of unbearable pain that serves no purpose except as an outlet for humanity’s worst impulses —  just one more He Said/She Said, meh I’m really not sure, let’s agree to disagree kind of thing? Because that’s the perspective of a sociopath.

Have we all become sociopaths?