McCann: The Anti-Gop Consortium

And yet, it has frequently seemed that all reference to violent incidents even tangentially involving a fragment of Islam must be preceded by a solemn statement to the effect that Islam had nothing to do with this, Islam is a religion of peace. Can we have less of this sort thing in 2016, please?
Western commentators have for so long been using "Christian" as a synonym for "decent", "kind", "generous", etc. that they may well feel a need in certain fraught circumstances to stress an equally positive attitude to rival religions, too.
They are never going to acknowledge the extent to which the murderous rampages of George W. Bush, Tony Blair etc., were fuelled by their fervent Christianity. They don't even feel a need to say that bomber Bush's blood-thirsty attacks on innocent unarmed people do not represent "real" Christianity. They don't call on "moderate" Christians to speak out against "extremists" who delight in bombing, maiming, torturing, killing.
Have you ever heard a commentator or interviewer follow a report on the latest mass murder of Palestinians by turning to the camera to say that, of course, the thugs who did this don't represent Judaism, that the vast majority of the world's Jews are as peace-loving as the rest of us and shouldn't be held responsible for atrocities wrongly committed in their name?
You will not have heard any such thing in 2015.
Nor will you in 2016, unless I manage for the first-ever time to stick to my New Year resolution and lurk outside television studios with a loaded shillelagh to beat the bejaysus out of the next schmuck who asks us to exonerate religions for evil deeds done by their most genuine and passionate adherents. If religion isn't the cause of what they do - and it is isn't - it may be the cause for which they believe they do it.
The sometimes clownish ex-London mayor Ken Livingstone found himself in deep soapy bubble at the tail-end of 2015 for saying on the BBC's Question Time that the Islamic suicide bombers who had attacked King's Cross and Tavistock Square on July 7 2005 had "given their lives" for their cause. But they had. They took 50 innocent people with them. But they had given their own.
As we come to the end of another year of terror and tumult, we should ask ourselves what has happened to political discourse and unafraid journalism that clear and obvious important truths are seen as unsayable?

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Another "first" in 2015 was the unashamed celebration of torture by governments in democratic countries.

The throngs of tourists and other visitors who will pass through Emancipation Hall in the Capitol building in Washington in 2016 will now have a large, white, marble bust of former vice-president Dick Cheney to gaze at as they feel the vibe and contemplate the majesty of American democracy. And indeed it can be majestic. Which makes it all the more depressing that one of the world's most notorious torturers is now memorialised and honoured under the dome of the Capitol.
Cheney directly, personally authorised the torture of thousands of "suspects" netted in various countries around the world and flown to Cheney's secret torture chambers. (Water-boarding wasn't the half of it.) The Irish government, of course, facilitated the torture flights by providing a stop-over service at Shannon.
In the course of the thrilling campaign which won him the presidency in 2008, Obama, on one occasion at least with his arm across his chest and his hand on his heart, promised that, under his administration, no one would be above the law. The allegations of illegality, corruption and torture made against the Bush regime would be fully investigated, no matter how high the evidence led. He invoked the ancient principle: "Let justice be done though the heavens fall."
That lasted for a couple of weeks once he had the feet under the table in the Oval Office. He called Justice Department officials off the investigation, and granted all the miscreants of the Bush years immunity not just from prosecution but from civil action by victims. In so doing, Obama lifted the taboo from torture. Now his administration has sunk even lower.
Here's vice-president Joe Biden at the unveiling of the bust: "As I look around the room and up on the platform, I want to say thank you for letting me crash your family reunion." (Actually, the occasion had nothing to do with a "family reunion", but you have to factor in that Biden is an idiot.) "I actually like Dick Cheney. I can say without fear of contradiction that there's never been one single time there has been a harsh word, not one single time in our entire relationship."
Two things for the New Year. One - can we, after his seven years in office, finally free ourselves from the delusion that Barack Obama stands for anything other than the same old decrepit, fly-blown, morally inert hypocrisy?
Two - it will be a stain on the conscience of a generation if nobody takes a lump-hammer and smashes Cheney's head in during 2016. They could bash the statue, too, when they are at it.