I have no idea what you're taking away from having watched 24 this season, Gus.

I think the torture has been very cavalier, and without much of a moral penalty, if any, associated with it.

What precisely that has to do with you and your race, I'm not sure. Or about ignorance, really.

I am perfectly comfortable leaving anyone's race out of it.

The torture on 24 this season has been more frequent than can be readily accepted as accidental. It is like justifiable torture is the message.

Maybe this is all conspiracy-theory thinking. It could be that the 24 writers have just been trying to get to plot inflections by the most gruesome means they can get away with on TV.

The message I'm reading, though, is that torture is justifiable. It is more efficacious against bad guys than against good guys. Go for it.

So we agree -- too much cavalier torture.

I'm not going to go as far as message, at least not intended, but it certainly is a theme.

I disagree with the good guy/bad guy thing -- was Jack even tortured this season? No other good guys with secrets were, and the hero isn't a hero if he gives anything up. No sample there.

The hero is a torturer. There is your sample.

(I think Jack was tortured, or anyways beat up pretty good just prior to the exchange. Let's call that torture, because I don't want to find myself making a case that Marwan has the superior ethical position, 'cuz he doesn't.)

Jack gets tortured a lot -- it's a thing. I was saying there's no sample in saying torture's not effective against the good guys if there's only one good guy with info that gets tortured when said good guy is the hero.

I think, quite simply, the good guys will be more heroic than the bad guys, and heroism includes resisting torture. The hero will be even more heroic than the rest of the good guys (although, in Jack's case, that's always been messy -- heroism for him is pain, whether deliberately inflicted by others for information or not).

For me, it all boils down to this residual represented thought: People who torture people are good guys.

I do not want my hero to torture people. My hero can be conflicted and confused, and be moving under the press of current events in a way contrary to his better motivations, but he should eventually recognize that his actions were wrong.

Otherwise, he is not a hero. He is an example of how not to act.

People who torture people are good guys.

Are you calling the people who torture Jack good guys? Or are you limiting yourself to this season? Because if that's the message, they're going back on their previous message.

I'd posit that "good guys torture too" is a closer message -- it's not been shown to be the tool of just one side.

good guys torture too

Anathema. If abstention from torture is removed from the defintion of "good guy", I don't want to be a good guy.

Let's go back to your sentence.

People who torture people are good guys.

This implies that the people who torture Jack are good guys. Is this actually the point you're making? I'm getting mixed messages.

Sometimes it seems you're saying that Jack isn't actually a good guy because he tortures people.

That - I get.

This implies that the people who torture Jack are good guys.

No, that is not the point I am struggling to make. People who torture Jack are bad guys. Jack has done bad-guy things. Jack is a bad guy, too, unless Jack's actions are justified in some larger context.

The 'larger context' here is Jack's actions versus the actions of a dude who is trying to reduce Minneapolis to a radioactive rubble.

My discomfort might be with the comic-book scale of the bad guy. Jack's actions are particular and immediate, shown to us in full detail. Marwan's awfulness is sort of remote, with network-announced body counts and poor dead Nerd Mommas we never actually see dead.

I get a sense of permission for Jack's actions, nevermind the reason.