> My taxes have frequently paid for US Gov led torture. If we ever hold China accountable in a meaningful way, it won't be due to authentic moral outrage.

Interestingly your premise is a form of forever torture that forever punishes and condemns entire nations of people even if they weren't directly (or even indirectly) responsible for the actions of a small group of people.

Every American is denied the ability to have authentic moral outrage because of what a very small number of people did eg at Abu Ghraib? I disagree. That's an absurd premise and it means a nation can never change its behavior or move beyond past mistakes. In fact, your premise encourages a nation to never change, because you're forever condemned no matter what you do.

It's a collectivist punishment system. The kind of thing that has been used to apply inherited or associative morality based on nation, group or race for thousands of years. It's straight out of the old testament.

Let's examine that however. So because of things that happened in the past, or things outside of your direct control, a person or government decades or centuries later can never hold a position of "authentic moral outrage." How about people that were disgusted by acts of US torture and voted their conscience accordingly (electing Obama instead of the war hawk McCain, for example), do they get to have authentic moral outrage? Can you clarify how your all-powerful god-like moral ruling works in practice?

The French can never have authentic moral outrage because Napoleon murdered millions of people and the French did horrible things in Vietnam? Is there an expiration timer on any of this?

The Russians can never have authentic moral outrage because of what happened under the USSR and because of what Putin is doing currently?

The people of Belgium are forever condemned to never possess authentic moral outrage because of King Leopold II?

The people of Cambodia can possess no authentic moral outrage, regardless of their involvement in the genocide and that condemnation shall last an eternity.

The Germans....

Shall I continue? These are all intentionally extreme examples to make a very obvious point.

The world found out about Abu Ghraib, and the US was shamed, humiliated, and Obama issued an executive order specifically banning the CIA's torture techniques in 2009 in response. The NDAA of 2016 also further restricted abusive interrogations. The people of the US were widely disgusted. It was very public as a matter, it was broadcast to the American people 24/7 for months. Culturally we had a large, very public debate over it as a nation. That was for a few dozen cases of torture. The world's superpower - which needed to have zero concern for the world's opinion - was very clearly humiliated by it and took action to prevent torture in the future (and yes, one can be reasonably skeptical of that being successful; as time goes on the US should be judged by its actions and not words on the matter).

Why should a nation of people or its large government/s be comprehensively denied "authentic moral outrage" because of the actions of an exceptionally small part of the population? A plainly absurd position to take on how morality should work.