I remember as a kid, playing with my dolls on the carpet in the front room. The T.V. was on and my dad was watching it. There were no cartoons on so I wasn’t interested in what was on the T.V. I heard a strange noise behind me and turned around to see what had happened. (It was that kind of a noise, kind of a strangled, choking sound.) My mom had gotten up from her chair and was sitting on the arm of the sofa with her arm across my dad’s back, stroking his hair with her free hand. My dad was sitting forward on the edge of the sofa with tears streaming down his face.
“It’s beautiful,” he managed to choke, “so beautiful.”
He was staring at the T.V. screen and my mom was smiling at him and hugging him. Whatever it was that was making him cry couldn’t have been too awful, if mom could smile about it. But, my dad?! Crying?!?! I’d NEVER seen it before.
I looked back at the T.V. It was just a sea of people. Thousands and thousands of people standing there, with a big needle-like monument at the far end of that sea of people. I looked back at my dad, not comprehending at all why a vast ocean of people, standing in front of a monument, could possibly make my dad cry. I was too scared to ask. I kept staring at this great crowd of people trying to figure it out.
August 28, 1963, I was a month past 5 years old, and that day is blazoned in my mind forever because my dad cried at the sight of people organized to insist upon their right to the constitution.
Being a brown man himself, it meant that he, too, might finally get to enjoy constitutional rights.
I mention this because I just finished watching “The Great Debaters.” The atrocities that were a matter of course back then, remind me of what is happening today with all this “Terrorist” red flag waving.
Don’t get me wrong, I think real terrorists are criminals and should be treated accordingly, prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
But people who simply have beliefs outside the Judeo-Christian religions should not be treated as terrorists simply because of their skin color or their manner of dress.
It should also be mentioned that people selling paraphernalia over the internet should not be arrested for terrorism simply because the law enforcement agencies cannot get to them any other way.
The effect being that everyone then becomes subject to being a terrorist and having their bank accounts, homes, cars, everything taken from them.
So, if like Tommy Chong, you are peaceably selling your hookah pipes online and the local law enforcement authorities are pissed because you are, in their opinion, flagrantly flouting the law. They can now use the Homeland Security Act, to label you a terrorist, because your “ill-gotten gains” are being used to fund terrorist groups. These same law enforcement personnel do not have to PROVE you are funding terrorist groups with your hookah pipes, they only have to make the accusation in order to seize your bank accounts, your home, your inventory, your life. My goodness! What a field day they can have with this wonderful Homeland Security Act. Everyone even marginally outside the law can now be arrested and their assets seized. Marvelous and marvelouser! What a windfall!
“Terrorism” has become the “Communism” of our era. If you don’t like what someone is doing, paste a terrorist label on them, take away ALL their civil liberties (they can do that now because of the Homeland Security Act) toss them in jail and let them rot. They are denied benefit of counsel, denied due process, and there is no oversight of any sort.
Until the Berlin Wall fell, Communism was the red flag waved in front of America’s eyes to keep everyone fearful and under control. Since the Communists are no longer a viable threat, a new enemy had to be found to keep America so fearful it would go along with the stripping of all civil rights. For our own good mind you. Just trying to keep y’all safe from those nasty Communists, I mean Terrorists. Oh yes, by all means, suh, let me live in fear so that your corporations can continue to make six billion dollar quarterly profits. I’m grateful you have my best interest at heart. Carte Blanche! And the corporations said “Amen!”
The problem here, as it was then, is confusing the right of the individual to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as well as religious freedom, with the “right” of the status quo to maintain its colossal profits. As for this white blanket being thrown over America, the total white-out of the constitution, what can be said for those who are using this fearful climate to enrich themselves at our expense?
Shrub and his cabal certainly got everything they wanted after 9/11. An America shaped into their image. The corporation rules. Finally! Privatize the war in Iraq. Here you go buddy, thanks for your campaign contributions. Told you I’d do right by you. God bless those terrorists for driving planes into our citizens. Now we can do anything and everything we always wanted.
Nobody would dare question their behavior for fear of the accusation of communism, I mean terrorism, being applied to their dissenting view.
And now, the same people who Shrub relied on to make America a corporation, those same people want the American government to declare bankruptcy (you try cutting 1 trillion dollars and see what happens) so that, and HEAR ME NOW, the government will HAVE TO turn to those same corporations that got us into this mess, to provide the goods and services that our government can no longer financially provide.
Quite a good strategy, don’t you think? Continue to get exactly what they want with the appearance of having “tried” to stop this out-of-control train. (Excuse me a minute, I have to go throw up.)
We are an America that has shut our eyes to what our government has done to us. If we continue to cling to the belief that it was done to “protect” us, then shame on us.
It is going to take a very long time to undo what Shrub and his cabal did to us. It’s not going to be easy. Mostly because the beneficiaries of Shrub’s beneficence do NOT want to give up their six billion dollar quarterly profits. (I won’t even go into how wrong their thinking: “What’s good for corporations, is good for America.”)
I believe it can be done. Turn our eyes back to education, health benefits, social programs and most of all create jobs such as was done under Roosevelt. Start fixing the infrastructure of our own country. Build roads, bridges, dams, schools, art centers. That is at least one solution to our current dilemma. And it’s an honest solution in which the true majority of American people will benefit not just the top one percent.
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