I see some of the election results are starting to roll in. Huckabee wins this, McCain that, Clinton v. Obama, primary primary primary. Yippee.
The thing I keep thinking where our government is concerned is about a lesson we should have learned from history.
I've read essays and listened to lectures about how the common people did nothing when the people in power started doing horrific things in pre-WWII Germany. When they started rounding up Jews and Gays and Gypsies, the "normal" folk assumed it'd get better.
I think for a few years a lot of us have been assuming it'd get better in this country.
Yesterday I heard a report on the radio about torture. The report was from someone who had been detained by the greatest army on earth (that would be ours, the U.S.) and shipped to a prison out of reach of the US legal system. He went on to say he was tortured. The torture he described was first being cut by a scalpel on his left pectoral, then his right, and then with over 30 individual cuts on his genitals.
Did you catch that? They cut scars and made his genitals bleed.
Now, you may say that terrorists deserve what they get. You may say that torture actually works as a deterrent or as a way of garnishing information.
Here's what I say:
I am outraged, appalled, unbelieving, that our government is enabling this kind of behavior. Worse, I am terrified that those other people in the world are now looking at U.S. Citizens the way we look at pre-WWII Germans and asking why we are letting our government get away with it.
I can only hope that with the coming regime change in our country that we can do away with the torture, the inhuman treatment of other people, the insulting excuses from the head executive that they believe they are above the law.
Imagine what's going to happen to your son or daughter when the bad guys catch them overseas. Imagine what's happening when our country is the bad guys.
Somebody please tell me how one person can start to affect a grass roots change in the way our country does business with the rest of the world. How can I help to make the torture stop? How can you help to make the torture stop?
Is electing one of these politicians going to do the trick?
2 Comments
None of them would halt this filth, save Kucinich who is out and Gravel who's nonexistent, and maybe Paul. They're all traitorous scum who fall all over themselves trying to outHitler each other, to the delight of appreciative dullards and thunderous applause.
Torture is now an integral part of our authoritarian police state. This fascist government, and I mean that in a very real way, has announced to the world it will plumb the depths of human depravity to maintain it's hegemony. In essence we've become the bad guys, and we have to wake up to that fact.
I agree. in the world's eyes, we're the badguys. But i don't believe we have to accept that.
We have to change that. How do we go about it? will electing new folks do the trick? How many generations will it take? Where do *I* start in order to help make the change back to where we are not the badguys any more? What can each of us do to facilitate the speedy return of America to it's former greatness?