Posts
In
Wisconsin, Republican Governor Scott Walker’s administration joined with the
conservative media to insure that the 900,000 people who signed petitions for
his recall were blacklisted from government appointments and candidacies, and
that those already in office were targeted with character assassination. In
order to make it easier for right-wing zealots to harass petition signers in
their homes and workplaces, the names and contact information for those 900,000
people were posted online. The fact that we can’t stop the fascists in Wisconsin makes it a bit harder to think that we can stand against the far more powerful fascists in D.C.
Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…
The right of the people to be secure…against unreasonable
searches and seizures, shall not be violated…
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the
right to a speedy and public trial…
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or other
infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury…
Could
any words be more comforting, yet who can you look at U.S. policy since 9/11 and
think that America still believes them? Do you ever wonder what the
government would do if you pissed it off, for example if you exercised
your First Amendment rights by putting a list of inflammatory words and phrases
on your blog?...
Ammonium
Nitrate. Mail ricin. Aryan Nation. Assassinate Boehner. Jihad. Hate America.
Terrorist. Bomb the capital. I’ll show them. Kill Alexander. Mail anthrax. C-4.
Suitcase bomb. Christian Identity Movement. Target government agents. How to
make firebombs. Death to America. Revenge bin Laden. Assassinate the president.
No one will ever know. Death to abortionists. Bomb the Golden Gate. Urea
nitrate. Al-Nusra. Death to the infidels.
White supremacy. Timothy McVeigh. They’re watching us. We’ll show them. Al
Qaeda. Shoot the survivors. Bomb abortion clinics. Strike during the World
Series. We’re going to get even. Kill niggers. Jewish conspiracy. Dirty bomb.
TNT. Gray area. Hold for ransom. Cover-up. Don’t volunteer information. Allahu
Akbar! Bigger than 9/11. Off-the-books. Hidden assets. This means war. Target
Americans. Racial superiority.. Refuse to answer questions. The Great
Satan. Al-Zawahiri. Germ warfare. Mujahedeen. They’re asking for it. Go after
liberals. Detonator. Kill Moslems. Taliban. Sharia. Spread infection. Plant a
bug. They owe it to us. New Crusades. Martyr for Allah. Burn the Koran. Born to
kill. Cyanide. Carbon monoxide. Bomb the Brooklyn Bridge. Target Christians.
Sniffer. Hail, Hitler. Kill school children. Secret search. Photograph target.
You can buy it all at Radio Shack. Bomb the Pentagon. They’re going to be
sorry. Don’t tell anyone. Make them suffer. Contact me through the usual means.
Frame him. Sneak-and-peek. Print counterfeit money. I’ll die before I talk.
Bomb the embassy. Conspiracy. Secret society. Poison the water supply. Attack
the subway. Bring down the Sears Tower. Dynamite. Nitro. Kill infiltrators.
Nerve gas. Secret weapons’ cache. They deserve to die. Death to Israel. Secret
code. Cayman Islands. Bomb churches.
...Would
it tap your phone, hack your computer, knock on your door, audit your
taxes, delete your blog, destroy your credit, question your neighbors,
deny you a passport, empty your bank account, plant kiddie-porn on your hard
drive, attach a GPS transmitter to your car, conduct a “sneak-and-peek,” put
your name on a No-Fly List, lock you up for years without a hearing…? When the
government operates in ever greater secrecy, unapologetically violates its own
laws, and does its best to destroy the lives of those who call attention to its
wrongdoing, all of the above are conceivable, so the remaining question is whom
do they consider important enough to turn their wrath upon. Surely not me, but
how can I be sure? If you were to put a long list of provocative words
on your blog, would you be sure?
“Paranoia
strikes deep
. Into your life it will creep
. It starts when you’re always
afraid
. Step out of line, the man will come and take you away.” –Buffalo
Springfield
We
send our young people to die in foreign lands, not in defense of freedom at
home—we’re destroying that ourselves—but in the hope that them being killed over
there will somehow keep us from being killed over here, yet every
time we violate another nation’s sovereignty by murdering its own people on
their own soil, that nation’s hatred of us increases. How many hundreds of
thousands of lives lost to “collateral damage” over how many decades is too
much? How much spying on ourselves and our friends is too much? How much ignoring
the sovereignty of other nations and treating them as our vassals is too much?
Amnesty International says we’ve already passed the limit. What took them so
long?
Our
founders’ concept of America was about more than preserving lives and
infrastructure; it was about upholding rights and liberties. I had known since
the 1960s that my government spied on some of its citizens without just cause,
but it was only with the passage of the ironically named “Patriot Act” that it
occurred to me that my own name might appear on a government
watch list if I Googled one too many of the wrong words; or wrote a
blogpost that some analyst didn’t like; or sent money to PETA, Earth First!, or
the Julian Assange Defense Fund.
I
told myself that I was surely being paranoid, if only because it was laughable
to think that even the most misguided analyst would consider me worthy of
government scrutiny. Then came Edward Snowden, and I learned that WE’RE ALL
under government scrutiny, if only to the extent that it stores personal
information about us for the day on which it decides to take a closer look at
any one of us, and who knows when or why that day might come? Now, I’ve learned
that my government not only collects data on all of its own citizens, it
collects data on millions upon millions of people in France, Spain, Germany,
Mexico, Brazil, and maybe other places that the Snowden documents will soon
reveal.
I
put a list of inflammatory words on my blog because I want my government
to look at me when I say: Terrorists aren’t our gravest threat, you are,
because only you can betray the promises made to us by the Founding Fathers. By
declaring a state of everlasting war during which you set yourself above the
Constitution and treat us all as potential enemies, you erect a wall between
you and us so that it is no longer “We the people…” but you the powerful and we
who cower at your feet in the hope that you won’t someday turn your jaundiced
eye upon us. No matter how physically safe you make us, if you throw
our founders' ideals in the garbage, where is the nobility that
justifies our existence? Have you forgotten the words you put into your
so-called Patriot Act...
“We
must seek the guilty and not strike out against the innocent or we become like
them who are without moral guidance or proper direction.”
...or
were they just put there to placate the masses with false assurances?
My
question to myself is whether I would do as Snowden did. The whole rest of his
still young life is looking none too good, yet when he dies, he can die knowing
that, with one idealistic act, he made his entire existence meaningful. Just as
Johann Pachelbel justified his life with a four-minute piece of
music, Snowden justified his by standing alone against the unholy strength and
resolve of The Government of the United States of America, and I envy him that.
I bear life better when I focus upon what one person can accomplish for good,
yet I am daily discouraged to find that far more people labor in the cause of
evil. What then is left for any person of nobility but to conclude that, if one
must choose, it is better to lose by doing good than to win by doing evil?
Better to be an Edward Snowden in the Moscow airport than a Barack Obama in the
White House or a Scott Walker in the governor’s mansion.
I chose the above version of Pachebel’s Canon in D because
it was performed by one person, a plain and simple man who appears unused to
the limelight and uncomfortable in it, yet a man capable of such beauty that he
gives me the courage to be alive, as did the writer of the Canon... as did the
bravery of Edward Snowden.
