StellaBlue

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Thu Sep-28-06 09:51 AM
Original message

This is worse than September 11th.

Yes, that is what I said.

On September 11th, the violence that our government has wrought the world over for the past half century (and before, in fits and starts), came back to visit its hell upon innocent Americans. This was not remarkable because of the nature of the attack, or the method, or the participants, but because of the victims. Americans, for the first time, knew the confusion and horror that has long been experienced by other innocent people in many countries when American bombs fell.

I don't need to list these countries. I also don't need to list the regimes who have previously used torture. Who we will now unabashedly be compared to in newspapers all around the globe. And rightfully so. The comparison is long overdue.

I thought that the selection of George W. Bush would be challenged, that Americans wouldn't stand for a blatantly stolen election. I thought that September 11th would awaken my fellow Americans, who, after an event of such shock and awe, would surely demand to know why we were so hated. I thought the Patriot Act, surely, would inspire mass protests, civil disobedience, and the refusal of the American people to countenance any more treason from their self-appointed, self-anointed "leaders."

I woke up this morning ill. I called in sick to work. I pattered into my dining room and sat down to check my email, and turned the TV on. I immediately remembered how enraged and appalled I'd felt last night, thinking about the implications of this evil act by our "elected representatives." I felt a deep, intractable sense of darkness. Heaviness. Dread. I have always been a cynic and a skeptic, but I am beginning to lose all hope in humanity. I called my mother, a legal secretary with a high school diploma who has always had to live paycheck to paycheck and who has never been particularly politically active or engaged. She was already at work, and said she was "just so depressed, just so depressed, I don't know what to think."

I looked over at the television. Regis and Kelly were there, on their stools like marionettes, heads bobbing, meaningless sounds coming out of their mouths. As if nothing has changed.

The stolen election(s) changed nothing.

September 11th changed nothing.

The passage of the treasonous and truly Orwellian Patriot Act changed nothing.

And now the suspension of habeas corpus, and the official approval of torture - torture - has changed nothing.

All they need now is a new Sedition Act, which, if the Republicans retain Congress in November, is not unlikely. If you think that a far-fetched assertion, who would've thought we would sanction torture?

But what shall we do? What can we do? We are all precariously hanging on to our homes and jobs as it is, lives tied to one corporate treadmill or another, our ambitions sagging under the weight of insurmountable debt, lack of health insurance, and all the other ususal, gold-plated nooses of the modern American consumerist gulag through which we condemn ourselves to wage slavery and political irrelevance.

I don't know what to think; or do. I do know that I will not submit; that I will not consent to aid their crimes. I will not be drafted. I will not be conscripted into any type of service whatsoever. I will not shut up. I will not be intimidated. Even if that means they will torture me.

I will not become one of them.

And, though they would no doubt be considered anti-American by those of the current ascendant anti-intellectual, theocratic, greedy, backward-looking, hateful ideology, the only other words that come to mind are these:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred. to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

This is worse than September 11th.

Yesterday Bush and his cronies managed to do what Osama and his Al Qaeda could not - take away our freedom.