[promoted by BooMan]
Years and years ago, I had someone very close to me call in the middle of the night. She was contemplating doing the unthinkable, staring down the barrel of self-annihilation, ending her life. She called me because she was desperate. Her life was difficult, miserable and full of pain but she didn’t want to end it, she just wanted to know why she shouldn’t end it.
If you’ve never been there, it’s more difficult than you can imagine. We go through our days saying why of course it is worth living, but when you’re looking into the frightened eyes of someone who is no longer convinced, what do you tell them? You’ve got to get down to the core of what makes life precious, beautiful and worthwhile, because someone you care about very much no longer realizes that.
In many ways America is traveling down the same path. Of course I mean that metaphorically, as the physical rocks and soil of what we call the United States will last long after people choose to stop calling it that. No, I am referring to the cultural values of America, perhaps more idealistically known as “what makes America great” – that is what the people in my country are close to wiping out, in fear and desperation to make the pain go away, and because it’s no longer clear that it is worth saving.
It’s easy to sit in your civics class and hold aloft the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and sing odes to them. But try it after you’ve had police storm your apartment without a warrant, looking for a drug dealer that isn’t there (oops, wrong address). Try doing it after you’ve gone through hundreds of police roadblocks set up ostensibly to catch drunk drivers, but fining you for not having your stickers up to date. Try doing it after you’ve had your shoes removed, your body wanded and your personal belongings riffled through in front of others when you’re coming back to the U.S. after a trip abroad. Try doing it when breastfeeding your child is a crime and when the accidental baring of a nipple on TV garners a half million dollar fine.
Try cherishing those documents when the clerk at the corner store sits behind glass for fear that you will rob them, when restaurants have armed uniformed guards, when banks have hundreds of cameras, when you’re forced to show ID to any curious passing police officer, when you’ve got to give blood and urine samples to a prospective employer and when your fingerprints are required to get a driver’s license. When your landlord can search your home at any time and so can the police with his permission. When all of your financial records are available online for a fee, when your phone records can be bought by the public. When your internet and phone company and bank tell you openly your records and transactions will be given to the authorities whenever they ask and no warrant is necessary. When police dogs can sniff your person, your car and your luggage and despite the fact there is no certification necessary for their training, if they “indicate” there is illegal substances, you can be searched.
Try writing epic poems to celebrate these documents when it feels like your vote doesn’t count. Even when there’s no monkey business with electronic machines, you live in rigged, gerrymandered districts designed to keep one political party in power. When your vote in the presidential election goes not to the name on the ballot but to a member of the electoral college, whom you’ve never heard of and yet he or she is deciding your vote. And to be able to vote at all you’ve got to find the right precinct, the right station, fill out the right papers, show the right ID. And of course never have been convicted of a crime because then you will learn this “right” is no right at all but merely a privilege.
Try lauding the law of the land when it is buried under a ton of silt from complex judicial decisions that water down such clean and clear language like “Only Congress has the power to declare war” to something amorphous like the President has the right to conduct armed hostilies which include wiretapping phones of innocent Americans because they may be talking to a person who may be linked to a terrorist organization because Congress gave the President the authorization to use force based on an earlier law which said it is ok for the President to initiate hostilies so long as he gave Congress an update every 90 days. Or when the tax code is so labyrinthine and complex that you need to pay someone else to do the paperwork, and that someone else can sell your records for profit to another company and still it is only you responsible, not them, and when the IRS says you made a mistake you are guilty until proven innocent.
Try championing the Declaration of Independence when you can’t even understand the monetary system, have no idea what the heck fractional reserve banking means, when the green pieces of paper in your wallet belong to a private corporation which has an exclusive contract with the government and yet somehow you the citizen are responsible for trillions in debt and you have to rely on nameless “experts” who tell you this is all somehow good for the “economy”. When you are taxed heavily by the faceless FICA yet you know the government is borrowing that money with no coherent plan to pay it back.
Try celebrating the Bill of Rights when your home, your money and years of your life can be taken away in the misbegotten “War on Drugs”, which criminalizes the possession and use of some substances while other, equally toxic substances are completely legal. When lives are destroyed, families ripped apart and peaceful citizens are thrown into the ever-expanding prison system to mingle with violent predators. Try celebrating freedom when your country has more people behind bars, on parole and on probation (per capita) than any other nation on earth – even more than China.
It is a grim time in America and all of those values that many of us grew up to consider fundamental, bedrock principles that are worth dying for have been steadily eroding for years. It becomes so hard to draw a line in the sand and say this is it, this is where I say enough is enough. And if you look around and see the things which make life worth living are all slipping away, where do you get the energy to fight to preserve the decaying fragments of what is left? When do you say enough is enough?
I guess we all have to make our choices, to look deep down in our souls and figure out which American values are worth it. I commend the hundreds of thousands of people who marched to protest the attempt to criminalize any contact with undocumented workers. I commend those who marched in the Texas heat last summer who dared to ask why our soldiers are fighting and dying in Iraq. I commend those who stood up and supported Senator Feingold, not because he “criticized” the President, but because he said by god in America there is no king, the Congress makes the laws and everyone up to and including the President must follow them. I commend those who stood up and supported Rep. Waxman, not because he “criticized” the President, but because he said by god in America there is no king, the Congress makes the law and the President can only sign into laws the bills that Congress hath voted upon.
I commend all of those who stood up to protest a war based on lies, misinformation and spin. I commend those who stood up and supported Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the ACLU as they worked diligently to document the abuses at Guantanamo Bay and at American-run prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. I commend those who stand up every single day to protect, defend and augment those fundamental principles that truly are about preserving life and liberty, free speech (yes even when it is unpopular), the freedom to assemble, freedom of worship, and freedom to be secure in your property and your person. I commend all of those of you who struggle to preserve the principle that members of the government must obey the law and yes even the Constitution. I stand up and salute all of you, famous and the anonymous unknown, praised and unheralded alike.
My greatest fear is that many Americans no longer even can remember those values you have stood up and struggled to protect. That their fear and loathing has blotted out the memory of a country which once led the world in defending human rights and now keeps men cowering in their own excrement in a tiny cell because it somehow enhances “national security”. That so many Americans are like my friends on that fateful day so many years ago, wondering what is the point of struggling to preserve liberty and keep freedom alive when it seems like it is already gone and all that remains is hate, fear and suspicion of others.
The good news is my friend is here with us on the planet today and that dark day is now long in the past. It is my fondest wish that one day all of us will be able to say that America’s dark days are long in the past as well.
Cross-posted from the doubleplusungood crimethink website Flogging the Simian
