June 18, 2008
We’re making history.
For centuries to come—if the world lasts that long—history books will ask why Americans didn’t stop their government from doing this. Everyone else on the planet has been asking that question for years.
I don’t understand why we’re not rioting in the streets about it. I guess because that’s not considered effective nowadays? But what is? Is anything effective? I’m going to write more letters and make more donations, and I’ve already been doing this but I don’t know what else to do. What else can we do?
This is not a rhetorical question, dear Clusterflock.
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6 Responses to “We’re making history.”
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I like both of these projects:
http://www.nrcat.org/
http://www.rejecttorture.org/
All indicators point to Bush administration officials retiring to their lives of privilege unaffected and unrepentant. Dennis Kucinich was on the floor of the House of Representatives for something like five hours reading the Articles of Impeachment. The next day, the “liberal” media barely mentioned it at all except to say that Congress would not act to impeach Bush so just forget about it. There is no new information in the document, but reading all 69 pages of the Articles of Impeachment is sobering.
Americans need to stand up and write their representatives. Today:
House
Senate
Oh, India. All of my thoughts on this are very dark, and many of them involve illegal acts. I fear that our nation is behaving very much the way Poles behaved during WWII, knowing that things were “going on” in those camps, but deliberately putting on blinders to avoid a sense of personal responsibility.
As to what we should do–beyond letter-writing, voting, and making donations to organizations that are fighting torture–I don’t know. I do believe that it helps to talk about it in forums such as this, though, and I thank you for continuing to prod us to keep this in our thoughts.
India–I know the frustration you are feeling; it keeps my stomach knotted up as well. You know, I keep thinking of the difference between these times and our lack of action, and the 60s, when people poured into the streets every day, speaking out even after students were gunned down at Kent State and beaten all around the country. It seems that the “establishment” learned something between then and now about the best ways to throw a blanket over all of America to keep it quiet: control the imagery; attack the source when it leaks out with the full weight of feigned patriotism and morality; support the vast medicating of the public and the notion that the right pill will make it all better (actually and metaphorically); promote the products and consumption that fosters insulation from community and retreat into a world of the Self; and form proxy institutions that deliver broad policy effects while remaining hidden. America has been weakened from within by the few who are able to soothe and quell and cajole to their own power-hungry ends. I tend to think that part of the poor state of our education system in this country has actually been fostered–deliberately undermined except for those who can afford to pay the highest prices for it (those who, in the eyes of the powerful, are the best heirs to the power they hold). I think different people will be able to do different things about this situation, and all should do something. How do you wake up a national moral outrage? At the very least we need to keep a steady drip going. And we need to get a new administration in place that will reach back into the recent past to “bring the evil-doers to justice,” as one of the evil-doers is so fond of saying.
I know that the torture detailed here includes many examples of systematic sexual abuse along with all the “usual” kinds of beating and waterboarding. But I wonder how Americans would react if our government decided that to “protect freedom and our way of life” we need to use the weapon of rape as it is being used in Darfur and was used in the Baltic wars. Might we also need to kill the children who “will only grow up to fight us”? What will we not do? And if this is so hard to answer, why is it so easy for some to call this country a “Christian Nation”? What we are lacking, across the country, is a capacity to feel shame. People don’t feel shame when they see themselves as occupying the top step of the great pyramid of humanity (and the cosmos, for that matter). What will bring them down to a real perception of their state? It all must start with clear words, courage, and standing in front of a tank when the opportunity arises–though even these things may be buried before change comes.
USA get your house in order! War criminals belong in prison, not running superpowers. How can Washington credibly host the UN and the US occupy a permanent seat on the Security Council when they cannot/will not bring to justice their own war criminals?
MJohnson: Same goes for China and Russia then, yes?