There has been a tremendous amount of speculation lately about what is wrong with America, but before we get into negative territory lets be clear about the fact that this is still the best place in the world to live. We live in a nation that is built on freedom, the expectation of excellence and the promise that hard work will be rewarded. The problem is that lately those concepts have been slipping. Our bungled economy has stripped away the possibility of reward for hard labor our failing educational system is pulling the rug out from under any idea of an expectation of excellence and the freedom of expression that has been the bedrock of our view of America is under attack on every front.
The latest affront is exemplified in the facist , National Defense Authorization Act which removes the protections of habeas corpus from the American judicial system and turns our civilian justice system over to the military. This is by far the worst piece of legislation in memory, because it eliminates the basic freedom on which our judicial system is built. I’ve already dealt with this in other blogs so I won’t go to any great lengths to deal with it here.
But what I will do is deal with the underlying principles of freedom that have deteriorated to such an extent that a bill like this can even show its facist face in public, let alone get passed. This situation is exemplified by the current trial of a pathetic little army private and his struggle against the massive, impenetrable gulag that is our military system of justice. But let’s forget the Gestapo tactics with which this kid has been treated and deal only with where this is going.
Bradley Manning saw injustices being carried out on film. He saw American troops committing atrocities against women and children. You want to say that this was war and that horrible things happen in war, you would be right, but for our government to excuse these atrocities without investigation and condemn Bradley Manning for bringing them to light is the epitome of moral degeneracy and governmental corruption.
A free and open society depends on the entire populace having access to what its government is doing. You will hear many arguments against that statement but they are all specious. Governments hate whistleblowers, as does any organization that wishes to keep their activities from public scrutiny. Our government is particularly adept at keeping secrets. It shouldn’t be, especially when those secrets have nothing to do with national defense and mostly to do with national screw-ups. The atrocity films that led Bradley Manning to turn those tapes over to WikiLeaks are a national disgrace. The army should have been investigating them from the moment they surfaced but instead of doing the right thing the army did what every half-baked politician who’s ever been caught with his hand in the till or his dick in the wrong woman has done. They tried to cover it up. You can’t change stupid. That’s why you need the Daniel Ellsberg’s and the Bradley Manning’s of the world. That’s why you need WikiLeaks. Because without them we have no recourse to the information that our governments are trying to keep from us, information that is almost always marked Top Secret or Classified but is the evidence of some kind of cover-up of ignorant, incompetent or illegal activities.
It constantly amazes me that our country is in a phase where we excuse the criminals and condemn the heroes that try to expose their criminal activities. Men like Bush, Cheney, Wolfewitz, Rumsfeld and their lot, who lied to the country, created wars for their own ends and destroyed the economy in order to cater to their equally criminal friends and associates in the business community have all gone without sanction while those who have tried to reveal their crimes must suffer, mostly because they aren’t rich enough or well enough connected to achieve justice.
You want to know why there are demonstrations in the streets? You want to know why congress has a pathetic 9% approval rating? You want to know why the gun nuts want guns capable of wiping out a small city? The answer is simple. We as a species need someone to believe in, we have always needed leaders to believe in; that’s why we created God. In a more mundane world we need to have heroes and men of distinction who are not constantly trying to screw us. Right now those men are few and far between. Right now our leaders, left and right appear to be nothing but a bunch of cowardly crooks and their sycophants, all bent on getting theirs while screwing the rest of the people out of their just rewards. This has to stop. If the government doesn’t get itself under control there are those in society who will be more than willing to help it achieve that end. We really don’t want that.
What we do want is an orderly progression to a state of equal opportunity; what we do want is justice based on facts not on net worth; what we do want is a legislature that that understands the needs of all it constituents, not just those in the top financial 1% ; what we do want is to be comfortable in the knowledge that we are not poisoning our planet and that we are leaving a safe environment for our children, grandchildren and great grand children.
Most of us who are alive today came into a world that was indeed tumultuous but at least for those in this country that world was reasonably safe and there was a future to which we could aspire. That is no longer the case and while terrorists make up a significant part of our security problems, the real threat to our lives and health is homegrown. It doesn’t carry a bomb, threaten to mow us down in the streets or annihilate the planet with a big boom but it is just as dangerous, more life threatening and far more of a treat to our health and happiness.
I’m speaking about banks that are too big to fail, oil companies that care nothing for the environment and bio-chemical giants that have turned our food producing capacity into a thug run patent war that threatens every farmer who doesn’t buy their product. I’m speaking about investment firms that operate outside regulatory guidelines with no thought of their investors well being and I’m speaking about legislators who care nothing for their mandate but only for the source of their next legal but immoral contribution.
Our beloved country is hanging over the abyss of greed and selfishness and the only thing that will bring it back s the recognition of that fact, its acceptance and the coming together of men and women of good will to fight the forces of greed and self-indulgence. Are we up to it?