Random Rights Review- Part 1

I feel like I’m beating a dead horse. Or that I’m sounding like a paranoid lunatic. Or even a little like Chicken Little screaming about the sky falling. The thing is, I don’t want the sky to fall. I don’t want any of my crazy-sounding writings to be true. Or about to become true. Dude, I just want to get along.

I want to be left alone as long as I’m not hurting others, and I pretty much want others to be left alone if they aren’t hurting me. It’s that friction’ intersection where people interact that seems to be rife for trouble. But that’s to be expected as well. Cause there will always be people on the make, on the take and plain ol’ dirty. And in dealings with this segment of the population over the course of human history, we have evolved to our modern system of laws to regulate that intersection of interaction. To enforce those laws, we created  a special class of persons with special rights and duties.

Lately, it seems as if we have aggression directed at our particular system of governance and all those people we’ve given special powers. Some of knee jerk reactions in the face of said attacks leaves me with feeling of shame and a really shitty taste in my mouth.  Because there are some travesties being wrought in my name and the names of all American citizens, shit I do not agree with. And never will.

And the defense of these atrocities, I hear the ubiquitous, “yeah, but…” Fuck you. There’s no yeah but in the belief of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. That we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. When push comes to shove, if our ideals cave under, they weren’t so great to begin with. There weren’t strong at the inception. And under pressure, our ideals CRACKED. And how do we respond? Do we steady ourselves, reaffirm our belief in our laws and our Constitution, and dig back in to make that a living reality? Or as close as flawed humans can get? Fuck no. We seem to have gone the fuck off the rails, ya’ll. Seriously.

I’m sick of hearing that 911 devastated us and our country. Does that make you mad? Why? Those bitches that terrorized our country DID NOT BRING US TO OUR KNEES. They barely bloodied our nose. And no, I’m not being callous about these that died that day. It was a horrible, terrible event. But shit, guys– why elevate the acts of terrorists to such spectacular levels? As it stands, the death toll of Pearl Harbor and 911 are about the same. Did The Japanese also bring us to our knees, too?  If they did, we seems to be dropping to our knees awfully easily.  Not every time Americans die on American soil because of assholes does that bring us to our knees. At most, it bloodies our nose.

But given our response in the wake of 911, you’d think that enemies were something we can’t handle. Not and hold to our beliefs and ideals if our continued scared response is anything to go by.

Torturing prisoners. And playing semantics on whether they are emery combatants and covered by the Geneva Convention or not, is ridiculous and stupid. We are suppose to be the good guys. Error on the side of good, dickheads. Treat them with a small degree of humanity even if their side tried to take out your side. Treating them in any other way leaves our soldiers open to retaliation. Plus, it’s just he right thing to do.

Don’t lock bitches up indefinitely under the guise of law. It makes a mockery of the law. Give them due process- remember, we’re the good guys– and either jail/execute them or let them go. Don’t be like the Nazies and have concentration camps  and call it something else. Those men aren’t leaving for anything less than death. And it’s wrong. We need to make this right. And playing games with where they are housed, is stupid and sophomoric.

Don’t change portions of our Constitution pretending fear of terrorists when in reality, this is a rights grab by the government. If our fear is enough to compel us to throw out long-held fundamentals beliefs, then we didn’t have a solid foundation to begin with. Really? Allowing surreptitious recordings isn’t going to lead to more terrorists captured. It’s just going to lead to further encroachment of lawful citizens’s rights by the government under the color of looking for the bad guys. Slowly, this fear is turning our good guys into bad guys.

I mean, doesn’t “Homeland Security” sound like fatherland rhetoric from Hitler? First, we needed to erode the Constitution and the Bill of Rights because of our “War on Drugs.” Now, we are told we need less rights because of our “War on Terror.” Doesn’t it just seem like our governmental law enforcement agencies keep begging for more rights erosion in fighting these nebulous opponents skipping from one reason/cause to the next? Before the drug war, it was the cold war. What will it be next? Will we be duped again? Don’t forget the INNOCENT Japanese citizens who were sent to internment camps and had their property taken by the government for being of Japanese descent. All those crazy witch trials to get communist sympathizers by McCarthy. And so on. It won’t end. Those that have power want more, and they don’t want to give it up. And if you don’t believe they are USING these opportunities as they present themselves to do a rights grab, you are either a part of the problem or hopelessly naive. We look back on that shit now and shake our heads. Why aren’t we shaken’ our heads now?

I believe the founding principles of our country can withstand any enemy. I BELIEVE this with all of my heart. Subverting the law, our country and our people into fearful reactionaries makes me so sad. We don’t need to take on the tactics of the bad guys to get them. They’re freakin’ bad guys, they’re gonna fuck up. We’re gonna catch them. We don’t need to trample all over the Constitution or our citizenry to do it. We don’t need to compromise our ideals to go after terrorist, or criminals or anyone else breaking the law or acting in war-like aggression. Or become like the people we’re tracking down. Or create a society like the ones in which those we hunt down live.

If I could wish for one thing, it would be for people to run toward something good and make changes based on that instead of running from something we fear and removing Constitutional protections along that flight.

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