hindsight foresight (later than we think)
When I was young and the light shone more clearly, I participated in ongoing "what would I have done" conversations, mostly about Germany in the 30s. We were all so sure that we would have done something substantive, we would not have gone about or daily business as the Social Democrats handed their government over to the Nazis, as the camps were built, all those things we knew they witnessed and did nothing about. Somebody should have organized hit squads,we thought, to go in and liberate people from the camps, at least a few of them. Nobody should have cooperated with the regime. And the Social Democrats should never have handed over their country. The Nazis never won an election: they got the government handed to them so they would stop disrupting the smooth running of daily affairs.
Okay. Here I am, an American, living in a time when the Constitution is daily mutilated -- not in bursts of criminal politics, but in a systemic and principled fashion: and what am I doing? I'm disapproving.
It's not an abstract thing. The constitutional pribnciples that are at risk are not just a matter of "will we have a say in who governs?' which is a serious enough question. These things have immediate, long-range, and sometimes terminal consequences for actual human beings.
I've been thinking we were in an analog to 1932, but it's later than that. We already have a hijacked government and the loss of democratic institutions (such as they were, but they were something and we have lost them). We already have torture camps and disenfranchised citizens. Look at the word "citizens:" in case you -- given the people I know who read this, I don't think it's likely -- but just in case you do think, that citizens are somehow more real people than noncitizens, and ought to be more deserving of decent treatment and ought to have their rights more carefully protected: we have citizens who are held without bail or possibility of release, without charges made against them, without the ability to read or be told the reason for their detention, without access to legal representation. Citizens whose property has been seized without trial or warrant, whose families don't know where they are, who have no reason to expect a change or release ever. Some are in solitary confinement: some are held in crowded conditions: some are beaten, shackled, deported to places where they do not speak the language and where they continue to receive harsh treatment and have no recourse.
And that's our citizens.
We require men of certain national origins to register themselves, separately from the usual record keeping of the green card, visa, and naturalization processes. We have vast prisons in our own country, some run privately and for profit, where children with and without their families are detained in outrageous conditions for indefinite periods of time. Most of them are there because they don't have permission to enter the country. Some don't even have that reason: they were picked up in indiscriminate raids, and even though they are not even "illegals" -- they may have green cards, or they may even be citizens -- they may spend a large part of their developing years in these conditions.
These are not aberrations: they are the system.
And what the hell am I doing? Disapproving.
I'm thinking: what will we think in retrospect? I was a teenager 25 years after the end of World War Two. What will a teenager think -- say thirty years from now? What simple thing will they say we should have done, as citizens? What monkey wrench, what action, what refusal to cooperate will they point to and say why on earth didn't you do at least that?
At least get on with the demand for impeachment, I think.
Okay. Here I am, an American, living in a time when the Constitution is daily mutilated -- not in bursts of criminal politics, but in a systemic and principled fashion: and what am I doing? I'm disapproving.
It's not an abstract thing. The constitutional pribnciples that are at risk are not just a matter of "will we have a say in who governs?' which is a serious enough question. These things have immediate, long-range, and sometimes terminal consequences for actual human beings.
I've been thinking we were in an analog to 1932, but it's later than that. We already have a hijacked government and the loss of democratic institutions (such as they were, but they were something and we have lost them). We already have torture camps and disenfranchised citizens. Look at the word "citizens:" in case you -- given the people I know who read this, I don't think it's likely -- but just in case you do think, that citizens are somehow more real people than noncitizens, and ought to be more deserving of decent treatment and ought to have their rights more carefully protected: we have citizens who are held without bail or possibility of release, without charges made against them, without the ability to read or be told the reason for their detention, without access to legal representation. Citizens whose property has been seized without trial or warrant, whose families don't know where they are, who have no reason to expect a change or release ever. Some are in solitary confinement: some are held in crowded conditions: some are beaten, shackled, deported to places where they do not speak the language and where they continue to receive harsh treatment and have no recourse.
And that's our citizens.
We require men of certain national origins to register themselves, separately from the usual record keeping of the green card, visa, and naturalization processes. We have vast prisons in our own country, some run privately and for profit, where children with and without their families are detained in outrageous conditions for indefinite periods of time. Most of them are there because they don't have permission to enter the country. Some don't even have that reason: they were picked up in indiscriminate raids, and even though they are not even "illegals" -- they may have green cards, or they may even be citizens -- they may spend a large part of their developing years in these conditions.
These are not aberrations: they are the system.
And what the hell am I doing? Disapproving.
I'm thinking: what will we think in retrospect? I was a teenager 25 years after the end of World War Two. What will a teenager think -- say thirty years from now? What simple thing will they say we should have done, as citizens? What monkey wrench, what action, what refusal to cooperate will they point to and say why on earth didn't you do at least that?
At least get on with the demand for impeachment, I think.