Some places that do not threaten the United States of America.
With tensions calming down from the rumble in the desert (just kidding, not that one), I am eager to pose a more general, philosophical question to the Daily Kos universe. This is more food for thought than calling for any specific discussion, but as usual, it can be fascinating where discussion leads.
At a fundamental level, was Nevada Senator Harry Reid right? Is it time for leadership on the subject of violence specifically and harassment, intimidation, and inappropriate conduct more generally?
Here’s a little background from The Hill:
“Bernie should say something and not have some silly statement. Bernie is better than that. He should say something about this [and] not have some statement someone else prepared for him,” Reid said.
...
Reid told Sanders to take charge of his supporters during their talk Tuesday.
He said how Sanders would respond to the violent outbursts would be “a test of leadership” and said he was “hopeful and very confident that Sen. Sanders will do the right thing.”
One of the most difficult and gut wrenching aspects of our entire system of political economy is the fundamental role of violence. It is not a tertiary or minor element, and grappling with that reality challenges us intellectually and morally. We yearn desperately to refuse to believe it is really this bad. Yet violence is at the very core of public policy, both in terms of the budgetary process and in terms of the impact on people’s lives. We have a gargantuan national security state, much larger than any other nation on the planet. Meanwhile, Harry Reid is not a random American in this story. He is the Democratic Leader in the United States Senate, someone who has been in positions of influence and power for many years of the domestic police state and global empire.
Here’s how retired General Taguba described one small component of the violence endemic in our system for the preface of a report for Physicians for Human Rights:
After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.
The former detainees in this report, each of whom is fighting a lonely and difficult battle to rebuild his life, require reparations for what they endured, comprehensive psycho-social and medical assistance, and even an official apology from our government.
But most of all, these men deserve justice as required under the tenets of international law and the United States Constitution. And so do the American people.
Note permanent war has been going on for so long now that the current Administration is no longer even the current Administration, and that is just one little piece of the larger story arc of state sanctioned violence.
If foreign policy isn’t your thing, take the criminal justice system. Not only is its sheer size and disparate impact on poor and minority communities a gross injustice on its face, but we go beyond even that measure of bad policy into utter depravity by subjecting incarcerated Americans to various kinds of violence up to and including sexual abuse, solitary confinement, indentured servitude, and death. And more death. And more death. An excerpt from that Atlantic article “American Slavery, Reinvented”:
Angola’s farm operations and other similar prison industries have ancestral roots in the black chattel slavery of the South. Specifically, the proliferation of prison labor camps grew during the Reconstruction era following the Civil War, a time when southern states established large prisons throughout the region that they quickly filled, primarily with black men. Many of these prisons had very recently been slave plantations, Angola and Mississippi State Penitentiary (known as Parchman Farm) among them...
More than a century later, our prison labor system has only grown. We now incarcerate more than 2.2 million people, with the largest prison population in the world, and the second highest incarceration rate per capita. Our prison populations remain racially skewed. With few exceptions, inmates are required to work if cleared by medical professionals at the prison. Punishments for refusing to do so include solitary confinement, loss of earned good time, and revocation of family visitation. For this forced labor, prisoners earn pennies per hour, if anything at all.
From the drug war at home to GWOT/OCO abroad, from Occupy to Ferguson, from asset forfeiture to national security letters, from economic sanctions to drone strikes, from Gitmo to Abu Ghraib, from Libya to Iraq, from waterboarding to stress positions, from TSA to SWAT, and many more, our nation has employed an astounding variety of public policy tools that bring violence, harassment, intimidation, and similar degrading and inhumane treatment to Americans at home and our fellow human beings across the globe. These are specific, concrete policy choices we continue to make this very day. Policy choices Democrats continue to make.
Should Senator Reid say something about this? Should he take charge of his supporters who are funding these actions and protecting lawbreakers from prosecution?
This is a test of leadership. What kind of vision does the Democratic Party have for the future of our nation and its relationship with the rest of the world? In short, do we condemn violence and hold its perpetrators to account, or not?
