When I decided to use my full name as my DailyKos screenname, I thought about it a good bit beforehand. My biggest fear about losing my anonymity is that I could someday be renditioned and tortured because the things I say displease someone in the Bush Administration. That risk, however small, is an unavoidable fact of the Government we now have.
I have been expressing myself and fighting for others for too long to now be afraid and censor myself, or hide in anonymity. When I was in Chile, under the Pinochet regime, the DINA (secret police) came to visit us 6:00AM and demanded to know with whom we were associating and what books we were reading. They threatened my friend with gun.
Rather than hide deeper in fear, I began participating in popular demonstrations in which we students were chased by armed police on horseback and shot at with water canons. Although we tried to demonstrate in anonymity, it was particularly hard for me, since I was one of only a handful of black people in the whole country at the time. The day after one demonstration, my friends showed me that I was on the front page of a national newspaper. I was just one face among thousands, but they knew it was me because I was the only black person at the demonstration.
Although an activist friend of my first wife was later burned alive by the Pinochet dictatorship on the streets of Santiago, we continued to speak out and ultimately Pinochet fell and democracy returned. There is little George Bush can do to us that Pinochet and others like him have not done to thousands before us for expressing their views. There may come a time when clandestinity is required to express any opposition to our government, but that time has not yet come for me.
I am well acquainted with police states, yet I cannot allow myself to be afraid of them, even though I am aware of their intense interest in dissenters. I know that my phone could well be tapped and my e-mails monitored, since those millions of calls and e-mails recorded by Bush cannot ALL be going to members of Al Quaeda. I know that the Republicans are much more afraid of the Democrats who threaten their income than of Al Queda who guarantees their income.
Of course I worry that the Government might think my views traitorous, since I know they believe anyone who doesn't agree with them to be a traitor.
I know that with Yahoo, Hotmail and Google all sharing information liberally with the US government, my anonymity is mostly a figleaf and fiction. Even if the Government is not presently monitoring my communications, they can with little effort and no judicial oversight.
But, I didn't stop expressing my views when the military chased us down the streets of Santiago. I didn't stop translating at Nicaraguan medical centers, even though these same centers were a favorite target of the Reagan-supported Contras guerrillas. And I am not going to stop expressing my views about the Bush dictatorship simply because Armando has lost his anonymity.
Since at some point, I hope to publish a hugely personally embarrassing autobiography, I might as well learn to live in the muted glare of the spotlight right now, come what may.
To those who offer tips for going deeper undercover, I suggest another alternative: Publish your opinions using your full name, as you do when writing letters to the editor, and let the chips fall where they may. Those who freely choose this alternative will be more exposed, but never as much so as, for example, the Iraqis who are the greatest victims of the war we so urgently want to end. Should an MSN media outlet read here of my opposition to the war, they are welcomed to quote me by name or contact me directly for more of the same.