The strength and sanctity of the American way of life comes from the democratic solidarity of the American people as well as the critical divisions maintained by our society. There are, of course, many detrimental divisions (like the segregation that Strom Thurmond spent his life fighting for), but this does not mean that divisions are always bad. If we had unisex bathrooms, instances of rape would almost certainly become far more prevalent; if the pentagon were left undivided, military order in this country would surely break down. If there was no separation between the state and federal government, there is no way that each state would receive appropriate federal support or funding. Without a government that follows the Voyerian economic philosophy of "laissez faire" (let it be), we are living in a country inching ever closer to fascism. Arguably most important of all, though, is the simple fact that if we lack a fortified separation between our religious institutions and the government, America is not a democracy, but a theocracy.
While it can be effectively argued that the breakdown of American democracy started with the 2000 election being overturned by the supreme court, it actually began long before that fateful act of judiciary treason. Congress tried to shut down the government without the consent of the American people in the nineties, the same government that negotiated with four different brands of terrorists in the eighties to make a quick buck and secure the violent overthrowing of a democratically-elected government, as well as help fund the drug trade that we now know the C.I.A. to have been intimately involved in during that time period and beyond.
Corruption, of course, is nothing new, but that is no reason to conclude that nothing need be done. We, the people, can still demand that our government at least be accountable for its actions, if the enlightened among us decide to unite and speak with one voice, as we did during the civil rights and feminist movements. If we stage a million man march for each and every cause that we care about, and we decide to never stop marching, it won’t matter if there are actually a million people marching; the government will have no choice but to listen to us. The reason they stopped listening is simply that we let them divide our collective voice, and the chief cause of this is that for four decades, collective thinking was propagandized as Communist thinking. It’s time to end the Red Scare, once and for all, before it consumes America for the third time in a century. If we want all of the troops to come home now, we can make it so, but not in silence. If we want the people that we elect to stop lying, we have to stop letting them. Richard Nixon was forced to resign because of Watergate, because we made it so, but we decided to make nothing of Plamegate, which was undeniably a far graver betrayal, as even Watergate wasn’t treason. JFK is written off as a mediocre president by many because the Bay of Pigs invasion didn’t work, but neither did the Illegal Invasion of Iraq or the War on Terror. Jimmy Carter lost popularity—in large part—due to his supposed mismanagement of the Iran Hostage Crisis, but what is to be said, and has been done, about the Bush Administration’s horrendous response to Hurricane Katrina. Bill Clinton was impeached because he lied about oral sex, but every single proponent of the Illegal Invasion of Iraq—which would obviously include each and every member of the Bush Administration—lied about being certain of Saddam Hussein’s connection to Osama bin Laden, as well as the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. What happened to the people who spoke out against the Illegal Invasion? They were called traitors, and said to be "soft on terror". What happened to those who told the truth about the absence of W.M.D. in Iraq? They and their families were targeted by the U.S. Government. For proof of this, one need look no further than Joseph and Valerie Wilson, who serve effectively as the Rosenbergs of our day, only we know for sure that they did nothing wrong. Instead of "Communists" and "communist sympathizers", the witches of the new American Inquisition are "traitors", "terrorists" and "terrorist sympathizers", and Iraq will undoubtedly go down in history as the "Korean War" of the Cold War between Christian America and the Muslim World.
Thankfully, with a more intellectually mature president comes more intelligent language. With the official "Wars" on drugs and terror officially abandoned, we can breathe a bit of a breath of somewhat fresh air, but, just as the cannabis clubs are still being raided, the C.I.A. is still allowed to torture. We mustn’t forget that every citizen of the world is protected by the Geneva Conventions, or that violating them by torturing our detainees—whether they’re guilty or innocent—we are creating a situation that makes it easier for people like Osama bin Laden to recruit young followers. We must always respect the Geneva Conventions, not just for the sake of abiding by international law, but for the sake of national security, which is supposedly pretty important in this country. The hot-button question of our era seems clearly to be "Why do they hate us?", and beyond the misguided allegation that "they" do indeed collectively hate "us" as a populous, it seems beyond obvious hat a group of Middle-Eastern religious extremists would most likely hate us for one of two reasons. The first is our brutal implementation of American-style Capitalism around the world—specifically where there are valuable natural resources—and the second is the proud proclamation by a vast majority of our loudest and highest paid voices that we are a Christian Nation.
One area where some solace might be found is in the fact that the U.S.S.R. is a thing of the past, because if the Cold War were still going on, it wouldn’t take long for our enemies to unite against us. It cannot be ignored that the fear that led us into Afghanistan the first time around was rooted in one fact: Communism and Islam are inherently compatible. Out of this fear comes an unfortunate blindness to another undeniable fact: Communism, as an entity abroad, is not a threat to the American way of life. We are still waging war for purposes of containment; somehow we didn’t learn that lesson after sacrificing a quarter-million lives for what, in hindsight, turned out to be an intercontinental flexing contest between Uncle Sam and a hyped-up foreign beast that never posed any real threat to America after the day Josef Stalin died. We would like to tell ourselves that we learned our lessons from our first Afghani intervention, which is the most current reason being given for us still being in Iraq, but in reality, we are applying the Afghanistan solution to Iraq, and what we really should have done in Iraq is what we did in Afghanistan. Of course, it’s too late to do that; the Iraqi army was relieved of duty by Donald Rumsfeld, which is what turned the nation to chaos.
One of the harsh truths that we must face is that we, as a people, are not responsible for buying everything that our government breaks, but while we ignore that basic truth, we ignore the obligation that we have to the Americans who are currently being oppressed. Blacks, women, homosexuals, atheist, agnostics, secular humanists, Native Americans, and children are all still being treated like second-class citizens in this country, but nobody seems to care about them as much as they do about the Iraqi people—who only became the object of our affection when we received the fourth, and we pray final, justification for the extension of our illegal occupation.
Any individual or institution that suppresses the rights of others is as un-American as King George.
Children are said to be left out of the democratic process for two reasons. The first of these is that they don’t pay taxes, and are therefore deemed unworthy of representation, but religious institutions don’t pay taxes either, and there is no legal sanction mandating that children be kept separate from the government. So, according to this first argument, any religious presence or influence must be removed from the U.S. government. The second reason given to rationalize children’s oppression is the intellectual inferiority of children, but this directly implies that unintelligent adults should be denied the right to vote, as well as any and all demented seniors. The truth is that politically aware children absolutely deserve the right to vote, but since we can’t force all potential voters to submit to any form of testing, what we need to do is develop a test of political awareness and use it to add eligible voters in the form of minors. Such a system would not only increase the voting population, but would also create incentive among the youth to become socially and politically aware. The only reason that one would oppose such a program is because they don’t want to live in a democracy.
The age of parental manipulation must come to an end right now, or we are no better than any other nation of oppression. This manipulation includes not only the forced inheritance of political beliefs, but spiritual brainwashing as well. It is widely accepted that children do not possess the emotional maturity to make well-founded decisions for themselves, which is why we have statutory rape laws in this country. It should then be understood that parents forcing religion upon their children is just as abusive as forcing them into sports programs, beauty pageants, or arranged marriages. It is also worth noting that while so many of us are so quick to point out the horrors of fetuses and embryos being aborted for "frivolous" reasons, but no one bothers to mention the incalculable detrimental toll that is taken on real-life children when their parents decide to split up for frivolous reasons. It’s easy to speak out against a defenseless young woman who has just exercised her legal right to choose, and even easier to spit in the faces of loving, monogamous, same-sex couples who simply seek the same basic rights as the rest of the population, but for some reason it is much more difficult for us to bemoan the real threat to the sanctity of marriage, which is, of course, divorce. Gay marriage means that mutual love and respect is adding more monogamous couples to in the population of married Americans, whereas divorce means that personal selfishness is decimating that very same populous. So, who’s a real threat to the sanctity of marriage? It is often said that marriage is a "sacred union between a man and woman", with the critical passage about "till death do us part" being conveniently omitted, even though ephemerality is far more central to concept of marriage than heterosexuality. It can be effectively argued that the heterosexual aspect is no more central to the institution of marriage than polygamy once was, and with that in mind, how can it be denied that the legalization of gay marriage is anything other than the latest step in social evolution? The similarities between the oppression of children and homosexuals lie in the solutions. Allowing minors to vote based on a test of social and political awareness is to allow the population of eligible voters to broaden and enrich itself, just as the inclusion of gay couples in the married population would broaden and enrich the institution of marriage. For some reasons, though, the voters and married couples both insist on holding themselves back, most likely due to egotism, which, as we all know, is as American as treason.
It mustn’t be forgotten that there is a distinct difference between the issues of abortion and gay marriage, and it is simply this: one can be opposed to abortion without religion being a factor in their decision making, but there is no secular rationale supporting the opposition to gay rights. This means that there is no reason for to be on board with women’s rights—pertaining to abortion—without being on board with gay rights first. Just another entity proving that America is on the road to theocratic existence. Secular Americans might find some relief with the Obama Administration, but it’s not nearly enough. Separation of church and state means no National Prayer Breakfast, no tax exemptions for religious institutions, no laws written with respect to specific religions, and, most importantly of all, equality for atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, and the rest of the American people seeking freedom from religion. Until these issues are no longer issues, we will not be able to call America a democracy without lying through our teeth.
Demagogues from the right spent six years telling the enlightened portion of the populous that failing to support the Illegal Invasion of Iraq (which flew in the face of everything from our own Constitution to the Nuremberg charter) meant not supporting the troops, with the obvious irony being that the Invasion supporters were trying to put the troops in danger for no apparent reason, while those opposing it were trying to keep them safe, and perhaps more importantly, here (just in case, say, a hurricane devastates one of our major cities). Of course, supporters of the I.I.I. simply used that line—another example of how moral latitude assists in the organization of political voices—to cloud the real issue, which was, and is, American ethnocentrism. That’s what made us so sure of ourselves in violating the U.N. Charter to take out Saddam Hussein; and when we found out that the Saddam-Osama connection was bogus, what did we do? Instead of punishing those responsible for fabricating the pretense for war based on faulty intelligence, we clung to the next reason we found to fight. We were there to get the W.M.D. that were in Iraq. When there turned out to be no W.M.D., again, instead of demanding answers, we bought the next company line. Now we were—and still are—fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here, but what’s really happening is, we’re fighting them over there, and because of that, if anyone—or anything—poses a serious threat to the homeland, we are utterly unprepared. If another natural disaster occurred, we would once again have to hire private contractors to secure the area, and as anybody who came back to New Orleans after Katrina will tell you, that makes for a much scarier—and far less efficient—reconstruction. The detrimental effect that Blackwater & Co. had on the city of New Orleans is incalculable, as is the amount of damage they have done in Iraq, but what we do know is that they got paid up to ten times as much as our soldiers, and bear the burden of the responsibility for Fallujah. With that in mind, how can one support the troops of this country without opposing the presence of contracted missionaries? They can’t; sorry, that’s the truth. Kos was right when he distinguished between the death of a U.S. soldier and a mercenary, and he shouldn’t have had to apologize for what he said. On a somewhat related note, how can one truly say that they are opposed to terrorism unless they actively oppose the covert military action that causes the blowback that we call terrorism? This is not to suggest that we—the people, the civilians—are in any way deserving of the blowback; merely a reminder that these acts of terror are not spontaneous, unprovoked actions. It is important to identify things for what they are, and 9/11 was blowback; until we wholly accept and address that fact, we will be unable to effectively prevent the next of its kind. Since September of 2001, we have engaged in countless acts of terror that we call enhanced interrogation techniques, and we’re supposed to feel better about it now, because only the C.I.A. can do it. Well, the C.I.A. can create terrorists just as well as the military; arguably better (they did create bin Laden). Nothing in this world is uncaused, but for some reason, when the cause is our presence in a foreign land, we insist on looking elsewhere—or even worse, pretending that there is no cause at all. We say that they hate us for our freedom, and they may, but would they go to such great lengths and make such irreversible sacrifices for such a vague and frivolous purpose? In short, would they have done what they did to us if we never went over there in the first place? Why must we still delude ourselves into thinking that our freedom, and not our global military and capitalistic presence, that is the cause of their disdain for us? Even if the anti-American sentiment is to be accepted as spiritually-based, rather than rooted in nationality, might that have something to do with the fact that we proudly refer to the United States a Christian nation? The Koran is not anti-freedom, but it certainly could be interpreted as being anti-capitalistic, and, in reality, there’s nothing wrong with that. There is, of course, a lot wrong with theocratic oppression, but if we’re really engaging in this culture war on that pretext, shouldn’t we deal with our own theocratic oppression first?
Terrorism is nothing more than a last resort taken by those desperate enough to sacrifice their lives in the name of a cause they don’t entirely understand. If they were actually dying in the name of a noble cause, and they actually understood what it was, they would be martyrs, but they don’t, so they’re not. If we were dealing with martyrs, we’d have a lot more to worry about. To win this culture war, all that we need to do is lift the veil, and part of that unveiling involves exposing the democratic superpower that we really are, which means that the first step on the road to recovery is restoring the heart of our American Democracy. This means accepting certain difficult truths, so as to prevent our regrettable history from repeating itself. The first of these truths is that the only thing that has changed since 9/11 is rhetoric. We are not safer, nor are we any more prepared to deal with disaster situations. Iraq has gone from being relatively stable under a dictatorship (more stable than a handful of other dictatorships around the world) to a chaotic haven for our enemies. The national debt has sunk to unprecedented lows. Religion has more of an influence than it has ever had in our government. We have been rewarding corporations for maximizing profits by laying off American workers. It has been established that to speak out against the president during wartime is treason, yet now there is a new president, and those rules seem to be changing. To call this anything other than racism is to do the same thing Nancy Grace did when Larry King asked about her dead fiancé, and lying is both a sin and a moral vice. Remember, we mustn’t lie to ourselves, especially not about ourselves. To claim certain knowledge of Heaven is to commit such a basic moral vice, though it is obviously a basic American right to hold such beliefs. When those beliefs become certainties, however, believers turn into demagogues, and it cannot be forgotten that a liar is a liar, and a demagogue is a demagogue. No living person knows that Heaven—or God—exists, and while it is perfectly fine to believe in such things, it is not fine to claim that you have certain knowledge, while contending that you are a realistic and honest person. We do, of course, have a right to be dishonest, but we also have a moral obligation to be hones, at least, to ourselves. If we oppose gay rights, we are homophobic: afraid of homosexuality. If we hold Obama to different standards than we held Bush to, we are ether political loyalists—to the detriment of our moral and patriotic interests—or we are simply uncomfortable with a black man being in the white house, which would make us white supremacists. If we fly the confederate flag—or the American Swastika, as it is seen by many black Americans, and for good reason—we are white supremacists. The ban in this country shouldn’t be on gay marriage, it should be on the confederate flag. The symbolic war that we are fighting shouldn’t be on drugs, but on hate crimes, which conveniently would mean the same thing as "War on Terror", but would lack the appeasement of domestic acts of terror. The Columbine killings (which were made possible by the N.R.A. and those hands that finally are dead and cold) and Matthew Shepherd’s death (which was made possible by the G.H.F. Kansas crazies who would later picket his funeral) were just as much a threat to the American way of life as 9/11, and the reason for that is because if we cant stop churches from inspiring terrorism at home, then we’ve got no chance against a threat from abroad, no matter who it is. Our strength comes from our solidarity, and bigotry is the cancer that eats away at democratic solidarity. Homophobia is the gravest threat facing the American people today, and we mustn’t forget that neutrality is a myth. When it comes to gay rights—as with everything else—one is either a proponent, or an opponent. It took white abolitionists to get the slaves freed. It took male feminists to pass the nineteenth amendment. Now it will take straight gay rights activists to liberate gays. One hopes we aren’t too scared to stand up for equality.