I am so sad and angry and frustrated. I grew up watching the wave of progress that swept through our country in the 1960's. One of my first political memories is being swept up from our backyard by my mother and rushed inside as protesters from a Black Panther rally fled the police. After my mother got us inside, I ran to one of the front room windows in our ground floor apartment to watch.
I saw lots of people running. Most vividly I remember seeing a white policeman smash a black man's face into a public water facet. I saw - I think for the first time (pre-Freddie Kreuger) - blood spewing out it seemed every where.
Later I remember watching the aftermath of Dr. King's assassination. Violent, ugly expressions of an age old despair - LA, NY, Deytroit, Chicago...
I watched the pain of RFK's assassination on a little black and white tv with the old rabbit ears. All that pain. I remember my mother being afraid, very afraid. Nonetheless, she was riveted by these events and made us watch with her as our country seemed to change.
All that pain. All that sacrifice. But it was worth it because we were moving in a positive direction. The idea was to give more to black people,more to the poor, more to women and children, more to the "least" among us. At the time these goals seemed not just to be morally right and achievable but they also seemed to be wise investments in our future as a nation. As rabbis, priests, ministers, amd imams joined together to face police dogs, batons, and jail cells, I know now that the world was watching, enthralled.
We were magnificient then (and we apparently still don't know how magnificent we were)! Every hippie; every Freedom Rider; every southern black registering to vote for the first time; every bra-burner! We - the majority of Americans - wanted more and better for all of us. We wanted to touch the moon - and we did it. We wanted to prevent old peolpe from living off cat food and we did it. We wanted every American to have an enforceable right to vote but...here we are. Perversely, BushCo's rhetoric stands akwardly on the progressive tradition of justice.
"How did we come to this?" I don't understand how a generation of young people dedicated to making people's lives better (because of humane/religious/ ethical/equalitarian/whatever reasons) could end up here. At some point many must have decided that "benign neglect" of social justice/greed/"self- preservation"/whatever justified voting for Ronald Reagan. They joined the Promise-keepers; they laughed first at Archie Bunker then at Limbaugh. They accepted "reverse discrimination" as the escape hatch from relentless statistical data proving sexual/racial/ethnic discrimination. They learned to ignore or disdain "facts" as elitist and...here's O'Leilly!
More proficient diarists have and will delve further into the nightmare we're living. I'm writing this tonight - without citations - because I have truthfully NEVER felt so bad about my country. (Consider: I watched and cried as Katrina unfolded).
The current occupant of the White House admitted today that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights have no meaning after September 11, 2001. Unbelievingly, I watched and read the major American media outlets "spin" this as a close legal call; as an aggressive commander-in-chief defending the nation at all costs. We all should be very afraid.
As far as I know no one at a major public microphone mentioned this pResident's betrayal of his oath of office; his violation of his public pledge (under hands-on-the-Bible oath) to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States. Why could the surveillers not go back to a Court after 3 days, after 14 days?
I saw what happened on September 11. 2001. I have lived and worked in NYC. I have friends there, favorite restaurants and shops - I love New York, especially Broadway! Even so I - and most New Yorkers - are not terrified by Osama bin Ladin.
I and no doubt most Americans (remember the passengers on the plane that went down in PA?) are not really afraid of bin Laden, al Qaeda, or the "war on terror." I live in a major metropolitan area but I am not panicked by invocations of "lurkin' terrists!" If - no when - the next terrorist attack occurs here, it will prove that all of those Americans who would eviscerate rights envied the world round gained nothing and still suffered a deadly attack.
I am heartbroken and so very sad to see Dr. King's splendid dream for America and all of its people abandoned so that we can torture and maim impoverished Arabs.
I very much fear that this we can not overcome.