The War on Americans
The War on Americans
Yesterday, it came to light that the NSA, under the orders of the executive branch, has been compiling a list of the phone calls of tens of millions of Americans. They’ve received this information from telecommunications companies Verizon Communications, AT&T Corp., and BellSouth Corp., with Qwest refusing to participate. The President has told us before, when other secret programs have been revealed, to not worry, that they are tracking international calls only, that they are only tracking terrorists. They’ve lied. We’re all potential terrorists. We are the enemy. The government has waged war on its own people.
This is the War on Terror. It’s what it’s been all along. They can’t actually eliminate terrorists, only embolden them with empty rhetoric and bullshit wars in Iraq. So, like any good totalitarian state, they wage war on their own people because that’s the only way to be successful.
Now cue the fools. The ones who will say this program is protecting the country, that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’re not a terrorist. That you’re liberties are being protected, and really, who cares as long as you’re safe from terrorists, right? The fools. The cads. Trust the Bush administration when, as seen by his falling poll numbers, more people than not don’t trust him. Trust him, when continually they say something is not true and then it turns out to be true.
Trust us, the administration will say, we’re not using this information for anything else but to protect you. But how long before that’s revealed as a lie? Will we soon learn that they’ve used this information to track their political enemies, people who have disagreed with them? Wow—abuse of power, who would think that would ever happen, especially when Republicans are in charge? (It’ll all be a different story if, say, there’s a President H. Clinton (D-NY) in office.)
At this point, after the voluminous collection of lies that have been thrust upon us over the last five years by this administration, why would we give them the benefit of the doubt of trust? Even if they were trustworthy, such a program should arouse the suspicion of all patriotic Americans regardless of political party.
And if the pattern isn’t clear yet, it should be now. Bush has asserted himself as above the other branches of government. Indeed, he can mimic their functions as he sees fit, creating law as he needs to and interpret the exist ones as fits his plans. And he chooses to ignore the other branches if he chooses to, so he can do as he chooses, making his power without limit. In case you haven’t paid attention to world history, a leader who does that is called a dictator. Bush has asserted himself as dictator, and the violations that generally occur when someone is a dictator—namely, the right to privacy—have been happening and are now coming to light.
Of course, the Congress is complicit in this, for not living up to their Constitutional responsibility of checking the executive branch. This is the great tragedy, because a Congress as a check could’ve stopped this. They could’ve impeached if they had to, to defend the republic from such aggression. But the Republicans who control the Congress put party above country and now we’re paying for it. Yeah, the Democrats are complicit too, for not putting up a fight, even they are a mostly helpless minority, and giving Bush the benefit of the doubt. Now we have the Founding Fathers’ worst nightmare—an unchecked executive branch, its power run amok. I mean, this is why they wrote the Declaration of Independence and told England to shove it, for fuck’s sake.
It’s a War on Americans. They’re fighting me, you, the guy down the street walking his dog, the lady in the grocery store trying to keep her child from crying because she refuses to buy him Pop-tarts. They’re fighting the old man in the checkout line trying to find enough change in his pockets to buy a bag of chips. The thousands of people in cars, locked in gridlocked traffic, $3.00 a gallon gas burning, hoping they make it to work on time. They’re fighting people dying too young from cancer, bullet wounds, poisoned air that is that way to help the smokestack business on the horizon pad its bottom line. They’re fighting a five-year-old calling her frail great-grandmother on her 95th birthday. They’re fighting a fifteen-year-old boy, his voice cracking and afraid as he calls a girl for the first time to ask her out on a date. They’re fighting you as you struggle to get a human being to answer customer service at a company that received hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks or even helped the government wage its war against you despite the fact that you pay your bills on time.
Where’s does this war end? That’s the question we should all ask. We should be thinking in terms of how we, the people, will win. It’s looking grim now, though, and we may have let it slip too far for us to recover.
Yesterday, it came to light that the NSA, under the orders of the executive branch, has been compiling a list of the phone calls of tens of millions of Americans. They’ve received this information from telecommunications companies Verizon Communications, AT&T Corp., and BellSouth Corp., with Qwest refusing to participate. The President has told us before, when other secret programs have been revealed, to not worry, that they are tracking international calls only, that they are only tracking terrorists. They’ve lied. We’re all potential terrorists. We are the enemy. The government has waged war on its own people.
This is the War on Terror. It’s what it’s been all along. They can’t actually eliminate terrorists, only embolden them with empty rhetoric and bullshit wars in Iraq. So, like any good totalitarian state, they wage war on their own people because that’s the only way to be successful.
Now cue the fools. The ones who will say this program is protecting the country, that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’re not a terrorist. That you’re liberties are being protected, and really, who cares as long as you’re safe from terrorists, right? The fools. The cads. Trust the Bush administration when, as seen by his falling poll numbers, more people than not don’t trust him. Trust him, when continually they say something is not true and then it turns out to be true.
Trust us, the administration will say, we’re not using this information for anything else but to protect you. But how long before that’s revealed as a lie? Will we soon learn that they’ve used this information to track their political enemies, people who have disagreed with them? Wow—abuse of power, who would think that would ever happen, especially when Republicans are in charge? (It’ll all be a different story if, say, there’s a President H. Clinton (D-NY) in office.)
At this point, after the voluminous collection of lies that have been thrust upon us over the last five years by this administration, why would we give them the benefit of the doubt of trust? Even if they were trustworthy, such a program should arouse the suspicion of all patriotic Americans regardless of political party.
And if the pattern isn’t clear yet, it should be now. Bush has asserted himself as above the other branches of government. Indeed, he can mimic their functions as he sees fit, creating law as he needs to and interpret the exist ones as fits his plans. And he chooses to ignore the other branches if he chooses to, so he can do as he chooses, making his power without limit. In case you haven’t paid attention to world history, a leader who does that is called a dictator. Bush has asserted himself as dictator, and the violations that generally occur when someone is a dictator—namely, the right to privacy—have been happening and are now coming to light.
Of course, the Congress is complicit in this, for not living up to their Constitutional responsibility of checking the executive branch. This is the great tragedy, because a Congress as a check could’ve stopped this. They could’ve impeached if they had to, to defend the republic from such aggression. But the Republicans who control the Congress put party above country and now we’re paying for it. Yeah, the Democrats are complicit too, for not putting up a fight, even they are a mostly helpless minority, and giving Bush the benefit of the doubt. Now we have the Founding Fathers’ worst nightmare—an unchecked executive branch, its power run amok. I mean, this is why they wrote the Declaration of Independence and told England to shove it, for fuck’s sake.
It’s a War on Americans. They’re fighting me, you, the guy down the street walking his dog, the lady in the grocery store trying to keep her child from crying because she refuses to buy him Pop-tarts. They’re fighting the old man in the checkout line trying to find enough change in his pockets to buy a bag of chips. The thousands of people in cars, locked in gridlocked traffic, $3.00 a gallon gas burning, hoping they make it to work on time. They’re fighting people dying too young from cancer, bullet wounds, poisoned air that is that way to help the smokestack business on the horizon pad its bottom line. They’re fighting a five-year-old calling her frail great-grandmother on her 95th birthday. They’re fighting a fifteen-year-old boy, his voice cracking and afraid as he calls a girl for the first time to ask her out on a date. They’re fighting you as you struggle to get a human being to answer customer service at a company that received hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks or even helped the government wage its war against you despite the fact that you pay your bills on time.
Where’s does this war end? That’s the question we should all ask. We should be thinking in terms of how we, the people, will win. It’s looking grim now, though, and we may have let it slip too far for us to recover.
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