2 Responses to Looks like America Lost

1. 

   David

   September 11, 2008. 6:14 pm at 6:14 pm

   Why are you so pes­simistic about our country?

   If you so choose to burn our flag (which cur­rently is your right), then be care­ful who you burn it in front of. You just might get your @ss kicked.

   The US Con­sti­tu­tion “should” (or at least it used to) only apply to cit­i­zens of the United States of Amer­ica. Unfor­tu­nately, the Exec­u­tive power that you claim is stronger than ever couldn’t pre­vent the Supreme Court from giv­ing some of its rights to the non-citizen ter­ror­ists held in Cuba.

   Whether a Demo­c­rat, Repub­li­can, or Inde­pen­dent becomes the next pres­i­dent, there will still be ter­ror­ism. Do you think there is some magic switch to turn it off? Until that magic switch is found, we must fight and fight to win! Or should we just hold up the white flag and sur­ren­der. I’ve got news for you… they will still kill you by slowly cut­ting your head off at the neck with a dull ser­rated knife as you scream and gur­gle up blood (sorry for the graphic descrip­tion). They don’t give a damn about you and me.

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2. 

   chickendude

   September 20, 2008. 3:45 am at 3:45 am

   David: That is funny. They will kill us? Maybe. They don’t give a damn about us? That’s prob­a­bly true–it’s obvi­ous that we don’t give a damn about them. The United States is a power nation and uses that power to take advan­tage of oth­ers. These ter­ror­ists are send­ing a pretty pow­er­ful mes­sage, and we are com­pletely ignor­ing it. Rather than exam­ine our­selves for the things we do that place these peo­ple into such des­per­ate sit­u­a­tions, we con­tinue to exploit, abuse, and gen­er­ally not give a damn about any­one but our­selves. In our search for “ter­ror­ists”, we jail, harass, and/or mur­der any­one who is slightly sus­pi­cious, and accuse and mon­i­tor every­one else regard­less. These attacks were used exclu­sively as a ral­ly­ing point for tighter sur­veil­lance of our own citizens.

   By the way, your “graphic descrip­tion” really isn’t that graphic (really, it sounds more like our meth­ods than theirs) in com­par­i­son to the awful things we put so many oth­ers through (whether through our eco­nomic, mil­i­tary, or polit­i­cal power). And then we laugh about it. Or we blame their poverty on them, say­ing “oh, it is sur­vival of the fittest” this or that, but i think we are intel­li­gent enough not to believe that, for when some­one tries to steal back the wealth that has been stolen from them in the first place, we cry out for these peo­ple who are fight­ing back to be pun­ished. This sur­vival of the fittest sce­nario only applies when we are the ones with power. It is sur­vival of the wealth­i­est: wealth = power. We con­tinue to neglect the fact that the sur­vival of the com­mu­nity is more impor­tant than the sur­vival of the individual…

   In the eyes of these ter­ror­ists, the peo­ple in the World Trade Cen­ter are the same peo­ple who every­day exploit and increase the divide between rich Amer­ica and impov­er­ished, starv­ing “else­where”. Besides, our machines, our guns, fac­to­ries, and bombs, have already killed more ani­mals and peo­ple than any (other) ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion could ever accomplish.

   Your point about the Con­sti­tu­tion also dis­gusts me. The Con­sti­tu­tion is a restric­tion of rights, not a grant­ing or guar­an­tee­ing of rights. In any case, the sta­tus of for­eigner should not mean the restric­tion of all rights (or any rights, for that mat­ter). I’ve never under­stood how some­one could come to this con­clu­sion. We clas­sify every­one by gen­der, sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion, race, lan­guage, and a mil­lion other char­ac­ter­is­tics, and, while many of these are used to harass peo­ple, none of them are used in deter­min­ing someone’s basic rights (not to say that stereo­types and racism, het­ero­sex­ism, etc. don’t worm their way into our legal sys­tem, but there is not a legal found­ing for it). Maybe it is because they don’t pay taxes? But since when must we pur­chase our rights? Or maybe it is because they didn’t fight in our lat­est cru­sade against the rights of oth­ers? No, that can’t be it either, as nei­ther did i and i haven’t been shot by the gov­ern­ment yet. The only thing i can think of is that we view Amer­i­can wealth as more impor­tant than even the most basic rights of those who attack it.

   And you know why ter­ror­ism will still exist? It is not because they are sick, deranged indi­vid­u­als, but because WE are sick, deranged indi­vid­u­als who value wealth more than life.

   “You kill a killer and you become a killer”

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