Comments on Genesis of an American Gestapo

Go to STOP THE WARS!! - Add a comment - Go to Genesis of an American Gestapo

Damon,

it's not just faith I'm relying on here. It's a simple test: if it were as bad over here as you say, I would be severely punished for posting my very-critical opinions about this president.

I knock on wood as I write this: I don't see the gestapo at my door yet. (Perhaps I'm already under their control, and they're programming my mind to make me believe that I still have my freedom. In which case they are enormously clever. Do you hear those wrenching and clicking noises? OH MY GOD!) 

Anyway, this tells me that, in all likelihood, we really will (or, as Brits would say and I wish Americans could still say without being laughed at, shall) have the chance to democratically and peacefully reverse this administration's travesties upon our justice system in three years' time.

Oh oh, I'm hearing the clicking noises again. I think they've got me. George Bush is a wonderful man and a great leader. Oh no, please help me, Damon!

posted by Dylan24 on July 20, 2005 at 4:48 AM | link to this | reply

I'm Pleased...

...you remain optimistic on the near future of your country, Dylan.

I'm less so, but I definitely hope that you're right, and I'm wrong!

Cheers!

D

posted by DamonLeigh on July 18, 2005 at 1:42 AM | link to this | reply

It's just that in historical context...

...it does not look as sinister. We have had much worse violations of civil liberties that, almost miraculously, have been reversed:

The Alien and Sedition Acts in the late 1700s severely restricted and punished critical speech against the government. They were repealed.

Socialist Eugene Debs was sentenced to ten years for giving an anti-war speech against World War I. An American President pardoned him. Today, no one giving an anti-war speech in the U.S. goes to jail, unless he is also calling for all Muslims to wage jihad against the U.S. Maybe this too is overly restrictive, but not as much so as in our past.

And of course, perhaps the worst example, the interment of 100,000 Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor -- by a progressive liberal president. After a much worse attack in 2001, an authoritarian-minded conservative president seized a few thousand Arab men on visa violations, hardly as egregious an abuse as after Pearl Harbor.

As I have stressed so much before, having been worse in the past does not justify our bad actions now. But the fact that our behavior has generally gotten less unjust over the years bodes more positively than this article would suggest.

I only hope that our historical record of correcting for our abuses of liberty, and becoming a more just country, does not break now. This would be the president to do it, though. There are so many people -- not a majority, but a minority whose representatives control our government and influence our media -- who think that the war on terror precludes meaningful constraints on executive power. It's when ordinary people support this, more than the president himself, that it really becomes scary.

In any event, I maintain still that in a country where a reporter can write "I hate George W. Bush" (Jonathan Chait of The New Republic) and keep not only his life and freedom but also his job, freedom of conscience is here to stay. We still have to vigorously protect against this administration's attempt to reduce this freedom, though.

posted by Dylan24 on July 17, 2005 at 7:21 PM | link to this | reply

Dylan...

...assured me in a recent comment that disidents are in no real danger in Bush's America.

He may have been right once. In light of the creation of the New SS, he may not be right any longer.

And that's very sad.

D

posted by DamonLeigh on July 17, 2005 at 10:41 AM | link to this | reply