Big Brother is watching you
Up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. Well, actually, it’s a GPS satellite watching every move you make. In the wee hours, however, it truly is a plane flying surveillance through the night, shattering the peaceful silence of our North Shore nights for the last hundred years.
Around town there are lots of new, white unmarked vans but you can recognize them by the “DHS” on their license plates. That means “Department of Homeland Security,” doncha know. Does this make you feel more or less secure?
As for yours truly I don’t really have anything to hide; I put it all in the shop window. I spend my days writing letters and signing petitions in protest against the lawless abuses of the Bush administration: torture, illegal wars of aggression, warrantless surveillance, outright thievery in the name of privatization, dismantling governmental oversight that protects our air, water and food, cutting safety net programs for children, the poor, and the elderly while awarding billions in no-bid contracts to cronies, flouting the Constitution, the list goes on and on.
For me, it’s the principle of the thing: I thought I lived in a country where warrantless spying was illegal and a Man’s House is his Castle. Another president, Richard Nixon, got into big trouble for similar shenanigans but those were different times. Nixon was a pussycat compared to Bush and Cheney. He even dealt with the energy crisis by, gasp, asking Americans to conserve gas and drive more slowly. Too bad he was paranoid, but he didn’t really ever advocate the overthrow of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
So, maybe someday I will be “renditioned” for my opinions but probably not since I am free, white and well over 21. No, it’s the people of color who are targeted by the Border Patrol agents (unless said officers happen to be speeding along the Gunflint Trail and hit a man and a tree in the road). Some people say the agents speed a lot, just because they can. Just reporting the local gossip here.
Our sleepy county is asleep at the wheel here. Where is our righteous indignation, where is our rage? And where are the terrorists sneaking across the Pigeon River?
New True
2 comments:
"HomeLand Security", its very name conjures up visions of Stasi, the Nazi SS, Mussolini's Fascism. I am not comforted by their presence, more like frightened. New True, you have hit the nail on the head, where is the outrage.
For those that wonder how we got to this crisis point in our nation I recommend Kevin Phillips book "American Theocracy". I bought my copy used online, it was pulled from the Cuyahoga County library, in Ohio! So much for enlightenment!
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