I read the papers on the Internet: the New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, etc. They report on the current state of the U.S. For the most part, it’s somewhat accurate. They tell me that the Government of that free country is spying and monitoring its people. They say that rights granted by the Government are violated by them. They tell me about the waste and graft that goes on in the halls of Government. They extol the atrocities of war and a Government hell bent on power and control.
I read all that and it doesn’t bother me. Anymore. It’s not my Government. It’s not my rights being violated, or my money being wasted or my friends being murdered. Now, I look at it the same way I looked out onto the world as an American: with disinterested pity. Oh – it’s a shame those things they do to people in North Korea or it’s sad how bad things are in Columbia, and wow – Darfur is really screwed – glad I don’t live there. That is how I can see America now.
For what it’s worth, I wish it wasn’t like that – but then, again, it’s the same as the American’s wishes for Nicaragua or Congo or Burma. I read the papers and really, I think to myself that the American’s brought it on themselves; it’s their own fault. I now understand the twisted perspectives of the Conservative Right Wingers towards unemployed black men or petty criminals – America had opportunity abound, she had all the offerings of a polite society, she had everyone in the world willing to help her out, but instead, she chose to go this way and not that.
The difference, of course, is America has been a bitch that is unbearable for the last 70 years or so, where as the unemployed black man has only been that way for .. maybe a few years, 10 at the most. She’s gotten so difficult to be around that when bad things befall her, it almost makes those of us around her smile. Like when the school yard bully finally “gets his” – well, America, this is yours. You have now entered the volumes of history with the likes of the East German Stazi who were renowned for their ability to spy on their own people. Even still information is coming out about the extent of it, going so far as to spray down a meeting room with a radioactive substance so they could track, at their leisure, the goings to and fro of the participants.
The one joy I would truly get, however, is not seeing the Americans trip over their own stupidity [as they will], but rather, to see those who’ve perpetrated these crimes against their own people be held accountable to those same people. Sadly, their stupidity will get in the way, much as it does when Accountability is delivered to congress in the form of a lying, conniving Attorney General, able to be tortured into telling the truth. Um, correction, not tortured – aggressively questioned, with water, electricity and good old fashioned pain, provided it does not “induce death”.