It is all very simple if you are an American. America is pure, but other countries, except for our allies, are barbaric.
The same goes for our wars. Everyone we kill, whether they are passengers on Serbian commuter trains or attending weddings, funerals, or children playing soccer in Iraq, is a terrorist, or we would not have killed them. So was the little girl who was raped by our terrorist-fighting troops and then murdered, brutally, along with her family.
America only kills terrorists. If we kill you, you are a terrorist.
Americans are the salt of the earth. They never do any wrong. Only those other people do. Not the Israelis, of course.
And police, prosecutors, and juries never make mistakes. Everyone accused is guilty.
Fear has made every American a suspect, eroded our rights, and compromised our humanity.
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8 comments:
It would be an understatement to call this piece underdeveloped and narrow-scoped.
The USG apologizes for unintended casualties; rapists are tried by the USG even when the perpetrators are soldiers, etc.
This piece would be like explaining all of Newtonian physics and Quantum physics and the differences between them as simply “stuff interacting with other stuff.” One oversimplification after another…
This guy was the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and yet doesn't know anything about how China handles it's prisoners and/or "criminals." He states that "An intelligent population might wonder how a “freedom and democracy” country could have incarceration rates far higher than a dictatorship, but Americans fail this test." I would say that an intelligent former assistant secretary of the treasury would realize that dictatorships execute far more citizens than the US and that in the USA a criminal can appeal five times, get time off for good behavior, and if the death sentence is to be carried out- no worries, it will take 25 years for the sentence to be carried out, all the while getting 3 meals a day, cable TV, computer and exercise privileges along the way on the tax payers dollar. This guy should watch carefully how dictatorships make prisons magically less populated, make those who speak against them disappear, and bypass courts and juries all together. There is no real comparison to be made here.
However, one difference is that the US has an actual for-profit prison system, unlike other countries. So the more prisoners there are, the more money the companies make, and the more some politicians make from the prison systems lobby efforts. That's part of the reason why people sit on death row for so long, too (besides gov. red tape and useless bureaucracy, two things they can be counted on for).
I also think it's notable that Roberts worked under Reagan, who virtually everyone you may personally know that was of voting age at the time of his election voted for. Just an observation.
He apparently still speaks well of Reagan and of "true conservatives." He has pointed out issues with outsourcing jobs and growing government power. In many of his views I would agree and in many more I disagree. He shared his concerns over "electronic voting machines programmed by republican operatives with proprietary software." It would have been a waste of my time to worry about that. He states that the US is "undergoing a coup against the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, civil liberties, and democracy itself" while offering his readers no real advise other than to buy his books and read his articles and the advise that "anyone who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media is totally misinformed." I get the feeling I'm going to be misinformed by depending on his writing or fall into his category of neoconservative for ignoring him all the while not getting any useful advise or suggested action items. He is just hard to get behind.
"He shared his concerns over "electronic voting machines programmed by republican operatives with proprietary software." It would have been a waste of my time to worry about that."
I don't consider it a waste of time to know that people have and still are going to prison for vote fraud, that organizations like ACORN and both political parties illegally stop people from voting or throw votes away, and that e-voting machines have been proven easily-hackable by individuals, non-profit organizations, and universities. It's S.O.P. for mainstream news to keep that info under wraps, and to belittle the ones that point it out.
"He who votes decides nothing. He who counts the votes decides everything." Joseph Stalin
blackboxvoting.org
True that knowing about stuff is- at times beneficial. Worrying is different than knowing. Worrying about voting issues didn’t aid me in my choice to go vote. I’ll do my part regardless of the crookedness of others. The man should point out a solution and/or speak to representatives about it. He never told me what the point of telling the column reader was. Was it a scare tactic, a precursor to a solution, or just a shotgun statement for no purpose, etc? He never explains. I don’t feel like playing a waiting game while he tells me I need to pay him for the answer in his book. Can’t we just each do our part to live “uncorrupt” lives and hold our offices and public services in the way they should be held (for good) and teach those around us to do the same? Knowledge with appropriate action is my goal, while worrying is a waste to me.
I think the deal is that he writes about stuff along these lines so often that might assume that most of who reads it understands what he is saying even though he might not elaborate on everything he says in every piece. Does that make sense? I catch myself doing that sometimes.
It does make some sense. I just want to get to the good stuff (possible solutions) faster. I guess I feel that I am just bombarded with restatements of the same problems the majority of the time. That is where my frustrations come from many times.
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