Thursday, December 06, 2007

Humanity Is Lacking

I want my country back. If you are captured in the war on terror, then you should be considered a prisoner of war and entitled to all the legal protections thereof. Unless the country you happen to offend is America, in which case you can count on justice denied. Sort of like one of those third world countries we used to feel superior to.

A man tries to kill himself by slicing his throat open with a sharpened fingernail after being held at Gitmo for over six years where only 80 of the 305 prisoners are actually suspected of committing a crime and the Supreme Court has doubts about whether these guys should be receiving adequate representation and due process? They can't see or call witnesses that can help them, they don't know the evidence against them and they have been there for many years without a trial. Why is there even a debate? One might think that the United States thinks that God died and crowned us king and that everyone who isn't melanin impaired is just an animal deserving to be caged or put down. Except that we give our animals more respect.

Breathing while black definitely has disadvantages. Not only are you ten times more likely to spend time in prison, but over 52% of people polled believe that the death penalty is most appropriately used on black people. There is no polite way to say this, but the US is a fucked up country.

How did we fall so far, so fast? How did the "United States" turn into a squabbling, fearful of our own shadow, whiny, blubbering ball of cowardice? It isn't the fault of some long haired, bearded nutjob on the other side of the world, that would be what used to be the free press and our current form of government masquerading as compassionate conservatism. They've done a wonderful job of changing the land of the free into the home of the incarcerated.

Next thing you know they'll make it illegal to defend anyone of color.

3 comments:

  1. "How did we fall so far, so fast?"

    If you nail that one down, let me know. It keeps me awake at night.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This has been in the works for about 30 years. I spoke on the same phenomenon today, but from a different aspect of it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I always wondered how the family values crowd rather strange for effectively insisting that black men be locked up at a mind-boggling rate, and then whining about how many black single mothers there are.

    What you've written about here seems like a natural (if obscene) outgrowth (a cancer comes to mind) of that.

    ReplyDelete