Game over.
A fourteen year old builds a clock and brings it to school. A teacher, school administrators, and the local police call it a bomb and cuff him, fingerprint him, and arrest him.
Deep in the heart of the Racist State of Texas, where education is subject to the whims of the local Evangelical Christians, a black student with a Muslim name is put through this humiliation and treatment more akin to a criminal.
So much for American ideals of equality, justice and freedom.
We are living in the post individual freedom era, brought on by fear and xenophobia. The fear of terrorists, the fear of immigrants and race hatred are the dominant forces at play in twenty-first century America.
The quote, attributed to Ben Franklin, "Those who sacrifice liberty for security, deserve neither", was never more true than now.
Muslim zealots, hating the United States for supporting oppressive dictators in the middle east for decades, never had a chance to defeat the United States, in spite of their successful attacks of September 11, 2001, or other terror activities.
Their victory lies in what we have done to ourselves in the years since. The willingness to yield individual rights and privacy, the Orwellian named "Patriot Act", hacked away at constitutional protections for American citizens.
The ability to travel freely within our own borders is a thing of the past. Muslim zealots in faraway lands make racial profiling in this country acceptable. Even the election of the first black President has only brought into focus the reign of racist terror that mostly white police forces in this country subject minority communities to. It hasn't helped stop it, but for a while there was a bit of talk about it.
But except for the momentary diversions these issues provide, let's strap in for the long moronic slog to the November 2016 election. Or that Arnold Schwarzenegger is replacing Donald Trump on "The Celebrity Apprentice".
A fourteen year old builds a clock and brings it to school. A teacher, school administrators, and the local police call it a bomb and cuff him, fingerprint him, and arrest him.
Deep in the heart of the Racist State of Texas, where education is subject to the whims of the local Evangelical Christians, a black student with a Muslim name is put through this humiliation and treatment more akin to a criminal.
So much for American ideals of equality, justice and freedom.
We are living in the post individual freedom era, brought on by fear and xenophobia. The fear of terrorists, the fear of immigrants and race hatred are the dominant forces at play in twenty-first century America.
The quote, attributed to Ben Franklin, "Those who sacrifice liberty for security, deserve neither", was never more true than now.
Muslim zealots, hating the United States for supporting oppressive dictators in the middle east for decades, never had a chance to defeat the United States, in spite of their successful attacks of September 11, 2001, or other terror activities.
Their victory lies in what we have done to ourselves in the years since. The willingness to yield individual rights and privacy, the Orwellian named "Patriot Act", hacked away at constitutional protections for American citizens.
The ability to travel freely within our own borders is a thing of the past. Muslim zealots in faraway lands make racial profiling in this country acceptable. Even the election of the first black President has only brought into focus the reign of racist terror that mostly white police forces in this country subject minority communities to. It hasn't helped stop it, but for a while there was a bit of talk about it.
But except for the momentary diversions these issues provide, let's strap in for the long moronic slog to the November 2016 election. Or that Arnold Schwarzenegger is replacing Donald Trump on "The Celebrity Apprentice".
No comments:
Post a Comment