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StrangerThan -> RE: The American Inqustion (10/7/2011 4:35:53 AM)
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I flew on one of the first commercial flights when air travel returned after 9/11. There were 4 people on my plane. The flight attendant told me they'd had 16 customers all day. The concourses at Atlanta's Hartsfield airport were virtually empty.
We pat down old folks, babies and breast cancer survivors in ways that are offensive at best, and close to molestation at worst. Right in the middle of it we do full body scans to strip away clothing so we can 'see' if they're carrying something bad. We hold people indefinitely without counsel, without access to courts, even without charges.
Bush and the Patriot Act was an outright attack on rights we assume as US citizens. Obama did what anyone with a brain whose head is not up a party's ass, would assume he would do, which is retain those powers and further them. The next president will too. So will the one following him or her.
Once abridged, governments and politicians do not give up power or control. The simply use the last step as the base for the next push to reinvent and reinterpret law in ways to seize more power. The only change possible has to come from the people. These scenarios will get scarier and more intrusive as time passes.
Of course, you can always wait until the current generations die off, and the next will simply accept it as the way it always was.
And in many ways, we deserve it. We're too fucking scared of ourselves, and too fucking politically polarized to deserve the liberty that we were given, and that we so easily give up when we feel threatened.
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