What I think of the election
Here is a draft of an article i'm possibly going to submit to my school's newspaper. Lemmie know what you think.
AMERICA VOTES “YES” TO FASCISM
It’s a sad day in America. Like many people on Brown campus, I was very disappointed in the outcome of the election. However, I was not disappointed so much with the failure of Kerry’s campaign- neither his loss in the electoral college nor his concession. In fact, my disappointment had nothing to do with John Kerry. However, my disappointment had everything to do with George W. Bush. My disappointment was with the America that has been projected by this election. The apparent consent that Americans have given to the Bush agenda, and the implications for our country and for the world.
Contrary to what the presidential campaigns might have had you think, the most urgent issue in America today is not jobs, nor same-sex marriage, nor a woman’s right to choose, nor even the war in Iraq. The most urgent issue is the state of our democracy. The current “security over liberty” trend we have been facing in this country is one that threatens democracy everywhere, and while this trend has been prevalent for years, nobody in recent memory has better embodied that trend than President Bush.
As we have seen from the Abu Ghraib scandal, and with recounts of torture and humiliation from British citizens recently released from Guantánamo Bay, horrendous means of torture and imprisonment at the hands of the American military and prison system are rampant. Under the USA Patriot Act, the executive branch now has the authority to “detain” anyone suspected of being a terrorist, without requiring any public justification or evidence. This places a great deal of power into the hands of a select few, who have no obligation to answer to the people. Countless psychological experiments have revealed that these kinds of abuses happen constantly whenever one group of people is given a tremendous amount of unchecked power over another group.
The kind of power given to Military personnel in Abu Ghraib is exactly what the Patriot Act has given to the Bush administration and Intelligence officials, and it is producing a wealth of horrors too numerous to list. To name a few, the systematic deportation of anyone seeking asylum in the US (reminiscent of when the American government sent a boat full of refugees from the holocaust back to Germany to be exterminated), the mass detention of anyone thought to be threatening (reminiscent of the Japanese internment camps during World War II), are what immediately come to mind.
Along with the combined effects of a racist drug war and felony disenfranchisement in this country, our government is seeking to marginalize people of color and drug users and prevent them from having any say in the political discourse of our country. These acts are not only horrors in and of themselves, but they are fundamental attacks on democracy. With the executive branch targeting political activists and critics of the government (which I have seen firsthand), it is evident why the system of checks and balances, which the Bush administration is effectively nullifying, were established in the first place.
All this, however, is not to imply that John Kerry would have solved any of these problems. However, the fact that the American people would vote for President Bush, even after these atrocious attacks on democracy have been committed by his administration, shows that the American people are either not educated or not concerned about these issues. While it would not resonate with mainstream discourse on American politics to call the American government as approaching Fascism, it is well-advised to pay heed to Pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous warning: “In Germany, first they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. ... Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak out. ” The reason why claiming America is approaching Fascism does not resonate well with the mainstream is because the mainstream is not comprised of Arabs, Muslims, political activists, immigrants, potheads, and the disenfranchised. But, as Niemoller warns, and has past experience has shown, we must vigilantly defend the rights of everyone in order to defend ourselves.
AMERICA VOTES “YES” TO FASCISM
It’s a sad day in America. Like many people on Brown campus, I was very disappointed in the outcome of the election. However, I was not disappointed so much with the failure of Kerry’s campaign- neither his loss in the electoral college nor his concession. In fact, my disappointment had nothing to do with John Kerry. However, my disappointment had everything to do with George W. Bush. My disappointment was with the America that has been projected by this election. The apparent consent that Americans have given to the Bush agenda, and the implications for our country and for the world.
Contrary to what the presidential campaigns might have had you think, the most urgent issue in America today is not jobs, nor same-sex marriage, nor a woman’s right to choose, nor even the war in Iraq. The most urgent issue is the state of our democracy. The current “security over liberty” trend we have been facing in this country is one that threatens democracy everywhere, and while this trend has been prevalent for years, nobody in recent memory has better embodied that trend than President Bush.
As we have seen from the Abu Ghraib scandal, and with recounts of torture and humiliation from British citizens recently released from Guantánamo Bay, horrendous means of torture and imprisonment at the hands of the American military and prison system are rampant. Under the USA Patriot Act, the executive branch now has the authority to “detain” anyone suspected of being a terrorist, without requiring any public justification or evidence. This places a great deal of power into the hands of a select few, who have no obligation to answer to the people. Countless psychological experiments have revealed that these kinds of abuses happen constantly whenever one group of people is given a tremendous amount of unchecked power over another group.
The kind of power given to Military personnel in Abu Ghraib is exactly what the Patriot Act has given to the Bush administration and Intelligence officials, and it is producing a wealth of horrors too numerous to list. To name a few, the systematic deportation of anyone seeking asylum in the US (reminiscent of when the American government sent a boat full of refugees from the holocaust back to Germany to be exterminated), the mass detention of anyone thought to be threatening (reminiscent of the Japanese internment camps during World War II), are what immediately come to mind.
Along with the combined effects of a racist drug war and felony disenfranchisement in this country, our government is seeking to marginalize people of color and drug users and prevent them from having any say in the political discourse of our country. These acts are not only horrors in and of themselves, but they are fundamental attacks on democracy. With the executive branch targeting political activists and critics of the government (which I have seen firsthand), it is evident why the system of checks and balances, which the Bush administration is effectively nullifying, were established in the first place.
All this, however, is not to imply that John Kerry would have solved any of these problems. However, the fact that the American people would vote for President Bush, even after these atrocious attacks on democracy have been committed by his administration, shows that the American people are either not educated or not concerned about these issues. While it would not resonate with mainstream discourse on American politics to call the American government as approaching Fascism, it is well-advised to pay heed to Pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous warning: “In Germany, first they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. ... Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak out. ” The reason why claiming America is approaching Fascism does not resonate well with the mainstream is because the mainstream is not comprised of Arabs, Muslims, political activists, immigrants, potheads, and the disenfranchised. But, as Niemoller warns, and has past experience has shown, we must vigilantly defend the rights of everyone in order to defend ourselves.