The abrogation of Human Rights
I am always interested in understanding the thought processes of people I don't understand, especially when I have a completely different perspective. I suspect this is why I used to ramble so much in my LJ. In any case, I was listening to the radio on the way home, and someone was explaining why they didn't think it was so bad that we have
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While I know you would say that we have choice because of votes, democracy, etc...you're also a member of the upper-middle-class elite. You have the means and the education to promote actual change. You have a certain amount of control in the world by yourself, without necessarily having to become part of a group. If you're brought up as, say, a blue-collar kid, you're taught that you have no control on your own and that your opinion, on its own, doesn't mean anything to anyone and you're sure as hell not going to have any means of changing anything. In this country, and in most countries, there are more of them than there are of you (and I count myself as somewhere in the middle of that Venn Diagram).
What I'm trying to say...in the most convoluted way possible...is that one is only going to put as much into democracy as one gets back. For most Americans who have little access to the legal system themselves(and you can't even begin to tell me that public defenders for criminal cases is equal to being able to afford to prosecute ridiculous civil cases), why should they offer it to people even farther down on the totem pole, foreigners and terrorists?
(And you will note the icon I used, of Steerpike, who has all the outward appearence of the upper class, all of the wits, all of the knowledge...but still knows he's not the real thing...)
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If in one's frustration at the system, one willfully participates in the destruction of that system, it should come as no surprise when the few protections that can be relied upon disappear, and we are left with a police state. My anger is not that people believe this, it is that they do not think about the implications of their actions. Rolling back this legal protection will actually weaken those aspects of the legal system that protect them from the big movers and shakers.
An example: You are a worker at a major factory. You decide to hold a protest because working conditions are horrible. The major corporation, sidles up to its bought senator and has you declared a terrorist and an enemy combatant. You disappear into a legal black hole and never come back out.
I know that the response I'm quoting is a gut reaction of those who feel disenfranchised in every way. But, part of what concerned me so greatly was that the person I was quoting was an intelligent articulate individual, who was supposedly well informed on the issues. It seems the ultimate blindness to me, to not realize that these laws can be levied on us as well. It is at once a frustration with the government and an implicit trust of the government.
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Just thinking outloud here. The potential hole of needless suffering and expense is bottomless.
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