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My Profile
Retro-retrospection - 2008-10-06
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10:01 a.m. - 2003-05-03
I have become an isolationist. I've narrowed my focus down to one thing, my new house. All other considerations, distractions, and former interests (the news, for instance) are moot. I just got sick of it. The steady march upon our civil liberties goes on and on and nothing I've done or said has made a whit's difference. So good-bye Miranda Act. Good-bye Right to Privacy. Good-bye Freedom of Speech. Good-bye reproductive choice. Good-bye Title IX. In fact if the so-called Patriot Act II gets approval we might as well take the Bill of Rights, roll it up tight and make a bean shooter out of it. It'll be useless for anything else. I got sick of e-mailing, signing petitions, shouting, writing editorials, and donating my time and money only to see my efforts stomped flat under the relentless jackboot of the Bushmen. And as much as it pains me to admit it, I'm scared. I'm frightened of them. All my life I've wondered how Hitler and the Nazis rose so quickly and were so effective. Why didn't the Germans DO something? Well now I know. For the first time in my loud mouthed life, I'm afraid of my government. People are being arrested for wearing t-shirts. Protesters and innocent by-standers alike are being fired upon by the police. People are disappearing. Jo-Jo and Lucky, Pakistani immigrants who worked seemingly around the clock at the Mobil station are gone. POOF! I asked Marie the night manager what happened to them. Grim faced she told me in a low bitter voice of the FBI sedan that pulled up. The blank faced agents in their polyester slacks and heavy Florsheim lace-ups bundled Jo-Jo and Lucky into the back of the car and sped away. That was 7 weeks ago. Nulifer, Lucky's wife hasn't heard from her husband since. Not once. The FBI won't say where he is or even admit they have him. I think about Lucky and his delight about his daughter attending school. "My daughter will not have to learn in secret. Every day she goes on the bus to school." I think of Lucky's beaming face as he points to a worksheet mounted behind the register. A 3 sentence long story about going fishing limned in the wobbly printing of a first grader. "See? See what my Imi did?" I think about Jo-Jo, Lucky's young cousin. Always with a smile and a small American flag pin on the collar of his neatly pressed Mobil shirt. Jo-Jo who learned to speak English by watching "Seinfeld" on a tiny TV hooked to an illegal satellite dish. Jo-Jo shyly showed me his fiancée's picture once. Now there is a young woman in Pakistan waiting and wondering. Will she ever hear from her love again? Who knows? The FBI might, but they ain’t telling. Nor, thanks to Ashcroft and Co, do they have to. Lucky and Jo-Jo aren’t terrorists, they are pump jockeys. They weren’t agitators. In fact they had nothing but praise and gratitude for the United States. But it’s their misfortune to be from a country our government has marked as an enemy. I’ve never made my views a secret. I have a police record. Six times I’ve been hauled to the lock-up for protest. But that firebrand young woman is older now. Sadder, too. Heartsick and wretched to the bone over the destruction of liberty and the frightening ease of how it’s happened. If I were taken in now, there’d be no one phone call. There’d be no reading of my rights. Civil rights have been revoked in the name of “National Security”. National Security? It’s kind of funny that MY security is gone. Stolen by the government that’s supposed to be protecting me. In the Bush America I am an Enemy of the State. Under Patriot Act II several of the entries I’ve posted here would be regarded as treasonable offenses. The punishment for treason is hanging. My musings and ventings just might get my neck stretched. Extreme? Maybe. But I think of the bleeding longshoremen in Oakland. I think of police handcuffing two men because “they” disagreed with the sentiment on a t-shirt. I think about Lucky and Jo-Jo. And I wonder, how long before the FBI sedan shows up in MY driveway? ~LA
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