The 4th of July is a time for reflection, a time for comparing the promises of the great experiment with the realities of the great hypocrisy we have become.
We are the great exporters/exploiters of democracy around the globe, justifying our actions with the logic that democracies don't war with their neighbors. Yet while America professes peace, we have brought mostly the sword to the rest of the world.
I hate to use the analogy, but it is the most accurate available in modern history - only Germany during WWII has invaded more countries in such a short period of time, and we know how peace loving the Nazis were.
Meanwhile a war rages on our southern borders, a war completely of our own making. The drug war in Mexico has killed more Mexicans, in a shorter period of time, than all U.S. and allied deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Unfortunately for the innocent Mexicans, their war is really our war - the U.S. government funds, equips, trains, and pulls the strings of the Mexican law enforcement and military fighting the drug producers. While firefights rage in border towns, the U.S. popular drug vulture's insatiable appetite for dope funds the other side of the conflict with millions of dollars a year. Sadly, the big winner of this tragic fight is U.S. arms makers, distributors, and sellers who are making billions supplying all sides with weapons and bullets. Look at any photo of a Mexican drug bust - the Mexican police carry Colt manufactured weapons, so does the U.S. DEA and so do the drug producers - thanks NRA: the people of Mexico thank you as well. The recently deployed National Guard on the border should point their weapons north towards the United States, that's where the enemy lies.
Stop the flow of money and arms south and Mexicans will stop dying on the streets and in their homes.
Last week in Poland, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton lectured the world on the demise of democratic principles and individual liberty around the world. Clinton warns, “We must be wary of the steel vise in which governments around the world are slowly crushing civil society and the human spirit.” Clinton's comments were particularly ironic and hypocritical considering her country's oppressive criminal justice industry has so crushed U.S. civil society that the result is one of the largest prison populations in the world. In the U.S. one in every 100 citizens is in prison - the land of the free has four percent of the world's population yet is responsible for incarcerating 25 percent of the world's prison population. Clinton concluded her self-righteous condemnation of the world by asserting, ''Democracies don't fear their people.” Unfortunately, with our inclination towards incarceration, Hypocrisies apparently do fear their own people.
This year the Supreme Court, the measure of justice in the land, made several landmark rulings that set a new standard of liberty for the country. The court ruled that corporations have unlimited free speech, they can dump millions of dollars into influencing elections and drowning out the individuals voice of liberty. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice was given $75 million ($50 million from the U.S. Stimulus Act) to limit free speech on adult only internet chat sites. With thousands of Federal agents engaged in computer sex chat something will be stimulated, but I don't think it will be the economy or what tax- payers were planning to bail out. Federal agents have also stepped up efforts to limit Islamic political free speech by creating Islamic Web sites that criticize the U.S. government, then conducting secret investigations on those who use the site.
Next, the court ruled that citizens can be incarcerated indefinitely past their mandated release date. The indefinite civil confinement ruling is being used against people whose crimes are nonviolent.
Lastly, the great minds of justice ruled that Americans can buy, sell, and carry weapons anywhere without reason or cause. According to an article in the Economist magazine there are over 100,000 shootings in the U.S. every year, 30,000 are fatal - and we are worried about terrorists: Americans kill Americans. The winner in this ruling is the weapons industry and gun lobby who wants to make sure their deadly product gets into as many hands as possible. The innocent people of the world staring down the barrel of a U.S. weapon thank you Supreme Court, they thank you with their last breath.
In the U.S. freedom means corporate freedom - freedom to make obscene amounts of money, freedom to exploit workers and the environment, freedom to manipulate stock prices, freedom to control the political process, freedom for corporations to take, and take…freedom for a corporate run government to bully the world by force of arms. But where is the personal liberty we once fought a war to obtain and promised a world? On this Fourth of July, with America embroiled in two wars of occupation and more of our citizens behind bars than any other nation on earths ask when we stopped being a Democracy and became the world’s greatest Hypocrisy.
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