What So Proudly We Hailed
I'm humming a few bars of that obnoxious Proud to be an American song as I read the news, but I'm having difficulty figuring out exactly which recent stories are supposed to fill me with patriotic pride. Maybe you readers can help me out?
If you're old enough to legally drink alcohol, you're old enough to remember when "opposition to government use of torture" was considered a fundamental American value. Now it's a form of treason deserving of a prison sentence.
Boarding a plane while being half-Jewish and half-Arab is all it takes to be handcuffed, arrested, stripped naked and subject to a cavity search. The people responsible for this have doubtless convinced themselves they did something noble and heroic; the occasional sexual assault at the hands of government agents is, presumably, the price of living in a free country.
A five-year-old girl was suspended from school for making a "terroristic threat" ... to shoot one of her friends with a Hello Kitty bubble gun. Her mother is trying to find another school for the girl but cannot, since her daughter now has a record of "threatening" other people. With soap bubbles.
The Department of Homeland Security (the same psychopaths who made TSA molestation mandatory for any American wishing to ride mass transit) is also filling urban areas with microphones capable of listening in on conversations (without a warrant, naturally).
America's national anthem ends with a question: "Does that star-spangled banner yet wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave?" The answer is obviously no.
If you're old enough to legally drink alcohol, you're old enough to remember when "opposition to government use of torture" was considered a fundamental American value. Now it's a form of treason deserving of a prison sentence.
Boarding a plane while being half-Jewish and half-Arab is all it takes to be handcuffed, arrested, stripped naked and subject to a cavity search. The people responsible for this have doubtless convinced themselves they did something noble and heroic; the occasional sexual assault at the hands of government agents is, presumably, the price of living in a free country.
A five-year-old girl was suspended from school for making a "terroristic threat" ... to shoot one of her friends with a Hello Kitty bubble gun. Her mother is trying to find another school for the girl but cannot, since her daughter now has a record of "threatening" other people. With soap bubbles.
The Department of Homeland Security (the same psychopaths who made TSA molestation mandatory for any American wishing to ride mass transit) is also filling urban areas with microphones capable of listening in on conversations (without a warrant, naturally).
America's national anthem ends with a question: "Does that star-spangled banner yet wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave?" The answer is obviously no.
posted by Jennifer Abel at 10:28 AM
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