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“Murderers lack empathy for their victims” said my stepmother to me when I was about ten years old. A psychiatric nurse, she was herself the head of a floor at the Psychiatric ward at Belleview Hospital in New York City. “They often don’t know when they are scaring you. So it’s actually good to tell them: You are scaring me!” She said. Because lacking in awareness, they don’t “get it”. And this is where a fundamental influence in our current political climate is being overlooked. Politicians, grassroots leaders, and the people: All are acting as if Bush and Cheney are sane, normal human beings who would respond to letters, signatures, et al. When suggesting that Bush and Cheney are neither sane nor psychologically normal, I am not trying to be nasty as this may sound. Neither am I a mental health professional equipped to officially diagnose. Yet the problem is that if mental health professionals diagnose an individual without actually having seen them in their office, they can lose their license. So it is up to us laypeople to do the job. Only men who have no conscience are capable of stealing an election, going over the heads of an entire nation of people in so doing. Only cruel-hearted psyches with shriveled cores are capable of abandoning Katrina victims to die. And did anybody notice on eyewitness news, at the moment that Bush was walking up to the microphone to announce the Iraq War escalation, that he was stifling smiles? Ugh. I will never forget that chilling sight. Further, did anybody who watched Fahrenheit 911 notice that he giggled the word “war” when stating “I am a war president” ? As if war and violence are for giggles? This is not normal, folks. Which leads to the next point: And it is this irrational psyche which is partially to blame for the erosion of our civil liberties: The other part of the responsibility lies with Congress. Even on the website of the ACLU, which at all costs is very careful about under-stating things so as not to “look radical“ to the world, it is stated that Bush bamboozled Congress into passing the Patriot Act at the same moment that Anthrax was circulating around Congress. (Log on to the ACLU‘s website at www.aclu.org, and enter Patriot Act fact sheets into the search box, and it will come up). Only murder-loving crazies would beg and plead Congress to pass a bill allowing them to torture without any jail in sight, as in the Military Commissions Act. In that Act, the word “Torture“ is defined as invoking pain levels equivalent to “severe organ failure and death“ (www.aclu.org see MCA fact sheets). Yet the Congress granted Bush and future presidents immunity in so doing, against all national and international law. As it turns out, according to the Red Cross, 70% of Guantanamo detainees are innocent. The ACLU’s movie Stop the Abuse of Power states that (at the time that movie was made) 850+ Guantanamo detainees were proven innocent. The Center for Constitutional Rights echoes the ACLU: Most “Terrorists” at Guantanamo are innocent and were never even charged with so much as one single crime. And the ACLU’s website is full of statistics of activists being DUBBED as “Terrorists” under the Patriot Act. Because the definition of “Terrorist” in the Patriot Act is “over-broad”, as echoed by the ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Gun Owners of America, and People for the American Way----every one of these entities and even many conservative entities agree in full---the Patriot Act “terrorist” definition is such that it sweeps up activists, peace groups and religious groups in its net. And there is neither probable cause nor warrant required for arrests to occur under the Patriot Act, at the unilateral whim of each individual FBI agent. Patriot II makes it possible for citizenship to be revoked and the greatly expanded death penalty powers invoked against innocent Americans: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/26683res20060906.html It’s always convenient for politicians to hide their criminal wrong-doings by silencing vocal people: No wonder Bush pushed the Patriot Act through by telling Congress that he would publicly characterize them as “soft on terror” if they did not pass the Patriot Act, giving them only hours to look at the 320+ page bill. And, no wonder it is activists who are statistically cracked down on. www.aclu.org/safefree/general/20073prs20050718.html The only way to render ducks lame is to tie their feet. And this is a fundamentally important fact to recognize. We are not dealing with normal, rational psychology here which is responsive to reason, concern or the awareness of pain inflicted on others, even on a massive scale. We must work with reality, not through it. Walk around a brick wall, don't keep banging your head against it. Please write this to grassroots leaders, journalists and politicians everywhere!
This quote summarizes the nature of my concerns and the content of personal experiences which stir my activism: "Necessity is the plea for every infringement on human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves". --Paul Revere, House of Commons
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