Tuesday, October 03, 2006
(7:03 AM) | Anonymous:
Tuesday Hatred: Guantánamo Edition
I hate the bill that Congress just passed that strips detainees at Guantánamo of the right to file writs of habeas corpus. I hate the word "detainees," because it's become a code word for "terrorists," "brown people," and "people who are not us." I hate that even though I hate "detainees," I don't have a better word to use. Trying to talk to people who are not commenters on blogs about the legislation has been a nearly fruitless exercise, save a couple of guys who called their senators because I told them to, and I hate that. Among the things I hate that people have said to me are the following words and/or phrases: "terrorists," "Islamofascism," "tough interrogation tactics," and "keeping America safe." Not to mention "detainees."I hate that we talk about things like "waterboarding" without knowing what those things look like [hint: it looks like this (via Unfogged)].
I hate that we are laboring under the misconception that the torture battle is being fought over people overseas, and that it is something that does not happen in American prisons. I hate that our racism and classism prevents us from caring about what happens to poor African-American and Arab men, and that we don't seem to mind, as a culture, if they live in filth, are mistreated, absued, tortured, and deprived of their constitutional rights at home and abroad. I'm doing anything I possibly can to help these people, and what I do is still nothing. I hate that I have political ambitions which will never be realized because I'm a woman, an Arab-American, and on the far political left. I hate that I envision political power as the best way to effect change, because it's the only paradigm that I really understand, and that I'm wrong, because even if despite all odds I were to gain some political influence, my ideas of compassion and effective, sane, non-kneejerk policy would fall on deaf ears.
I hate that our political system is broken: a democracy such as the one we imagine our country to be can't exist without a free and frank exchange of ideas. What I hate is that it is no longer our government that silences us; we silence ourselves, by not caring, by caring but resigning ourselves to defeat, by thinking that the political engine of democracy is a hurtling freight train over which we have little control. I hate that thinking one is impotent effectively makes one so.
UPDATE: Go and give some Tuesday Love.
