September 11
Two days after the terrorist attack, I wrote a short essay about how it was a tragedy, but that the real shock was how long it took for anyone to do it. I said then that America was a bully on the world playground, that we would lose freedoms in pursuit of a false sense of security, and that a majority of people would eagerly accept the heavier yoke if it meant feeling safer.
I wasn't nice back then.
I wasn't wrong, either.
September 11
America has a three-hundred-year history of religiously motivated colonialism and racial violence with which it has never truly reconciled and for which it has never really apologized. The idea of America is rife with assumed privilege on the world stage. It still tries to act like the only superpower, and like the only country deserving of the title. Pax Americana is a threat to global stability; it refuses to lead and can't accept that anyone else do better.
September 11
Last year's "liberal" candidate, Hillary Clinton, is the wife of our second-most recent "liberal" president -- can you say "dynasty"? -- who was less liberal than Obama in 2008. As Secretary of State, she advocated for arming rebels in Libya, producing a collapsed state. She supported the Iraq War and rejected universal health care. In 2016, she spent more time appealing to centrist Republicans than disaffected progressives. She courted Henry Kissinger for an endorsement.
September 11
Even America's voting system is illiberal. First-past-the-post as a voting system is guaranteed to produce a two-party outcome over a long enough period,. The Electoral College and the distribution of federal legislative seats mean citizens in urban areas have less impact on federal law than rural ones. Buckley v Valeo guarantees that campaign finance laws can't be fixed without a constitutional amendment. Citizens United is a naked embrace of plutocracy.
September 11
Now, we have the most dangerously incompetent president in the history of the country, and open admissions of his children accepting foreign offers of insider information and foreign governments staying at presidentially-owned properties to curry favor. We're seeing sustained assault on the independent press despite their handwringing over "peaceful far-right protestors" being attacked by "violent antifa." Violence has increased against people of color, immigrants, and LGBTQ people.
September 11
If I have hope for the future, it's that America has tried, in fits and starts, to embrace its other set of ideals. To be the Mother of Exiles, as the New Colossus calls us. To embrace everyone who come to our shores, looking for a place to call "home." If there is an America in which I can believe, it's her, though I don't know how much of her remains. If there is any faith I have left in a vision of America, it must start there.
September 11
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
September 11
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
-- New Colossus, the poem on the Statue of Liberty
September 11
If Uncle Sam must die so that the Mother of Exiles can live, well... I've seen worse transition narratives in my time. It takes some of us longer to get here than others, but what matters is that we get here eventually.
September 11
@literorrery *nodnodnod* 45 is not some shocking deviation or break in our triumphant democracy, but a logical, predictable consequence of the autocratic tendencies we've been allowing increasing control over our society.
September 11
In the last decade and a half, America has continued its descent into illiberalism. Under the last "liberal" president, Barack Obama, the government expanded the use of drone warfare, failed to act against extraordinary renditions, had American citizen Anwar al-Alwaki assassinated without due process, permitted eight prosecutions of whistle-blowers under the Espionage Act, decreased government transparency, and expanded the mass surveillance apparatus built by his predecessor.