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This is the Eye of Grace. This is where the world is set straight before your simple minds. This is where the shit hits the fan.
I am the shit. You are the fan.
The Enemy Within
We are constantly bombarded, by media and by our own government, by our friends and neighbors, by the grouchy business man in the line to the check in desk at the airport, with the horrors of the terrorist threat to our country. Yes, sir… Terrorists are trying to take our freedom away, and we have to fight for it, by sending our kids to fight that good fight in sun baked deserts halfway across the world. It is important that we don’t give in to these terrorists, because, after all, it is our very freedom that is at stake here.
Now, I don’t know how your personal freedom was infringed upon by the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Maybe you lost someone in the crumbling towers, or maybe you know somebody whose life was drastically altered in its aftermath, but chances are you are just another regular Joe Schmoe who sat there, glued to the TV, as the shit hit the fan.
So, what really happened to you after 9/11? How was your actual freedom hampered by those terrorists? Were you put in house arrest by random bands of roving Arabs in your dreamy little suburb? Did Muslim leaders invade your kids' school and make them pledge allegiance to the president of Iran? Was your library card suddenly revoked by Syrian agents? Did a bunch of bearded camel jockeys strip you of your right to protest politics you don’t agree with, by duct taping you to a Scud missile, heading for Israel?
No, of course not. You only paid way more for gas than before, all of a sudden, and that wasn’t even the Arabs’ fault. The gas companies just saw the opportunity to raise the prices, in anticipation of what may, perhaps, possibly, happen down the line, testing the waters for how much we would actually pay if need be... and they got away with it.
Nothing else changed.
Really.
You still had your mind to speak against social injustices. You could still burn a flag in your backyard. You still had the right to an attorney and a speedy trial. You had the right to call upon a writ of Habeas Corpus and appeal your detention from prison. You had the right to talk on the phone, without secret agents eaves dropping on every word that could construe you as, gasp!, a terrorist.
Note, please, that this is all past tense, dear reader.
For it seems that things have changed a bit. All those civil rights above have now been dispatched of with a vengeance. Scale by scale, our freedom is being flayed from our dull and brainwashed flesh.
Wasn’t the point with these wars that we would retain the level of freedom we already had, and perhaps, perish the thought, even expand upon it – becoming even freer in a more modern and civilized America?
Instead, our own government, through a series of bills and legislations, have passed the Patriot Act, suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus, instituted a banning of flag burnings (under the punishment of fines and jail time) and even authorized the use of telephone tapping of ordinary citizens – supposedly to further “aid” our efforts to fight terrorism, but, instead, effectively hacking away at our American right to fucking freedom. Freedom, kids. The very thing that was at stake here from the beginning, supposedly at the hands of blood thirsty Arabs and fuckheaded Muslims. Why is it then that every step to infringe upon our civil rights has been taken by our own representative electives? I sure as fuck don’t want my freedom to be infringed upon. I never voted for that shit. Did you?
Didn’t think so.
So, while Joe Schmoe’s kids are dying in Iraq, fighting for our "freedom", our own President is signing away our rights left and right.
This is the same man who wanted the United Arab Emirates to be in charge of our Port Security.
You still don’t get it, do you? You still think we have to "make some sacrifices to serve a greater good", right? You are such a good little sheep.
Do you know that the Patriot Act can, effectively, put you in detention, indefinitely, for no other reason than Homeland Security thinking you constitute a danger to our American society? They don’t have to specify what danger that may be, or exactly what your crime is, because the Patriot Act gives them the right to kick your door in, in the middle of the night, and drag your ass to a cell and hold you there, without an attorney, until the cows come home. See, you don’t have to be a bushy-browed towel-headed Muslim to constitute a threat – you could be an outspoken person, voicing your opinion against the government and that could be enough to authorize a phone tap on all your conversations.
When I called for petitions, for the two Border Patrol agents that were facing prison time for the whole drug smuggling incident, a lot of people said, “I would love to fax the White House, but I don’t want them to know who sent it. Can I do it anonymously?” What the hell is that? Are we afraid of our own government now? Is that the kind of freedom we want for ourselves? Is that the freedom we are fighting for in Iraq? "A people should never fear its government, the government should fear its people." That is the stone-pimp truth, kids.
I am telling you, right now, that the only freedom that has been taken away from us, as American Citizens, since 9/11, has been carried out by our own government – supposedly to protect us from ourselves, if you believe them. Maybe they will give it back to us once the mysterious War on Terror has been won.
Uh-huh… Right.
See, a government doesn’t act in your interest. Never. No matter what political affiliation they adhere to. They act in their own interests alone. You are truly naïve if you think your rights are in any way precious and untouchable, especially if they stand in the way of the preservation of the Powers That Be. A beaten, scared and supervised people are much easier to govern than a bunch of free-thinking obstinate jerks. Stalin knew this. Hitler knew this. Castro knows this. Kim Jong Il knows this. And yes... Bush knows this. People can’t be trusted to always vote for the right guy, so you have to encourage them with a kick in the right direction, and by eliminating other options. If you dangle the big curved Arab sword of Damocles over the heads of your people, then you can get away with murder and fascist methods of political pruning, literally, all in the name of “War on terror”. For we don’t want any more skyscrapers to come crumbling down around our ears, do we? Maybe if we let our government fuck us in the ass, real hard, we can save our cities from becoming terrorist war zones?
You, the average American - Democrat or Republican (it doesn’t matter – really – sorry to burst your bubble, kids) - have a great aversion against Big Brother Watching. You tremble from indignation at the thought of DNA banks, keeping track of everybody’s genetic fingerprints – no matter how many crimes they would prevent/solve.
You shake your fist against people who think the First Amendment shouldn’t apply to groups like NAMBLA, who endanger the safety of little kids. That would crack the foundation of our Bill of Rights! But you still live, indifferently, in a country where you can be thrown in a cell without legal aid, indefinitely, with no contact with the outer world, for being an “enemy of the state”. There is no classification of this “enemy of the state”, mind you, but believe me, if they think you are one, you’re it. Don’t doubt it for a fucking second. But you don’t care.
You don’t picket up and down the streets in protest against the phone taps and the federal access to your library records. They only target other people, right? Arab Muslim fuckheads, and their likes.
You don’t march on the Castle of Washington, torch ablaze, to demonstrate against the bill that, effectively, suspends the principle of Habeas Corpus – a detainee’s right to appeal his detention through an attorney. A bill that was passed the very same day Foley was conveniently busted for his, years old, sex mails, and that totally distracted from this controversial bill being rushed through Congress. Most Congress Men who voted hadn’t even read the bill – but it passed. Still, you were busy watching Foley making an ass of himself on TV, not hearing squat about this Habeas Corpus travesty until now. Just like you sit there and watch American soldiers getting blown to pieces by suicide bombers in a foreign country. They are all just shiny objects dangled in front of your ADD. They are sacrificial lambs to the slaughter, ensuring plans of power, right here at home, to be put into motion by politicians without scruples, but with an agenda.
A rather scary thing with that bill, signed into the new law of “Military Commissions Act of 2006”, is that it also empowers the President to be the one to “define torture” in detention centers. This basically gives our own government a mandate to extract information from “terrorist detainees”, using measures of torture, by calling it something else.
Is this fucking America? Some of these “terrorists” are actual Joe Schmoes, American citizens, presumed guilty until proven innocent.
KGB used to do the same to their “enemies of the state”.
What? You thought your freedom was really at stake at the hands of a bunch of sand monkeys in some country without electricity or indoor plumbing? Fucking, please… Snap out of it. People have always hated America (well, since we started to meddle in everybody’s business after WWII, of course) and they will always hate us. That is nothing new. Our politicians have always used that against us, the people, to further their own goals and preserve their power. That is nothing new either. It used to be the Cold War that kept us brainwashed and in place – cowering under our desks at the thought of a Nuclear Holocaust and the Big Scary Red Bear. Nixon, Johnson and Reagan milked that fucker for all it was worth, putting the American population in a fetal position of fear and mistrust. Anything foreign was to be spat upon, and not buying American was on par with being a red commie bastard, so domestic brand names sold like gold. The American economy flourished like a motherfucker and everybody voted for all the right people.
It’s the same shit now. The War on Terror is really The Cold War II, and we are once again being manipulated into submission and supervision by our elected leaders, encouraged to mistrust anything from outside our borders or anything that goes against the wishes of the Powers That Be.
The real Enemy of Freedom is already inside the gates, kids, stripping you of your civil rights – little by little.
He was here all along.
You voted for him.
~ The Eye of Grace ~
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