Bravo, U.S.A...I salute you!

Admittedly, I’m a little behind on the news. Even though The New York Times pops up every time I open Firefox, I usually do a quick skim of the headlines and then go straight to checking my e-mail. It’s better this way, reason says, it won’t result in a day of depression. Well, ignorance is bliss some of the time. The rest of the time, it just leads to finding out about things like this two days late.

I’m angry. No, wait: I’m infuriated. How did this happen? How could this happen? About two weeks ago, a stubborn but well-read friend of mine harangued me for making harsh comments about our country’s legal policies. He wasn’t defending the Supreme Court, per se, but he was defending their upholding of the Constitution and my apparent inability to understand that if you take away one Amendment, you give clearance to take away all of them. We were talking about gun control, and the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a law that would have banned citizen possession of handguns in Washington D.C. I don’t like handguns, and I probably never will. Anyone who is even slightly educated will probably say the same thing: they exist solely to kill people. (After all, no one’s going to shoot an elk with a 9 mm.) So to me, fudging with the 2nd Amendment and making handgun possession illegal in a city with one, if not the highest murder rate per capita in the nation seemed okay to me. When the Supreme Court didn’t agree, I understood their reasoning, but didn’t like the decision. The Times report I read aptly pointed out how context is everything, and because the 2nd Amendment was written at a time when things like gangs and homicide didn’t exist in the same way as they do today, it needs to undergo thorough reexamination. I agree with this. But again, my friend said, imagine what would happen if they did away with the 2nd Amendment. Imagine what else they could change. True, but in my mind, various rulers of our country (and the Justices who follow them) could make attempts to alter the Constitution at any time. I really do believe, despite everything, that our freedoms can be taken away as easily as they’ve been given. Sure, it’s great to live in the States. But when you’ve got Supreme Court Justices who need reminding of the existence of Constitutional Amendments (as indicated a week before the gun control case, when the Court barely ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainees deserved fair trials), it’s a little easier to see how faulty the whole system has become.

This whole wire-tapping bill is just icing on the cake. Yes, it’s being done for precautionary measures, to fight terror, to stop what can be stopped and save what can be saved, etc. etc. But wire-tapping without warrants? You say the wrong thing on the phone—maybe you make a joke that someone happens to be listening in on and happens to misinterpret—and suddenly, you find yourself detained without cause, a victim of rendition. I dunno, man. The whole thing sounds a little too 1984 for my liking. I think the worst part is that it keeps phone companies off the hook. Let’s save the big corporations! Guess who can’t sue when the government doesn’t need a warrant to eavesdrop?

Keeping the people down. That’s really what America’s always been about. How to make itself look good, while oppressing those who really help hold it together.