Dear Dirty America

The guest post at naked capitalism makes us painfully aware:

Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday explained why it’s legal to murder people — not to execute prisoners convicted of capital crimes, not to shoot someone in self-defense, not to fight on a battlefield in a war that is somehow legalized, but to target and kill an individual sitting on his sofa, with no charges, no arrest, no trial, no approval from a court, no approval from a legislature, no approval from we the people, and in fact no sharing of information with any institutions that are not the president.

And then, one of Holder’s profound quotes, which will make for a great scene in a movie one day:

“…our nation today confronts grave national security threats that demand our constant attention and steadfast commitment. It is clear that, once again, we have reached an ‘hour of danger.’

“We are a nation at war. And, in this war, we face a nimble and determined enemy that cannot be underestimated.”

We haven’t been able to escape the long-drawn “hour of danger” since the Bush administration screwed up and let those jetliners crash into those NYC towers. Our hour of danger has turned into an hour of tyranny at home — warrantless wiretapping of cellphones, online monitoring, unlawful search and seizures throughout the country, legions of riot police that outnumber peaceful protesters, TSA groping and radiation-spilling body scanners, and a proposed $600+ billion plan to unleash 30,000 spying drones over American skies.

(That $600 billion is particularly offensive when we can’t pay for good teachers, fund nutrition programs and healthcare for kids, and keep the postal service alive.)

And an hour of tyranny abroad that now includes nine or more “war fronts” that currently drain the US economy and its military might. We have thousands of civilians being blown apart by predator drones.

We have the NDAA bill that allows for any American citizen to be indefinitely detained without a trial. The Obama administration made good on that kind of tyranny by taking out a mid-level Al Qaeda blogger — Anwar al-Awlaki — and his sixteen year old son.

What the killing of Awlaki came down to was being murdered for freedom of speech — Is this the kind of world we want? No trial, no jury, not even for an American with some hostile views. The Obama administration still refuses to release the evidence, or the Department of Justice’s legal opinion on murdering an American citizen overseas.

It’s messy stuff. Who can blame the administration? All kinds of unconstitutional implications and ugly ramifications to deal with. So wait until we forget. Which we most certainly will. Why don’t we complain?

If there’s any hour of danger for United States citizens, it’s the threat and harm that will most likely come from the illegitimate men and women in power, who continue to stand outside the boundaries of our Constitution. People such as Eric Holder and Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and formerly George Bush Jr, and Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney. Or future men in the same position, such as Mitt Romney, John McCain, or Rick “Cold Dick” Santorum.

Stop getting frightened by their rhetoric. Speak up, speak out. Start complaining, start talking back to these shills. If the Holders of the world could have it their way, we’d have an unseen enemy to fight for the next century. It’s good for big business, big capital, and big oil.