Another article you should read regarding those rights that are slipping through our fingers faster than water through a sieve. Thanks again for the heads up from Shelley. Sneaky little devils our friendly neighborhood congressional reps.
“Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purpose is beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” --Louis Dembitz Brandeis, lawyer, judge, and writer (1856-1941)
I always get inspired to write when I read BurningBird's blog and the attached comments. What I read there seems to send me off into all sorts of what ifs, and down paths of introspection. I see different facets of what is lurking about in my own mind.
Shelley has been back from a recent hiatus for awhile, but I missed her return, so I'm playing catch up. On 11/24, she wrote an interesting piece on changing someone else's opinion. I recommend that you read it, but that's not what I want to talk about.
In this piece, she mentioned an interview Tommy Franks did with Cigar Aficionado magazine - you can find it here. General Franks tells the interviewer that “if terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government.” He proceeds to warn us that such an incident would cause us to “question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution.”
This scenario seems very real to me in our current state of fear here in the US of A, and the potential of living in a totalitarian state scares me down to the very marrow of my bones. It scares me far more than any terrorist threat.
The problem is that it doesn't scare enough of my fellow Americans, too many of whom live in a constant state of denial. "It can't happen here" syndrome sucks most of us in and keeps ups safe - so we think. We are about as safe as the ostrich with his head in the sand. Problem is that he doesn't realize that his posterior is very much exposed.
As the tragedy of September 11, proved it can happen here - and it can happen to you, or me, or someone close to us.
We feel safe within the bubble of our 200+ years of freedom and democracy, and we don't realize how fragile that safety is. We don't realize that this bubble can so easily be broken. The Patriot Act and other policies and trends set in place since 9/11 have paved the way for the possibilities. I strongly believe that another terrorist attack on our soil will provide justification to those who crave total power (and I'm convinced they are all too prevalent among our current administration) to stage a coup.
Friends, acquaintances and family members brush off my fears. They think I'm an alarmist with an overactive imagination. I seem to be in the minority, so maybe I am, but I don't think so.
I think you have only to study history, and do some research to at least raise some questions in your mind. The trouble is that most of us don't do that. We're focused on our own lives and events closer to home. We don't have time to concern ourselves with the bigger picture. But if we don't consider the big picture, it may be here before we even know what has happened - and then it may be too late to stop it.
I think we have to at least consider the possibility. Maybe it won't happen, but I still think that to prevent it from happening, you have to first allow that it could. If we don't at least do that, the reality could sneak up from behind us and catch us with our heads in the sand.
On a visit to the Bronx Zoo, I was amused by signs in the reptile house. As a rather large python slept in a tree behind thick glass keeping us from him, and him from us. The sign alongside this glass enclosure read, “Don't bang on the glass ... what would you do if it broke.”
Take a long look at your freedoms folks ... what would you do if you woke up one morning and they were gone.
“The believer is happy; the doubter is wise.” -Hungarian proverb.
As is to be expected, there have been a multitude of TV shows about Kennedy and the assasination this week - over the past couple of weeks actually. I haven't watched any of them, but I did see an interview Matt Lauer did on the Today show.
I don't remember who he was interviewing, but he asked them about conspiracy theories. The interview brushed them off as nonsense, then went on to offer his opinion on why these theories exist to this day. Basically, he seemed to feel it was an emotional response. He even hinted that those who believe that a conspiracy existed are a little flakey.
Well, I'm probably one of those flakes. I don't wholehearted believe that there was a conspiracy, but there are so many strange happenings that surround the incident and so many unanswered questions, that leave me wondering.
There are conflicting stories about the body, the wounds, the autopsy and some who say the body went missing for a time. There are witnesses who claim to have seen another gunman or shots from the grassy knoll. There are people involved who died under seemingly mysterous circumstances. There are expert riflemen who have tried to duplicate Ozwald's feat of firing all three shots, and failed. And what about the "Magic Bullet theory" - the one that claims Governor Connally was killed by the same bullet that killed JFK.
Too many question marks exist without enough satisfactory answers for me. Both the conspiracy theorists and the single gunman theorists seem to go through all sorts of hoops to prove their pet theory. Each question answered seems to open more questions to ponder. There are elements from each side that leave me wondering, what if. Forty years later, and still I'm left wondering. Still unconvinced that either side is right.
“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken bird that cannot fly.” - Langston Hughes
Seeing as how today is the 40th anniversary of the day day when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, I'd thought I'd present a few thoughts.
Everyone who was alive, cognitive and old enough to pay attention to the news remembers where they were on this pivotal day in history. I am no different.
I was in art class and we were just cleaning up our projects before the end of the period. The PA system gave a static buzz, then the voice of a radio announcer droned, “Three shots were fired.”
The general chatter in the classroom dropped to silence as we all looked up at the speakers in the ceiling. I wondered what was going on and why we were hearing this voice that was neither the principal's nor her secretary. I'm sure I wasn't alone in thinking that perhaps someone had triggered the microphone by accident, still “Three shots were fired.” sounded ominous. We had no idea what those 4 words held in store.
The PA system clicked off momentarily, then the familiar voice of our principal filled the room. "The president has been shot," she said, just before the buzzer sounded to end the class. At the same time those of us in the room exclaimed, “Oh, no!.” or just “No!”
The principal, then instructed us all to proceed to our next class. She didn't have to add, "With dignity," because we were all familiar with that admonition. It was Sister Louise's favorite expression. I don't recall the halls being so quite during a change of class rooms - not that they were ever all that noisy - Sister Louise wouldn't stand for that. What little talk there was, was done in whispers, as though we would disturb some cosmic force, better left undisturbed. Mostly, we were all in shock. Who would shoot JFK - and why?
My next class was algebra, but we didn't launch into a discussion of sines and cosines. The teacher was wise enough to know that our minds were on math at the moment. For a few minutes, we speculated on what had happened and why. Some of us who followed the news more closely than others, knew that the President had been going to Dallas that day, but that was about all we knew at the time.
Sister Louise came on the PA again, and then instructed us to go down to the gym.
I don't know how they got the chairs set up on the gym floor so quickly and I didn't really think about it then, but we all took seats and waited for whatever was going to happen next.
Sister Louise took the stage behind a podium. She told us that the President had been shot in Dallas and had taken to a hospital. Over 300 teenage girls sat in that gym. The silence punctuated only by an occasional sob. Sister Louise said, nearly in a whisper, that we would pray. To this day, I can hear plainly the sorrowful cadence of 300 plus young voices reciting the Rosary led by Sister Louise and one of the other nuns.
Between the news and the comforting rhythm of the prayer, I was numb - just working on auto-pilot - so I don't remember how far we had gotten, when the phone on the stage rang. Silence dropped again like a steel door. In a swirl of black habit, Sister Louise hastened to answer it as we all sat still with a cloud of dread hanging over us. I felt a strong premonition that the news would not be good.
“President Kennedy has died,” she said, when she returned to the podium.
Some of us cried aloud, some sobbed silently and others just sat in shock. I don't remember too much after that. I know the buses were brought in and we were sent home early, but the rest of that day lives only as a blur in my mind.
The days that followed all seemed grey and silent. It seemed that everyone spoke only in whispers. The TV droned in the background with coverage of the flight back from Dallas and recaps of the events. I felt like I'd been dropped into an underwater world where everything worked in slow motion.
My family watched as Jack Ruby shot Ozwald and that added another layer of surrealism to those days. We watched it happen live on TV. It was the end of an era and at the same time a new one had begun. Never again would watching something happen on TV as it was actually happening seem so bizarre.
With the end of that era came an end to the innocence my generation held dearly. We had Camelot on the stage, in the movies and in the White House. Whether you supported this President or not, you had to acknowledge that there was something, somehow mystical about hsi presidency. Perhaps it is just the advantage of retrospect, but that's the way I remember it.
The Kennedy Presidency inspired hope, optimism and idealism, like no other that I have known. My parents weren't especially supportive of him. I don't really remember why. It was just a feeling I got. We didn't much discuss politics, but I knew they considered themselves Independents; sometimes supporting Democrats and other times Republicans. I think my mother just thought he was too young to be President.
To me, he always seemed larger than life, and like many my age, I was fascinated with Jackie, and the antics of Caroline and John-John.
That bright hope and bubble of optimism burst with his death. Vietnam and disillusionment followed. We heard of the ensuing years, that he had been a womanizer and that his marriage to Jackie had not been the ideal we'd supposed. But at that time and in that place there was a magic in Washington that hasn't been matched since.
On November 22, 1963, for more than one generation of people, innocence died, hope took on a coat of tarnish and harsh reality set in. However we must hold on to the dreams we had back then. If we don't hold them dear, all hope - even tarnished hope - will be lost.