We have become such "good Americans" that we no longer have the moral imagination to picture what it might be like to be in a bureaucratic category that voids our human rights, be it "enemy combatant" or "illegal immigrant." Thus, in the week before the election, hardly a ripple answered the latest decree from the Bush administration: Detainees held in CIA prisons were forbidden from telling their lawyers what methods of interrogation were used on them, presumably so they wouldn't give away any of the top-secret torture methods that we don't use. Cautiously, I look back on that as the crystallizing moment of Bushworld: tautological as a Gilbert and Sullivan libretto, absurd as a Marx Brothers movie, and scary as a Kafka novel.This is from Diane McWhorter's article "The N-Word: Unmentionable Lessons of the Midterm Aftermath," at Slate.com. Highly recommended.
Proudly delegitimizing the state since 2005
"Aye, free! Free as a tethered ass!" —W.S. Gilbert
"All the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and . . . the State should be abolished." —Benjamin Tucker
"You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." —James Madison
"Fat chance." —Sheldon Richman
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