Comment I placed in CNN.
In the current social climate and aftermath, a prank that would put you in two weeks' community service in the 80s, could now send you to Guantanamo.
I had a colleague before 9/11 who used to travel around east Asia. He used to asked, "Why are govts in that region so uptight about Communists? Why are Muslim govts jailing Muslim dissidents who spoke too much religion? Why are people who speak of racial issues put in jail? They are barbaric who don't' recognise the rights and freedom of speech. Why cane and humiliate a boy who merely went scratching some cars in town?"
To be fair to him, he probably did not know of, or experienced, the Communist insurgency, the terror, the racial riots, the religious extremism evangelists the govts had been sensing as being sent by Saudi oil money.
I would really like to look into the eye of that colleague now and ask him, "What happened to this beloved country?" The last I heard of him was his conversations seems to veer towards a measure of red-neckedish or even T-baggish.
Let me further muse the situations that OBL has made us crawl into.
In the current social climate and aftermath, a prank that would put you in two weeks' community service in the 80s, could now send you to Guantanamo.
I had a colleague before 9/11 who used to travel around east Asia. He used to asked, "Why are govts in that region so uptight about Communists? Why are Muslim govts jailing Muslim dissidents who spoke too much religion? Why are people who speak of racial issues put in jail? They are barbaric who don't' recognise the rights and freedom of speech. Why cane and humiliate a boy who merely went scratching some cars in town?"
To be fair to him, he probably did not know of, or experienced, the Communist insurgency, the terror, the racial riots, the religious extremism evangelists the govts had been sensing as being sent by Saudi oil money.
I would really like to look into the eye of that colleague now and ask him, "What happened to this beloved country?" The last I heard of him was his conversations seems to veer towards a measure of red-neckedish or even T-baggish.
Let me further muse the situations that OBL has made us crawl into.
- Democrats who support en mass phone line tapping.
- An annoying TSA.
- Children getting arrested due to zero tolerance on simple pranks.
No comments:
Post a Comment