Ugh

As something of a political/news junkie, I run into any number of depressing things--Often US policy is the worst.
I can't help but be frustrated by what I see.
The US is now nearly indistinguishable from the people we claim to be fighting. Torture, violence, violations of rights, and a fiercely ideological rhetoric is spewed frequently. Secret memos passed around. Hiding things from the public. Lies. Bull shit. Misdirection.
I'm probably going to end up with my own file someplace because of this post. If I haven't already got one for attending protests and protesting in general.
I cannot support anything or anyone that hurts other people. I may not like people in general, but I'll be damned if I allow pain and suffering to brought on anyone by a ruling entity without some squeak of protest.
I want to change things. I want to help make the world into what it should be. I want to help other people become what they could be.
You know what scares me?
The USA PATRIOT act was a shelved bill, brought back out right after 9/11.
The fact that the government has lied to me and to the public flagrantly. Perhaps they believe we are, as whole, less intelligent than a young goat.
That it watches everything with the Predator program, which watches for key words and then tracks anyone who enters those key words.
That there are secret prisons.
That there are people who are drugged and tortured by government officials with official approval.
That we were lied to get our nation embroiled in a war that we will never be able to leave properly. The day the Middle East is stable is the day the world begins to end.
That there are cases of people being arrested IN THE US for running opposition sites.
That the American public has simply accepted the various violations of human rights with nary a shrug.
That we've left the values we championed for so long so far behind that it will take some serious, strenuous effort to recover.

And that's what scares me the most--hard work is not something people are willing to do. As long as day-to-day life runs smoothly, who cares about what the politicians decide? Who cares what happens to other people as long as I'm ok? As long as my circle of friends and family is ok?
Neil Postman warned against this in Building a Bridge to the 18th Century. And damn it all, he was right.

If we set our minds to it, roll up our sleeves, and plunge forth into the muck and mire of what the Bush administration will have left us, we can move heaven and earth. The diety of your choice cannot stop us.

But I don't think it will happen. It makes my heart break, but it's true. Nothing will change unless something serious happens. It would take a lot of secretive arrests--mysterious disappearances of friends and neighbors--lots of trials that end in censorship--to honestly change the world my generation is setting foot in.

The nation I cherish--the ideals and ideas that I live with and for--is slipping away. Slowly. There are hints of what we were still. But they are slowly dying away.

And we will soon be left with nothing but memories of a golden past, when every man and woman could have a real trial. When the word of secret arrests reached us, we assumed they were in some forgotten hell-hole of a nation. When lies of government officials consisted of, "I did not have sex with that woman!"