Spare Me: 4th of July 2022

Spare me your red, white and blue claptrap

I don’t want to hear it this year

not in 2022,

when theocrats in dusky judicial robes

strip our rights away

by twisting the law to impose their 18th century notions

on the rest of us;

Spare me myths of wise Founding Fathers, 

George Washington was a greedy land speculator,

and the sage of Monticello, Thomas Jefferson, had a yen

for Negro flesh and spread his pale seed among the people

he owned,

never once believing that 

all men are created equal;

Spare me tales of divinely inspired destiny,

wave your blood-soaked stars & stripes someplace else,

because no moral God could condone centuries of chattel slavery,

Black men, women, and children bought, sold, traded, 

insured, mortgaged, beaten, whipped, 

raped,

burned alive and lynched at will;

atone for that and we can speak of Liberty

and Justice for all; atone 

for genocide on the plains, for the Trail of Tears and

Wounded Knee, 

for the invasion of Haiti

Mexico

the Philippines and 

Guatemala

for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for Afghanistan and

Iraq;

Spare me your fireworks until Donald Trump 

is held to account for attempting a coup;

every minute the sociopathic former president 

and his traitorous retinue walk free

they mock the rule of law

and make the Department of Justice a euphemism;

Spare me your patriotic speeches and odes to democracy

as long as Mitch McConnell

runs the U.S. Senate like his personal kingdom;

Spare me your 4th of July sales, deals, discounts

I’m not buying;

Spare me your backyard BBQ’s and all-American BS

as long as white Christian fascists

care more for the unborn than they do for the living,

and venerate their guns more than their wives,

sisters and

daughters;

Spare me, America, until you muster

the moral courage to look in the mirror

and not flinch at the 

reflection

that makes you so

uncomfortable and afraid.  

Sadism, American-Style

Just following orders from the top, that’s all. The word came down from on high to waterboard Al Qaida detainees or strip them naked and lock them in cages for days on end, and the CIA operatives obeyed, using the same amoral logic that hundreds of SS guards employed when they shot or gassed Jews in Poland; same logic used by the underlings of Joe Stalin and Idi Amin and Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.

In this case, just following orders means absolution from culpability.

The Obama Administration should be commended for releasing internal Bush-Era Justice Department memos that bring to light the heinous “legal” methods used by the CIA to torture suspected terrorists -- and condemned for not pursuing prosecution of the people who carried out these un-American practices.

Because someone must be held accountable for torturing human beings in the name of the United States government and lowering the United States to the level of a sadist.

Under George W. Bush, we kidnapped real or suspected terrorists, jailed them, and then tortured some of them when we believed it suited our ends.

If we’re willing to do all that, we have to ask what else we’re willing to do in the name of “national security.” Where does it end, and with whom?

President Obama declares that these perversions will never happen again – and that might be so, on his watch – but what is to prevent a future administration from reviving the Bush Administration’s entire “pre-emptive” framework, including torture?

I want to know: Does the United States of America torture human beings we find threatening or don’t we? Does our conduct depend on circumstances? Do we reserve torture only for Muslims or would we also torture Mexicans or Swedes?

Although the United States is a militaristic empire with a long rap sheet, our respect (OK, maybe it was only lip service) for the rule of law, domestic and international, stood us above rogue regimes. Identifying the bad guys on the world stage used to be a relatively black & white affair. Regimes that held people in jail for years without due process, or tortured political prisoners, were bad and the United States condemned them.

Until George W. Bush came along and used the aftermath of 9/11 to stand international conventions against torture on their head.

By every indication Barack Obama is a decent, intelligent man, but he’s also a politician infatuated with having it both ways; he wants to appear as if his administration is cleaning house – but only if the cleaning excludes the basement; he also wants to protect his political capital from charges from the Right that the administration is on a witch hunt.

A politician talks about looking forward; a leader talks about making sure the evils of the past do not repeat in the future.

A leader knows when to stand on principle and not budge an inch.

Since Obama assumed office the style and tone in Washington D.C. has definitely changed, but at the end of the day real change has not yet arrived. In fact, real change isn’t even in sight.