Thursday, December 22, 2005
We're Losing
The war on terror. We are losing, if not lost. We've argued how to bring ourselves down to their level and have by most reports done so. Our country has taken Orwell's newspeak to new highs. It's not kidnapping, it's renditions. It's not torture if they don't die, it's enhanced interrogations. It's not a bureaucratic nightmare that can't even figure out what to do in a hurricane, it's the Department of Homeland Security - an Orwellian term if I've ever heard one. The government is spying on us with no legal reason other than they say they can. Now like many foreign countries we have the national military watching what we do and getting ready to control what we do.
At the same time, our infrastructure is crumbling around us. Companies are going bankrupt faster than their workers can be laid off. Crime is rising in many places. The state I call home is going to hell faster than the factories here can crumble. Every negative list - crime, poverty, segregation - that comes out, puts Michigan and its cities in the top twenty or higher. The only thing that isn't rusting away here is the guns kids use to shoot each other on the street with.
Soon we won't have to worry about other third-world police states, we will be one.
