American
Tears
By Naomi Wolf
15 October, 2007
Huffington
Post
I
wish people would stop breaking into tears when they talk to me these
days.
I am traveling across the
country at the moment -- Colorado to California -- speaking to groups
of Americans from all walks of life about the assault on liberty and
the 10 steps now underway in America to a violently closed society.
The good news is that Americans
are already awake: I thought there would be resistance to or disbelief
at this message of gathering darkness -- but I am finding crowds of
people who don't need me to tell them to worry; they are already scared,
already alert to the danger and entirely prepared to hear what the big
picture might look like. To my great relief, Americans are smart and
brave and they are unflinching in their readiness to hear the worst
and take action. And they love their country.
But I can't stand the stories
I am hearing. I can't stand to open my email these days. And wherever
I go, it seems, at least once a day, someone very strong starts to cry
while they are speaking.
In Boulder, two days ago,
a rosy-cheeked thirtysomething mother of two small children, in soft
yoga velours, started to tear up when she said to me: "I want to
take action but I am so scared. I look at my kids and I am scared. How
do you deal with fear? Is it safer for them if I act or stay quiet?
I don't want to get on a list." In D.C., before that, a beefy,
handsome civil servant, a government department head -- probably a Republican
-- confides in a lowered voice that he is scared to sign the new ID
requirement for all government employees, that exposes all his most
personal information to the State -- but he is scared not to sign it:
"If I don't, I lose my job, my house. It's like the German National
ID card," he said quietly. This morning in Denver I talked for
almost an hour to a brave, much-decorated high-level military man who
is not only on the watch list for his criticism of the administration
-- his family is now on the list. His elderly mother is on the list.
His teenage son is on the list. He has flown many dangerous combat missions
over the course of his military career, but his voice cracks when he
talks about the possibility that he is exposing his children to harassment.
Jim Spencer, a former columnist
for the Denver Post who has been critical of the Bush administration,
told me today that I could use his name: he is on the watch list. An
attorney contacts me to say that she told her colleagues at the Justice
Department not to torture a detainee; she says she then faced a criminal
investigation, a professional referral, saw her emails deleted -- and
now she is on the watch list. I was told last night that a leader of
Code Pink, the anti-war women's action group, was refused entry to Canada.
I hear from a tech guy who works for the airlines -- again, probably
a Republican -- that once you are on the list you never get off. Someone
else says that his friend opened his luggage to find a letter from the
TSA saying that they did not appreciate his reading material. Before
I go into the security lines, I find myself editing my possessions.
In New York's LaGuardia, I reluctantly found myself putting a hardcover
copy of Tara McKelvey's excellent Monstering, an expose of CIA interrogation
practices, in a garbage can before I get in the security line; it is
based on classified information. This morning at my hotel, before going
to the sirport, I threw away a very nice black T-shirt that said "We
Will Not be Silenced" -- with an Arabic translation -- that someone
had given me, along with a copy of poems written by detainees at Guantanamo.
In my America we are not
scared to get in line at the airport. In my America, we will not be
silenced.
More times than I can count,
courageous and confident men who are telling me about speaking up, but
who are risking what they see as the possible loss of job, home or the
ability to pay for grown kids' schooling, start to choke up. Yesterday
a woman in one gathering started to cry simply while talking about the
degradation of her beloved country.
And always the questions:
what do we do?
It is clear from this inundation
of personal stories of abuse and retribution against ordinary Americans
that a network of criminal behavior and intention is catching up more
and more mainstream citizens in its grasp. It is clear that this is
not democracy as usual -- or even the corruption of democracy as usual.
It is clear that we will need more drastic action than emails to Congress.
The people I am hearing from
are conservatives and independents as well as progressives. The cardinal
rule of a closing or closed society is that your alignment with the
regime offers no protection; in a true police state no one is safe.
I read the news in a state
of something like walking shock: seven soldiers wrote op-eds critical
of the war -- in The New York Times; three are dead, one shot in the
head. A female soldier who was about to become a whistleblower, possibly
about abuses involving taxpayers' money: shot in the head. Pat Tillman,
who was contemplating coming forward in a critique of the war: shot
in the head. Donald Vance, a contractor himself, who blew the whistle
on irregularities involving arms sales in Iraq -- taken hostage FROM
the U.S. Embassy BY U.S. soldiers and kept without recourse to a lawyer
in a U.S. held-prison, abused and terrified for weeks -- and scared
to talk once he got home. Another whistleblower in Iraq, as reported
in Vanity Fair: held in a trailer all night by armed contractors before
being ejected from the country.
Last week contractors, immune
from the rule of law, butchered 17 Iraqi civilians in cold blood. Congress
mildly objected -- and contractors today butcher two more innocent civilian
Iraqi ladies -- in cold blood.
It is clear yet that violent
retribution, torture or maybe worse, seems to go right up this chain
of command? Is it clear yet that these people are capable of anything?
Is it obvious yet that criminals are at the helm of the nation and need
to be not only ousted but held accountable for their crimes?
Is it treason yet?
This is an open invitation
to honorable patriots on the Right and in the center to join this movement
to restore the rule of law and confront this horror: this is not conservatism,
it is a series of crimes against the nation and against the very essence
of America. Join us, we need you.
This movement must transcend
partisan lines. The power of individual conscience is profound when
people start to wake up.
Former Deputy Attorney General
James Comey said No: he told colleague that they would be ashamed when
the world learned about the Administration's warrantless wiretapping.
A judge today ruled that the U.S. can't just ship prisoners out of Guantanamo
to be tortured at will -- she said No. The Center for Constitutional
Rights is about to file a civil lawsuit -- against Blackwater: they
are saying No.
In Germany, according to
historian Richard Evans, in 1931-1932, if enough Germans of conscience
had begun to say No -- history would have had an entirely diferent outcome.
If we go any further down
this road the tears will be those of conservatives as well as progressives.
They will be American tears.
The time for weeping has
to stop; the time for confronting must begin.
Copyright © 2007 HuffingtonPost.com,
Inc.
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