Some fresh, light snow fell last night and this morning in Chicago. Not impressive, but something, at least.
Rush University Medical Center
Chicago, Ill.
Rush University Medical Center
Chicago, Ill.
December 2011
Rush University Medical Center
Chicago, Ill.
Dec. 8, 2011
Over the past 10 years, many Americans willingly gave up their civil liberties in the interest of some delusion about enhanced safety in the wake of the events of 9/11. History shows that this tactic has been used in the past to manipulate citizens. Witness the burning of the Reichstag in Germany. An event orchestrated by the government methodically and quite brilliantly. So today it sems this has become the new normal.
I think that we are better than this. I don’t think that we are about torture, rendition, ethnic profiling, or subjecting our own peacefully demonstrating citizens to disproportionate force.
George Orwell’s 1984 is beginning to seem naive compared to the reality we witness before us today. If this is the new normal, then I am disturbed to even imagine what is yet to come. Can you say “police state”?
It sounds trite, but it’s a slippery slope. Once Americans became cowed into surrendering their rights, all manner and sort of additional changes were easy to foist on them. So how long will Americans allow this to continue? And is it already too late?
Let us not forget this poem attributed to Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Taken at Logan Square Monument
On Tuesday, police in Oakland aggressively used “nonlethal” rounds to disperse peaceful protesters from Occupy Oakland. Their violent overreaction seriously injured Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen, leaving him hospitalized with a fractured skull. Iraq Veterans Against the War, of which Scott is a member, has asked everyone to share the image below to show support.
