Letters to the Editor
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The United States of Lyncherdom
That's what Mark Twain called his country around the turn of the last century, when we were largely satisfied with shaming ourselves by lynching the occasional Negro or Jew. We continue to shame ourselvs, all of us -- every one -- until the day comes when we stand up as a nation and not just a handful in a courtroom, and demand, no, command our government to behave in the way we were all raised and taught to understand it was designed, as it is spelled out in its very charter, its Constitution and body of laws. This will not happen until we, as a people, feel, accept, and throw off the mantle of shame we have agreed, sheep-like, to wear as our elected government has carried out the most atrocious sorts of acts against both foreign nationals and some of our very own citizens.
What was perpetrated against Maher Arar and countless, often nameless others, is beyond merely unacceptable: it is an enduring shame, a crime against humanity, and all the jingoistic chanting of the same idiotic, meaningless excuses for bestiality carried out on a global scale will not put a happy face on it. Until we have forced our hired help to cease lynching the world's citizenry at random for the sheer love of brutality we will continue, all of us, to remain complicit in these crimes and will continue to stoop to the level of both our real and imagined enemies.
I love my country; at this moment I not only fear but also loathe my government. I know I am not alone.