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reality, especially regarding the actual behavior of our government/corporate rulers in creating wars and oppressing the poor here and abroad, it is nevertheless an extremely potent ideal that lives in the hearts of most Americans, and, as important, lives in the hearts of people everywhere.
America is the place you flee to, from torture, war, injustice and all forms of oppression.
America is the place where a free press and a free people provide you with the opportunity to expose injustice, not just to seek refuge from it.
America is the place that, having won a WORLD WAR against the Nazi war machine and Japanese imperialism, significantly declined to take advantage of the countries that it had defeated, and the devastated countries that had been liberated, and instead created the United Nations and the international rule of law, and invited ALL countries to be members, to have a vote, and to work together for world peace and justice.
America is the country that not only declined to take racial/national revenge against Germans, Japanese and other enemies, but generously aided their recovery.
America is the country where it was possible, when a great injustice had been done--such as the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during the war, the enslavement of African-Americans, and genocide against the Indians--to expose the injustice and to achieve some amount of historical vindication, and current justice, as well as compensation.
America is the place that outlawed religious war, that had so plagued Europe for many centuries, and established freedom from religion and freedom of thought as the FIRST PRINCIPLE of the republic.
America is the place where hard work and education are rewarded with upward mobility, as opposed to so many countries in which wealth and entitlement are granted by birth, not by merit.
America is the country where no man or woman is king, and where all citizens, collectively, are the sovereign.
America is a somewhat miraculous "melting pot" where religious, cultural, racial, economic and other differences, that cause tribal wars in the other parts of the world, live peacefully together, undertake common projects of many kinds, and adhere to common principles of equality and dignity.
America is a country where anyone can become president.
America is a country where the "rule of law" supersedes the "rule of men," where dictators and robber barons, if they arise, can be curtailed by COMMON AGREEMENT that everyone is equal before the law.
George Bush and Dick Cheney slew this America, not in our hearts, but in so far as our ideals, and the beacon of those ideals to other people, was alive in government policy.
And I believe that it is in that sense that Betty Williams blurted out her statement, "Right now, I could kill George Bush," which she quickly amended. She didn't mean it in the sense of taking his life. I think she meant it in the sense of all that he and his junta have killed--not just people (at least a half a million Iraqis), but absolutely vital principles and ideals of American government policy.
Now, when some poor dissident is tortured and thrown into a dungeon by some heinous dictatorship around the world, he or she cannot dream of America, or dream that, if he or she does not personally survive, his or her children and neighbors and compadres may one day be free, and the horror of the present moment will one day be vindicated...in America. By America.
Because America is now the torturer, officially declared. America is now the invader, with "preemptive" war, death, destruction, occupation and colonialism as its official policy. America is the official thief of the world, the destroyer of democracies, the prop to dictators, and the purveyor of the "Big Lie," in its government proclamations as in its once free, now corporate/government controlled, press. America is the place where greedy and stupid people rule by virtue of their birth, not their merit. The place where the right to vote is now controlled by rightwing corporations with "trade secret" code--an "election" system worthy of Josef Stalin.
George Bush and Dick Cheney killed the American Dream, in so far as it was practically demonstrated by government policy, by principles of accountability, by our laws and by democratic representation.
It still lives within most of us. I am convinced of that. And its universal principles of equality and humanitarianism will be restored to our government, eventually. But how many hearts have, in the meantime, been broken? How many opportunities for human progress have been lost? How many people have been utterly crushed?
It is wrong, though, to focus our outrage on Bush, Cheney & Co. as individual persons, although they most certainly should be held accountable. It is rather a class of oligarchs that is "the enemy," and collective, peaceful, democratic action is the only way to deal with a class of lawless, traitorous, unbelievably greedy and conscienceless people, if we are to be true to that dream that we hold within us, of America the just. It is Bush, Cheney and their PUPPETMASTERS and ENABLERS that need to be dealt with. And it is their power and not their persons that need to be killed. Kill a fascist and another will arise. Kill their power and you have established a PRINCIPLE for all, and a LESSON for all.
And how do you "kill their power"? By RE-empowering the people. Priority no. 1, for that goal, should the restoration of transparent vote counting.
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