Arrest
Me
By William Rivers
Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 4 March 2003
George W. Bush is out of control.
I'll say it again.
George W. Bush is out of control.
I'm waiting for the black government cars to
come squealing up in front of my house, for the thump of leather on my
stairs, for the sound of knuckles on my door, for the feel of steel
braceleting my wrists, for the smell of urine in some dank Federal
holding cell as I listen to questions from men who no longer feel the
constricting boundaries of constitutional law abutting their duties.
Sounds paranoid, doesn't it? Straight
out of the Turner Diaries, maybe. Sounds like I'm waiting for the
ominous whop-whop-whop of the blades on a black helicopter churning the
air over my home. Sounds like I'm waiting to find a laser dot on
my chest above my heart before the glass breaks and the bullet pushes my
guts out past my spine.
Crazy, right?
Ask Andrew J. O'Conner of Santa Fe, New
Mexico if it sounds crazy. Mr. O'Conner, a former public defender
from Santa Fe, was arrested in a public library and interrogated by
Secret Service agents for five hours on February 13th.
His crime?
He said "Bush is out of control" on an
internet chat room, and was arrested for threatening the
President.
Ask Bernadette Devlin McAliskey of Ireland
if it sounds crazy. She was recently passing through Chicago from
Dublin, where she passed security, when she heard her name called over a
loudspeaker. When she went up to the ticket counter, three men and
one woman surrounded her and grabbed her passport. McAliskey was
informed that she had been reported to be a "potential or real threat to
the United States."
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey has spent the
better part of her life struggling for the Irish nationalist
cause. She did not lob Molotov cocktails at police. Instead,
she became a member of British Parliament at age 21, the youngest person
ever elected to that post. In 1981 she and her husband were shot
by a loyalist death squad in their home. She has traveled to
America on a regular basis for the last thirty years, and has been given
the keys to the cities of San Francisco and New York.
Upon her detention in Chicago last month,
McAliskey was fingerprinted and photographed. One of the men
holding her told her that he was going to throw her in prison.
When she snapped back that she had rights, she was told not to make the
boss angry, because he shoots people. "After 9/11," said one
officer, "nobody has any rights."
"You've evaded us before," said the officer
before McAliskey was deported back to Ireland, "but you're not going to
do it now." She never found out for sure how she was a threat to
the United States, and is currently filing a formal complaint with the
U.S. consulate in Dublin.
There are those who will brush these
incidents off. Andrew O'Conner has been an activist for years, and
has not hidden his disdain for this looming war in Iraq.
Bernadette McAliskey is a world-famous fighter for her people.
Some will say the opinions and freedoms of people like this do not
matter in the grand scheme. Others will wave these incidents away
as random examples of thoughtless action by petty dictators who were
foolishly given badges and authority.
I don't.
It is ironic, in a grisly sort of way.
Hard-right conservatives spent the entirety of the Clinton
administration baying to anyone fearful enough to listen that the
President was coming for their freedoms, that it was only a matter of
time before the Bill of Rights was destroyed. The myth of the black
helicopters, the apocalyptic views of the Turner Diaries, and a smoking
crater in Oklahoma City all testified to the brittle paranoia these
people promulgated in those years.
Now, those same people have representatives
with parallel views on virtually every domestic and foreign policy idea
in control of the House, the Senate, the White House, the Supreme Court,
the intelligence services and the United States military. These
are the people who brought us the Patriot Act, versions 1.0 and 2.0, the
people who are responsible for the most incredible constitutional
redactions in our history.
Ask Mr. O'Conner and Ms. McAliskey about
it. They can tell you what happens to undesirables these
days.
When you murder peaceful dissent in America,
you murder America itself. When you harass innocent people for
their past and present views, you spread fear within an already
terrified nation. This is not about some fool of a Secret Service
agent jumping the gun on an innocuous online comment, or an airline
security officer with a penchant for bullyragging 55 year old
women. This is a failure from the top down, an empowerment - by
the man charged with defending our constitution - of lesser jackasses
with large badges who do not understand nor care for the importance of
their positions. This is about failed leadership, and the
despoiling of everything that makes this place precious and unique and
sacred.
In other words, Bush is out of control.
Bush is out of control.
Bush is out of control.
Come and get me.
William Rivers
Pitt is a New York Times bestselling author of two books - "War On
Iraq" (with Scott Ritter) available now from Context Books, and "The
Greatest Sedition is Silence," available in May 2003 from Pluto Press.
He teaches high school in Boston, MA.