Bradley Manning is gone, though the agent could probably write to Chelsea Manning c/o the US Army.
America isn’t America anymore, if it ever was
I know, right? Things were so much more, well, FREE, back in the day.
You know, in like, well, slavery days.
Or when we were exterminating all of the people who had been living on the continent before the Europeans got here, you know, those Indians.
Well, uhm, or like WWII, when we put all the Japanese in camps. And IBM was selling computers to the Nazis so they could be more efficient with that whole Final Solution thing they were up to.
Or, uh, Jim Crow era.
Er, uh, I mean, during the McCarthy era and Cold War. J. Edgar Hoover and stuff!
Er, uh, Vietnam, yeah, Vietnam! Kent State!
Oh… Well shit. I guess it never was.
I know, no kidding. Things really went downhill when the UK took Heathrow from the US.
Haha, what great questions they had for her!
I wonder if they also waved their neckties at her & demanded she reveal what colour they were or asked her what she had for lunch on Tuesday last.
“She knows who Edward Snowden is! A WItch! A Witch! May we burn her?”
No taxation without representation?
Wait, no. Then you just sound like the Tea Party nutjobs. Hrrm.
Hey, wait a minute. You mean Americans, surely.
Doubt they thought of themselves as Americans, and the people killing them sure didn’t.
Just what is the generally respectable way to refer to the people who lived in the USA before it was colonized, these days? Tribal peoples? Indigenous? Sometimes it’s so darn hard to be PC.
Do you really want to fuck with a lawyer? I mean you’re harrasing someone who can file a civil lawsuit against your ass and it won’t cost them a penny in attorney’s fees…
Usually referred to collectively as Native Americans. Many Native Americans refer to themselves as Indians, although that’s not a great term to use, because it’s easily confused with Asians from India. Although I have talked with a lot of NA people who refer to themselves SPECIFICALLY by tribe, because that’s who they are. Who wants to be lumped? Do I say I’m white? Not really. I’ll cop to being German Scotch Irish, and that’s about it.
So lawyers are representing people who may have committed an offence?
This has to end. Who’s side are they on?
The US has its moments of blazing righteousness in complete defiance of its obvious hypocrisy. I mean hell, that is about as American as it gets. You have deceleration of independents that declares all men to be created equal… and then a constitution that describes how many real people a slave is worth in figuring out how many representatives you get in the House of Representatives. How American is that?
Honestly, I prefer hypocrisy over acceptance. I would rather the US fail to live up to its standards than successfully meet no standards. Standards give you something to strive for even when you fail. For all the horrible things that the US did during the Cold War, it did manage to stand strong at great personal risk and defend Western Europe and support freedom in Eastern Europe. For every nasty act of covertly fucking over someone’s freedom, the US resisted the temptation to impose nastier principle destroying laws. As the Cold War spun up, the US by in large became more free in the face of a threat, not less free. The US went the entire Cold War with “papers please” being a joke making fun of the Soviet block’s lack of freedom. It isn’t so fucking funny now.
The US has never been perfect. It has committed genocide, kicked over democracies, killed and tortured. It has also took up the sword and shield to defend liberal democracy when out of all of the nations in the world, it had the least urgent need to do so. I vastly prefer a hypocritical US that strives towards achieving good liberal principles than what we have now. I miss hypocrisy. A sincere hypocrite can change, while an unprincipled shit will always be an unprincipled shit.
Papers please.
Personally I like the Canadian term “First Nations”, but even that isn’t perfect.
Yeah, but it does get the point across that there is more than one. Hell, there are different language groups (not just different related languages) represented in this.
“Who is Edward Snowden?”
“Where is Bradley Manning?”
Some hard-hitting questions right there. Watch out Jesselyn, I think you´re dealing with a genius.
The nascent police state is alive and well in Britain, and growing up nicely, although it’s going through a passive-aggressive phase.
As Burroughs said - a toothless flabby fascism,
Somebody said, roughly, “Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.” It was, I’m pretty sure, intended to suggest that there are worse things than hypocrisy. I agree.
