Post Mortem

Nov. 3rd, 2004 11:41 am
shannon_a: (Default)
[personal profile] shannon_a
America is dead.

Perhaps it died last night, amidst hope stillborn; perhaps it died three years ago, as fear and hatred billowed out like smoke from two fallen towers; and perhaps it died four years ago, as a nation looked in disbelief at an election stolen away, still quietly mouthing to themselves, "It can't happen here. It can't."

But the nation conceived of two hundred and twenty-eight years ago by our founding fathers is gone. Their hopes of religious freedom, of strength for the common man, are shattered. We now live upon the mouldering corpse of their dreams.

Sixty-two years ago our grandparents were faced with the pivotal event of their generation, when Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese, and our country was brought into World War II. That generation clothed itself in honor and was welcomed onto the world stage by every free country of Europe. It fought too, but it fought for the oppressed, for the common good, and when it was finished it said, "My time here is done," and having given back to Europe its hope also returned its freedom and its dignity.

Three years ago we were faced with the pivotal event of our generation and we instead clothed ourselves in greed and ambition. This time we were not welcomed as we took our war across the Atlantic; instead we accepted the disdain that was heaped upon us as if it were our due, that which should be rendered unto Caesar. We wallowed in the hatred, for it told us that we were strong, and the rest of the world merely jealous of the greatness that we had.

This time we are not the liberators; we are the enslavers. We are not the freedom fighters; we are the killers. The blood of a hundred thousand innocents already lies thick upon our hands. We do not fight against an Aryan Empire, built upon intolerance for our fellow man; we are that Empire.

Last night we were given a hope, a last hope, a chance to cry out into the night that we are not those men, those men who stampede across the freedom and dignity of the world, blind to all but our own ambition. But our cries into the night were unheard, swallowed up by the looming darkness.

We are those men.

If we are to have any hope left, it can be found only by looking one last time at Germany, the evil empire that we cast down sixty years ago. Today they are a vibrant and free country, a stronghold of finance, a home to dreams, to freedom.

As we once were.

As, perhaps, we can be again.

But not for a long time. Fifty years perhaps, sixty. I am not sure I will live to see the day.

And today, America is dead.
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