It’s Come To This

As a child of the 80s, I was raised initially to mistrust the country of Russia. It was the USSR back then, and everything they were was supposed to represent all that was evil in this world. President Reagan implored Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” and that wall finally came down in 1989. America basked in the glory that was the final victory in the so-called Cold War.

That’s how the history books will record it. That’s how it has been recorded so far. Communism was a failed system and Democracy, with the capital D, was the only way to enlightenment.

Now I must ask my fellow countrymen, be they republican or democrat, how it feels to know that a citizen contractor who worked for the NSA has sought and succeeded to find asylum in the country of Russia because his government, who touts “the land of the free and the home of the brave” as their stock in life, has found his exposing what everyone already knew was unspoken truth?

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so detached from true freedom. Fuck your parties, fuck your protections against our free society…this young man sought to bring to light a grievous overreaching of our government, in the name of protecting our way of life, and he’s a pariah. He didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know, or even less what those we call our enemies knew; he only focused it for us so that we could see it more clearly.

Is this what Democracy means? If you dare to speak the truth, to pull back the curtain to expose the man behind it; is this the end result?

I was against everything that Preznit Bush spoke for, but only because I knew full well what his intentions were. He barely hid them. But now that President Obama is seemingly compliant with the very same raping of what it means to be free, what’s the fucking point? I’m absolutely disgusted with the whole endeavor. If being free means robbing people of their freedom to the point where they seek freedom in the nations that once represented everything but freedom, who do you believe?

This country needs to collectively pull its head out of its ass. Sadly, I don’t see that happening. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m not holding my breath doing so.