The Slippery Slope

When did it start? Is there anyone still alive who remembers the horror and shame, the mass murder of innocents, and the sudden silence of disbelief post-Nagasaki?

Who among us believes there will ever be a reason to use a device like this again? If so, under what circumstances?

Our government -- mind you, these are OUR representatives, so what they do, think, say, plan or carry out is OUR responsibility -- is planning for a possible nuclear attack against Iran. Seymour Hersch pointed it out the other day. No one has denied it.

I wonder if we still can say NO to the lunatics in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. After all, we didn't do much when our military -- under orders (legal orders? hey generals, do you believe the orders were legitimate?) -- invaded Iraq. Turns out it was under false pretenses and if you didn't figure it out already, well, you were taken for a fool.

Then, we didn't do much when our government said, "Hey, we can call you people 'unlawful combatants' because we didn't give you our permission to defend yourselves, and that lets us lock you up for the next few decades without trial or representation."

After that, we just let it slide when our government redefined torture and exempted itself from the Geneva Conventions. After all, what's a little more bending of international law when nobody came down too hard on us for our preventive invasion in the first place?

Are you starting to see how this works yet?

Just eat a little bit of this at a time and before we know it, our bellies are so full of crap that it simply doesn't matter any more. We move from observing to excusing and rationalizing to becoming full participants. You know it. Those pictures from Abu Ghraib, when you saw them, was a bitter bite but you swallowed it. And in so doing, in allowing there to be times and situations in which torture is justified, you sold your soul. It's simply too late now to take back that permission.

Then, we stood down when we learned that our government exposed the identity of someone in our own intelligence community. Small potatoes at this point. Further, we put up a negligible fuss on discovering that our government was spying on us citizens, without warrant or independent oversight. After all, nobody even read the Patriot Act when it was passed, right? Following on, we now find out that the leader of the executive branch of our government himself authorized the leak of selected pieces of a classified document in order to discredit a citizen who was telling the truth that our government didn't want told.

At this point, any conscious normal human being should be tearing their hair out and screaming, "Impeach the bastards!"

If we don't say NO after all this, there's only one reason. We've slid too far, we're going too fast.

See you in hell.