[Voterescue] Sign the Freedom Pledge: Naomi Wolf - "American Tears"

[Vickie Karp]

  American Tears

Posted October 11, 2007 | 06:47 PM (EST)
By Naomi Wolf
I am traveling across the country at the moment -- Colorado to California
-- speaking to groups of Americans from all walks of life about the
assault on liberty and the 10 steps now underway in America to a
violently closed society.

The good news is that Americans are already awake: I thought there would
be resistance to or disbelief at this message of gathering darkness --
but I am finding crowds of people who don't need me to tell them to
worry; they are already scared, already alert to the danger and entirely
prepared to hear what the big picture might look like. To my great
relief, Americans are smart and brave and they are unflinching in their
readiness to hear the worst and take action. And they love their country.

But I can't stand the stories I am hearing. I can't stand to open my
email these days. And wherever I go, it seems, at least once a day,
someone very strong starts to cry while they are speaking.

In Boulder, two days ago, a rosy-cheeked thirtysomething mother of two
small children, in soft yoga velours, started to tear up when she said to
me: "I want to take action but I am so scared. I look at my kids and I am
scared. How do you deal with fear? Is it safer for them if I act or stay
quiet? I don't want to get on a list." In D.C., before that, a beefy,
handsome civil servant, a government department head -- probably a
Republican -- confides in a lowered voice that he is scared to sign the
new ID requirement for all government employees, that exposes all his
most personal information to the State -- but he is scared not to sign
it: "If I don't, I lose my job, my house. It's like the German National
ID card," he said quietly. This morning in Denver I talked for almost an
hour to a brave, much-decorated high-level military man who is not only
on the watch list for his criticism of the administration -- his family
is now on the list. His elderly mother is on the list. His teenage son is
on the list. He has flown many dangerous combat missions over the course
of his military career, but his voice cracks when he talks about the
possibility that he is exposing his children to harassment.

Jim Spencer, a former columnist for the Denver Post who has been critical
of the Bush administration, told me today that I could use his name: he
is on the watch list. An attorney contacts me to say that she told her
colleagues at the Justice Department not to torture a detainee; she says
she then faced a criminal investigation, a professional referral, saw her
emails deleted -- and now she is on the watch list. I was told last night
that a leader of Code Pink, the anti-war women's action group, was
refused entry to Canada. I hear from a tech guy who works for the
airlines -- again, probably a Republican -- that once you are on the list
you never get off. Someone else says that his friend opened his luggage
to find a letter from the TSA saying that they did not appreciate his
reading material. Before I go into the security lines, I find myself
editing my possessions. In New York's LaGuardia, I reluctantly found
myself putting a hardcover copy of Tara McKelvey's excellent Monstering,
an expose of CIA interrogation practices, in a garbage can before I get
in the security line; it is based on classified information. This morning
at my hotel, before going to the sirport, I threw away a very nice black
T-shirt that said "We Will Not be Silenced" -- with an Arabic translation
-- that someone had given me, along with a copy of poems written by
detainees at Guantanamo.

In my America we are not scared to get in line at the airport. In my
America, we will not be silenced.
More times than I can count, courageous and confident men who are telling
me about speaking up, but who are risking what they see as the possible
loss of job, home or the ability to pay for grown kids' schooling, start
to choke up. Yesterday a woman in one gathering started to cry simply
while talking about the degradation of her beloved country.

And always the questions: what do we do?
It is clear from this inundation of personal stories of abuse and
retribution against ordinary Americans that a network of criminal
behavior and intention is catching up more and more mainstream citizens
in its grasp. It is clear that this is not democracy as usual -- or even
the corruption of democracy as usual. It is clear that we will need more
drastic action than emails to Congress.

The people I am hearing from are conservatives and independents as well
as progressives. The cardinal rule of a closing or closed society is that
your alignment with the regime offers no protection; in a true police
state no one is safe.

I read the news in a state of something like walking shock: seven
soldiers wrote op-eds critical of the war -- in The New York Times; three
are dead, one shot in the head. A female soldier who was about to become
a whistleblower, possibly about abuses involving taxpayers' money: shot
in the head. Pat Tillman, who was contemplating coming forward in a
critique of the war: shot in the head. Donald Vance, a contractor
himself, who blew the whistle on irregularities involving arms sales in
Iraq -- taken hostage FROM the U.S. Embassy BY U.S. soldiers and kept
without recourse to a lawyer in a U.S. held-prison, abused and terrified
for weeks -- and scared to talk once he got home. Another whistleblower
in Iraq, as reported in Vanity Fair: held in a trailer all night by armed
contractors before being ejected from the country.

Last week contractors, immune from the rule of law, butchered 17 Iraqi
civilians in cold blood. Congress mildly objected -- and contractors
today butcher two more innocent civilian Iraqi ladies -- in cold blood.

It is clear yet that violent retribution, torture or maybe worse, seems
to go right up this chain of command? Is it clear yet that these people
are capable of anything? Is it obvious yet that criminals are at the helm
of the nation and need to be not only ousted but held accountable for
their crimes?

Is it treason yet?
This is an open invitation to honorable patriots on the Right and in the
center to join this movement to restore the rule of law and confront this
horror: this is not conservatism, it is a series of crimes against the
nation and against the very essence of America. Join us, we need you.

This movement must transcend partisan lines. The power of individual
conscience is profound when people start to wake up.

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey said No: he told colleague
that they would be ashamed when the world learned about the
Administration's warrantless wiretapping. A judge today ruled that the
U.S. can't just ship prisoners out of Guantanamo to be tortured at will
-- she said No. The Center for Constitutional Rights is about to file a
civil lawsuit -- against Blackwater: they are saying No.

In Germany, according to historian Richard Evans, in 1931-1932, if enough
Germans of conscience had begun to say No -- history would have had an
entirely diferent outcome.

If we go any further down this road the tears will be those of
conservatives as well as progressives. They will be American tears.

The time for weeping has to stop; the time for confronting must begin.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/american-tears_b_68141.html




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