Arrest Me
by
William Rivers Pitt
Dissident Voice
March 4, 2003
George
W. Bush is out of control.
I'll say it again.
George W. Bush is out of
control.
I'm waiting for the black
government cars to come squealing up in front of my house, for the thump of
leather on my stairs, for the sound of knuckles on my door, for the feel of
steel braceleting my wrists, for the smell of urine in some dank Federal
holding cell as I listen to questions from men who no longer feel the
constricting boundaries of constitutional law abutting their duties.
Sounds paranoid, doesn't
it? Straight out of the Turner Diaries,
maybe. Sounds like I'm waiting for the
ominous whop-whop-whop of the blades on a black helicopter churning the air
over my home. Sounds like I'm waiting
to find a laser dot on my chest above my heart before the glass breaks and the
bullet pushes my guts out past my spine.
Crazy, right?
Ask Andrew J. O'Conner of
Santa Fe, New Mexico if it sounds crazy.
Mr. O'Conner, a former public defender from Santa Fe, was arrested in a
public library and interrogated by Secret Service agents for five hours on
February 13th.
His crime?
He said "Bush is out of
control" on an internet chat room, and was arrested for threatening the
President.
Ask Bernadette Devlin
McAliskey of Ireland if it sounds crazy.
She was recently passing through Chicago from Dublin, where she passed
security, when she heard her name called over a loudspeaker. When she went up to the ticket counter,
three men and one woman surrounded her and grabbed her passport. McAliskey was informed that she had been
reported to be a "potential or real threat to the United States."
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
has spent the better part of her life struggling for the Irish nationalist
cause. She did not lob Molotov
cocktails at police. Instead, she
became a member of British Parliament at age 21, the youngest person ever
elected to that post. In 1981 she and
her husband were shot by a loyalist death squad in their home. She has traveled to America on a regular
basis for the last thirty years, and has been given the keys to the cities of
San Francisco and New York.
Upon her detention in
Chicago last month, McAliskey was fingerprinted and photographed. One of the men holding her told her that he
was going to throw her in prison. When
she snapped back that she had rights, she was told not to make the boss angry,
because he shoots people. "After
9/11," said one officer, "nobody has any rights."
"You've evaded us
before," said the officer before McAliskey was deported back to Ireland,
"but you're not going to do it now."
She never found out for sure how she was a threat to the United States,
and is currently filing a formal
There are those who will
brush these incidents off. Andrew
O'Conner has been an activist for years, and has not hidden his disdain for
this looming war in Iraq. Bernadette McAliskey
is a world-famous fighter for her people.
Some will say the opinions and freedoms of people like this do not
matter in the grand scheme. Others will
wave these incidents away as random examples of thoughtless action by petty
dictators who were foolishly given badges and authority.
I don't.
It is ironic, in a grisly
sort of way. Hard-right conservatives
spent the entirety of the Clinton administration baying to anyone fearful
enough to listen that the President was coming for their freedoms, that it was
only a matter of time before the Bill of Rights was destroyed. The myth of the
black helicopters, the apocalyptic views of the Turner Diaries, and a smoking
crater in Oklahoma City all testified to the brittle paranoia these people
promulgated in those years.
Now, those same people have
representatives with parallel views on virtually every domestic and foreign
policy idea in control of the House, the Senate, the White House, the Supreme
Court, the intelligence services and the United States military. These are the people who brought us the
Patriot Act, versions 1.0 and 2.0, the people who are responsible for the most
incredible constitutional redactions in our history.
Ask Mr. O'Conner and Ms.
McAliskey about it. They can tell you
what happens to undesirables these days.
When you murder peaceful
dissent in America, you murder America itself.
When you harass innocent people for their past and present views, you
spread fear within an already terrified nation. This is not about some fool of a Secret Service agent jumping the
gun on an innocuous online comment, or an airline security officer with a
penchant for bullyragging 55 year old women.
This is a failure from the top down, an empowerment - by the man charged
with defending our constitution - of lesser jackasses with large badges who do
not understand nor care for the importance of their positions. This is about failed leadership, and the
despoiling of everything that makes this place precious and unique and sacred.
In other words, Bush is out
of control.
Bush is out of control.
Bush is out of control.
Come and get me.
William Rivers Pitt is a teacher from Boston, MA. He is the author of War On Iraq:
What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You To Know (Context Books, 2002) with Scott
Ritter, and The Greatest Sedition is Silence which will be published in
May by Pluto Press. Scott Lowery contributed research to this report.