Homeland Insecurities
A Gay Opinion 1/9/03
By R. A. Melos
Like most Americans, all I want is to feel safe, be loved, respected, and accepted for who I am. I don't think that's too much to ask for, do you? Well apparently it is. However, unlike the majority of Americans, I was prepared for the letdown when it was discovered not everyone on the planet likes us as much as we like ourselves.
Growing up closeted and in a deep denial prepared me to face the truth. People are just plain annoying most of the time, and when they start telling me how I should live my life they pass annoying and go straight to arrogant dictator-wannabes.
I would be among the first to say we need to be more secure as a country, but I would also be among the first to say we need to maintain our civil liberties while increasing security. So far, all we've truly succeeded in doing with our increased security status is piss off Middle Easterners and a bunch of people too shy to sue the government because they don't wish to appear unpatriotic.
Patriotism to me means believing in and respecting your country and ALL that it stands for, especially the nitpicky civil liberties that made America a land of opportunity. Every time I hear someone like John Ashcroft go on national television and bring up the subject of detainment camps for Americans deemed potentially un-American in their actions, I cringe and lose that much more respect for a country with growing respect for someone who appears nazi-like in his thinking.
I feel the same loss of respect every time Donald Rumsfeld opens his mouth. I would say I feel the same every time George W. Bush speaks, but knowing his strings are being pulled by Dick Cheney makes me feel a slight bit sorry for Bush, because he truly is the first openly expendable President in the history of the United States.
While Cheney is scurrying into a bunker every time the office of Homeland Security elevates the alert status from burnt sienna to a rich auburn, Bush is tossed out there like a decoy in Air Force One to attract fire, if it should come to that. In the meantime, Cheney is comfortably secure in the knowledge he's safe and could emerge from his bunk, like a ground hog to see his Presidential shadow should the shit hit the fan.
Somehow having news anchors proclaiming Dick Cheney is safe in an undisclosed location is supposed to give me a warm fuzzy feeling of comfort, but it only succeeds in giving me a headache, and indigestion.
Meanwhile as America becomes even less popular with the global community, George W. Bush is doing a terrible impression of John Wayne, making me wonder if he's not really doing an impression of John Wayne Bobbit, IE being the dickless wonder I always considered him to be prior to the 2000 election.
Given my feelings on the current world situation, it's amazing I have any hope left for a liberal world of freedom that would suit my frame of mind, but I do. I have the hope long buried in my soul, beaten back so often by bullying thugs known as peers who attempted to impose their beliefs upon me, that one day I won't feel oppression in the air every time I set foot outside. I have the hope I'll have the freedom to live as I choose, love as I choose, and enjoy the laughter of my fellow man as we watch the smog of oppression lift to reveal the common sense of free thinking people.
In the meantime I, like so many others, wonder when the proverbial shit is
going to hit the fan, and just how far it'll blow before someone has the common
sense to pull the plug and clean up the mess?