As soon as you turn out the light, a thief takes your day and your night

[sovay]

Just because one of the speakers at last night's protest thought we were well past any use in calling on elected officials does not mean that I did not just leave messages with mine in the matter of Rumeysa Ozturk, my senators to encourage them to speak out further and my representative to thank her for doing so. I do not feel that I have so many levers available to me that I can afford not to pull all of them just in case.

In all of the articles I am reading about deported, disappeared, or threatened students, I understand the tactical importance of their good characters and I don't care and I wish it were not necessary to make anyone care. I don't want their civil liberties to depend on a referendum of their pro-Palestinian activism and the degree to which it may or may not have been antisemitic as defined by a government which platforms Jew-haters like there's any kind of shortage. I was in Boston for the Marathon bombing. I was so afraid that the Crusader roleplay of the war on terror which even then had been part of the American doomscape for more than a decade had shot due process out of a cannon in the case of a bona fide domestic terrorist. Nothing about this steamrolling of constitutional rights makes me feel safer and it is not meant to, but it does make me want to scream that the fundamental rights and privileges of the law are apparently no longer even a nominal cornerstone of the American mainstream. It should not get tangled with whether their free speech is your free speech. It should not matter even if they are a nice person. I have gathered to my perplexity that the fear of the Devil turning round on them motivates far fewer people than I had once imagined, but come the everlasting exceptionalism on. Disappearing people off their doorsteps, dumping them in black sites for profit should be a no-brainer no-no.

I am obviously having a bit of a fritz-out over whether any of the actions I am taking even rise to the level of grit in the gears or whether they are merely a garnish of historical interest on an unstoppable slide and I am well aware that on some level it doesn't matter, because there is never any excuse for standing there looking on with folded hands and in any case it doesn't feel to me like the better course, but I would feel a whole lot better if I could see even a little bit of resistance in the mechanical sense in action.

Comments

[thedarlingone]

Speaking as someone who grew up on the right-wing side of the tracks, I'm honestly just as baffled by the exceptionalism. I grew up on a constant diet of "we can't set this precedent because a left-wing successor in the position could use it against us, we have to work within the system and gain power legitimately". And now the same people are just smashing every check and balance in creation. I really don't understand humanity sometimes.

[sovay]

I grew up on a constant diet of "we can't set this precedent because a left-wing successor in the position could use it against us, we have to work within the system and gain power legitimately". And now the same people are just smashing every check and balance in creation.

I can see how that would not feel any less head-spinning.

*hugs*

[minoanmiss]

I don't know when precisely this rubric was adopted but it seems to be the current one: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

I honestly doubt they expect to have left wing successors, which realization is perennially worrisome in ever more numerous ways.