| Repeal the Patriot Act now! If my daughter can get up at 2:00 AM to get in line at one of the nation’s measly sixteen passport offices by 3:00 AM, you’d think that the politicians we pay to read the documents they sign on our behalf could do likewise—get up early enough to do their due diligence on behalf of the tax-paying American people, not to mention the rest of the good folks all around the world who have been Bushackled by the do-gooding signers of The Act in D.C. How dare they tout ‘it’s for the good of the Country.’
Please take a look at the historic walls in the collage at the bottom of this article.
(Two weeks earlier when my daughter first arrived at the PP office, the line stretched out the door, to the elevators, through the lobby of the building, outside the doors of the building and several blocks beyond. The second trip—she was in line by 3:00 and out by 11:00 AM. Eight friggin’ hours to get a piece of paper. Multiply that waste of time by the numbers in line around the nation at the mercy of a government that over-loaded its ass again—and ours—by penning their autographs to unread ‘patriotism.’)
If 600 pages was too much to read within the time frame of Washington’s latest infamous ‘midnight ride of Paul Revere,’ then at least they could change the friggin’ rules. Like maybe instead of hundreds of pages which no one reads except those looking for their ‘perks’ among the puzzling pages, let’s set a limit of say…ten pages?
Or in the case of our illustrious politicians, perhaps they could adhere to generally accepted corporate rules of engagement by allowing at least three days’ review time? Oh, I forgot! The government is not ‘corporate’ nor is it bound by the laws it makes for which we pay dearly.
The very thought of what the drawers, files, and piles must look like in government offices since 9/11 and Katrina make me want to call Neicy Nash of television show Clean House! The small town of 1,000 people just south of where I live only recently received their FEMA payments (partials I’m sure) from the disastrous flood which occurred there in July 2002. That’s only five years, all you hurricaned hopefuls! But don’t count on as much help or as quickly following your more gigantic, traumatic ordeal. Your tax dollars are at work—just not on home soil.
In the meantime, thanks to governmental incompetence navigating an outdated but at last illuminated labyrinth of deception and favoritism, we’ll find the consequence of America’s endless conquests staggering. As will our children and theirs.
If intelligent people will just follow the bread crumbs in and through and around the forest, they will begin to see that governments aren’t the problem, religions aren’t the problem, the mafias (they’ve even divided the world into ‘their’ territories) are not the problem, education is not the problem, poverty is not the problem, and bureaucrats are not the problem. At its simplest, narrowest point of reference, our ‘constant’ problem is the male gender.
The above masculine monoliths of ‘civilized society’ are merely fronts for exclusive-thinking men, or as Bill Maher calls them—rich fucks. Is no one doing the math with me? Statistics in our faces but not in our favor? Lint in our pockets but gold in their banks? Who are the beneficiaries? If you are a woman or girl, are you one of the extremely lucky? Or does our feminine fairy tale’s crumby path peter out where the masculine edicts, walls, and ovens begin?
I would describe myself as just your basic nice person. I’ve devoted most of the years of my life to being nice. I’m so nice that when I’m not nice I feel guilty for days. But I’m beginning to shed ‘nice’ feelings every time I witness or hear of atrocities—especially against women and girls.
I’m beginning to understand that ‘nice’ is not necessarily effective. I’m beginning to realize that diplomacy, both personal and international, can sometimes cost more lives than hard core tyranny. (In her book Half Life of a Zealot, Swanee Hunt stated about her Ambassadorship to Austria, “I could not conform to the description of a diplomat as “an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country.”)
And I’m beginning to be affronted when blessed by well-meaning people with phrases such as ‘peace and light,’ when ‘help stop killing’ seems much more understandable, memorable, and attainable…at least as one of the first steps to the peace they pass around so generously.
Walls have been built since The Circle of C’s gripped the masculine gender’s limbic brain stem. Conquerers of walls or builders of walls—either way, the structures stand as legacy to exclusion, not protection. Never in my younger and more trusting years could I have imagined a wall between the United States and the neighbors to our north and south. What hypocrisy of so-called holy ideals.
Yet plans are underway for these snaking Hadrian-like barriers that will become the varicose veins of an isolated and ‘over-the-hill’ populace. Again, is anyone doing the math with me? Would any of us be where we are if walls kept people imprisoned? No—we’d still be in our cribs! Well, neither can the grungy man-made gender walls withstand the intelligence and determination of women empowering women and children in peril!
Take a reminding glance along my Walls Collage below. They just keep getting higher, thicker, and longer, leaving puzzling historical significance connecting the dots to mankind’s gender-specific sordid and violent past. Hadrian’s Wall, circa 122 CE, demarcated ‘civilization’ from ‘barbarism,’ friends from enemies, Christians from Muslims, light from darkness, north from south, good from evil. The Wall signified protection from Hades, the underground abode of the dead, later described in Greek mythology circa 1527 CE. ‘Hades’ then and ‘Hell’ as we imagine it today. Most women and girls are outside those walls and can vouch for the hell of attempting to exist beyond the privileges that male barriers afford the globally knighted brotherhood.
© 2007 Lynne Sims
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Jerusalem City Wall — 11 BCE |
Cairo Citadel — 12 CE |
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Great Wall of China — 5 BCE |
Hadrian’s Wall — 122 CE |
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Buchara, Uzbekistan — 2 BCE |
San Juan, Puerto Rico — 1500-1600 CE |
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Israel and West Bank — Current |
Berlin Wall graffiti — Current |
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End of the Great Wall of China — Current
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