Jeff McCallum

It’s hard to give credence to every cause, difficult to unite to right the wrongs being perpetrated on our people by our own government. Sometimes I wonder how we forgot so quickly the lessons we used to scoff at, everything from 1984 to Fahrenheit 451 is foreshadowed or happening before our eyes, yet we continue Nero like, to eat, drink and be merry. Today’s court ruling on wiretapping was just one more warning that -- to paraphrase Sinclair Lewis -- “When fascism comes to this country it will wrapped in our flag and carried by the religious right.” I doubt that it even occurred to him to add "upheld by a stacked court."

ACLU Slams Appeals Court Decision in NSA Surveillance Case (7/6/2007)l 

 Court Ruling on Illegal Spying

Fill in the Blanks

We sit silent because we don’t

have a draft blowing the death cold in

our nostrils

filling them with the stench of war and burning

our eyes with the reality of our own or someone

very close’s mortality

We sit silent because we don’t fear

our brother his mother our mother being placed in a white

van in the middle of the street in the middle

of the night in the twenty four seven battle with

terror we are disinterested spectators witnesses

to sound bites buffering our own morality

and nothing more

We sit silent because we don’t

worry about anything but the cold draft

of possible unemployment when the war machine grinds

to a halt pausing while sniffing out the next

piece of meat hoping we are not

the target of the religious right and if our rights

are the next fatality

so be it

We sit silent because PETA equals people

eating tasting animals and Green Peace is composed of tree

huggers and hippies who don’t understand

that Exxon was just not treated fairly and those commie pinkos

stand squarely in the way of progress toward the Great American

Century of death and the ACLU just doesn’t stay out

of what is not their business habeas corpus

has no place in our reality

We sit silent because_______________