Sometimes my brain does some really weird stuff—especially right now while I’m coming off my antidepressant—but tonight it threw me a strange curve ball:
I serve on the steering committee of the local ACLU chapter, and it’s ‘that time of year’ at the ACLU when our representative to the state board has the unenviable job of hitting up the local major donors for some extra bucks. It’s a job I’ve done quite a few times over the years, and for me, it’s the only really unpleasant part of representing the chapter to ‘Chicago.’
This evening, our current rep sent the committee members some information about the most recent meeting of the state board, and mentioned that he’d soon be contacting each of us individually to do the squeeze. I hit reply and kind of went on autopilot, as I sometimes do when firing off a polite reply-type note, and explained that my finances were screwy and I wasn’t going to be able to make a pledge this year, but that for now and the foreseeable future, the ACLU was my first priority for both any extra pennies I found in the sofa and whatever time and energy I can come up with for the cause. And then I said “. . . Obama is many times more dangerous [to civil liberties] than BushCo ever could have been.”
Holy shit! Did I write that? Where’d that come from? Do I really think that?
To which the answers are – indeed, yes, I’ll explain, and sadly, yes.
For me and many like me in the civil liberties community, the single most important issue in the 2008 presidential election wasn’t the war or the economy or immunity for telecommunications companies that assisted the government in illegal spying on innocent American citizens or even the torture memos. For us, aside from wresting control of the country from the hands of an apparently completely insane Republican Party, the 2008 election was about restoring the United States Constitution and the rule of law.
Since taking office, Obama’s record has been mixed. But Bush left one hell of a mess, and Obama is a constitutional scholar fer krissake, and surely when the dust settles, he’ll get this stuff sorted out. Or at least, that was my illusion until Thursday’s speech on Gitmo in which he introduced the concept of “Prolonged Detention.” I think Rachael Maddow said it best:
The only difference between Obama and Bush is that this level of rape of logic and of the United States Constitution is not something an inarticulate, bumbling fratboy with ADHD could pull off without the absurdity being so obvious that even Aunt Martha’s cat Puddin was scratching its head there at the end. A constitutional law professor, on the other hand . . . .
More on this soon (or not)
