I’m re-posting here a comment that I left on a Chris Hedges post about the upcoming last-ditch appeal for the freedom of Julian Assange. The comment was extreme, and it led the pack in likes. But that was not my purpose. My sentiments, here are genuine: I’ve had it with the failure of the promise that should’ve been America. And I’ve definitely had it with its entirely money-corrupted two-party political system and all of its current corrupt politicians; if there are one or two exceptions in your mind, I grant you that. I can’t find any.
The comment follows: It’s from the deepest gut malaise in my 76 yeas of existence as a natural born, first-generation US citizen (both my parents Italian-born naturalized citizens).
“The issue and the impediment here are one and the same: the US government IS a criminal entity populated with, replete with, spineless colluding soulless criminals. As an American, I once thought better of this country, that it had better foundations, but unfortunately, too many elected leaders who took the corporate handouts forgetting the populace they represented. But that far-too-kind judgment is long past. Given the slow-motion murder of Julian Assange and the first amendment, given the obvious complicity in Palestinian genocide, I can only conclude that the entire experiment has morphed into terrorism theater, with that government as the terrorist; which should be extirpated, incarcerated forever as an ongoing crime against its own species, the biosphere, and any reference to sane cognition or morality. I completely reject my identity as an American citizen. Freeing Julian might make me feel better, but will never purge that judgment and the fecal taste it leaves on my tongue”.
I stand by the emotional malaise behind the comment. I’d be embarrassed to ever have to admit to being an American. I’d rush to rattle off something mundane in Italian, my second language, to try to convince a stranger that I had a different identity.