Naomi Wolf| BIO |
American Tears
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/american-tears_b_68141.html
Posted October 11, 2007 | 06:47 PM (EST)


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I wish people would stop breaking into tears when they talk to me these
days.

I am traveling across the country at the moment -- Colorado to
California -- speaking to groups of Americans from all walks of life
about the assault on liberty and the 10 steps now underway in America to a
violently closed society.

The good news is that Americans are already awake: I thought there would
be resistance to or disbelief at this message of gathering darkness -- but
I am finding crowds of people who don't need me to tell them to worry;
they are already scared, already alert to the danger and entirely prepared
to hear what the big picture might look like. To my great relief,
Americans are smart and brave and they are unflinching in their readiness
to hear the worst and take action. And they love their country.

But I can't stand the stories I am hearing. I can't stand to open my email
these days. And wherever I go, it seems, at least once a day, someone very
strong starts to cry while they are speaking.

In Boulder, two days ago, a rosy-cheeked thirtysomething mother of two
small children, in soft yoga velours, started to tear up when she said to
me: "I want to take action but I am so scared. I look at my kids and I am
scared. How do you deal with fear? Is it safer for them if I act or stay
quiet? I don't want to get on a list." In D.C., before that, a beefy,
handsome civil servant, a government department head -- probably a
Republican -- confides in a lowered voice that he is scared to sign the
new ID requirement for all government employees, that exposes all his most
personal information to the State -- but he is scared not to sign it: "If
I don't, I lose my job, my house. It's like the German National ID card,"
he said quietly. This morning in Denver I talked for almost an hour to a
brave, much-decorated high-level military man who is not only on the watch
list for his criticism of the administration -- his family is now on the
list. His elderly mother is on the list. His teenage son is on the list.
He has flown many dangerous combat missions over the course of his
military career, but his voice cracks when he talks about the possibility
that he is exposing his children to harassment.

Jim Spencer, a former columnist for the Denver Post who has been critical
of the Bush administration, told me today that I could use his name: he is
on the watch list. An attorney contacts me to say that she told her
colleagues at the Justice Department not to torture a detainee; she says
she then faced a criminal investigation, a professional referral, saw her
emails deleted -- and now she is on the watch list. I was told last night
that a leader of Code Pink, the anti-war women's action group, was refused
entry to Canada. I hear from a tech guy who works for the airlines --
again, probably a Republican -- that once you are on the list you never
get off. Someone else says that his friend opened his luggage to find a
letter from the TSA saying that they did not appreciate his reading
material. Before I go into the security lines, I find myself editing my
possessions. In New York's LaGuardia, I reluctantly found myself putting a
hardcover copy of Tara McKelvey's excellent Monstering, an expose of CIA
interrogation practices, in a garbage can before I get in the security
line; it is based on classified information. This morning at my hotel,
before going to the sirport, I threw away a very nice black T-shirt that
said "We Will Not be Silenced" -- with an Arabic translation -- that
someone had given me, along with a copy of poems written by detainees at
Guantanamo.

In my America we are not scared to get in line at the airport. In my
America, we will not be silenced.

More times than I can count, courageous and confident men who are telling
me about speaking up, but who are risking what they see as the possible
loss of job, home or the ability to pay for grown kids' schooling, start
to choke up. Yesterday a woman in one gathering started to cry simply
while talking about the degradation of her beloved country.

And always the questions: what do we do?

It is clear from this inundation of personal stories of abuse and
retribution against ordinary Americans that a network of criminal behavior
and intention is catching up more and more mainstream citizens in its
grasp. It is clear that this is not democracy as usual -- or even the
corruption of democracy as usual. It is clear that we will need more
drastic action than emails to Congress.

The people I am hearing from are conservatives and independents as well as
progressives. The cardinal rule of a closing or closed society is that
your alignment with the regime offers no protection; in a true police
state no one is safe.

I read the news in a state of something like walking shock: seven soldiers
wrote op-eds critical of the war -- in The New York Times; three are dead,
one shot in the head. A female soldier who was about to become a
whistleblower, possibly about abuses involving taxpayers' money: shot in
the head. Pat Tillman, who was contemplating coming forward in a critique
of the war: shot in the head. Donald Vance, a contractor himself, who blew
the whistle on irregularities involving arms sales in Iraq -- taken
hostage FROM the U.S. Embassy BY U.S. soldiers and kept without recourse
to a lawyer in a U.S. held-prison, abused and terrified for weeks -- and
scared to talk once he got home. Another whistleblower in Iraq, as
reported in Vanity Fair: held in a trailer all night by armed contractors
before being ejected from the country.

Last week contractors, immune from the rule of law, butchered 17 Iraqi
civilians in cold blood. Congress mildly objected -- and contractors today
butcher two more innocent civilian Iraqi ladies -- in cold blood.

It is clear yet that violent retribution, torture or maybe worse, seems to
go right up this chain of command? Is it clear yet that these people are
capable of anything? Is it obvious yet that criminals are at the helm of
the nation and need to be not only ousted but held accountable for their
crimes?

Is it treason yet?

This is an open invitation to honorable patriots on the Right and in the
center to join this movement to restore the rule of law and confront this
horror: this is not conservatism, it is a series of crimes against the
nation and against the very essence of America. Join us, we need you.

This movement must transcend partisan lines. The power of individual
conscience is profound when people start to wake up.

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey said No: he told colleague that
they would be ashamed when the world learned about the Administration's
warrantless wiretapping. A judge today ruled that the U.S. can't just ship
prisoners out of Guantanamo to be tortured at will -- she said No. The
Center for Constitutional Rights is about to file a civil lawsuit --
against Blackwater: they are saying No.

In Germany, according to historian Richard Evans, in 1931-1932, if enough
Germans of conscience had begun to say No -- history would have had an
entirely diferent outcome.

If we go any further down this road the tears will be those of
conservatives as well as progressives. They will be American tears.

The time for weeping has to stop; the time for confronting must begin.

Naomi Wolf| BIO |
American Tears
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/american-tears_b_68141.html
Posted October 11, 2007 | 06:47 PM (EST)