Terror

If you are not terrified, you're not paying attention, Columnist Tom Friedman said. The full interview is here. www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/09/25/thomas_friedman_im_terrified_covering_americas_potential_second_civil_war_i_shudder_at_four_more_years.html

Rick's snoring had jarred me awake. If I'm in Argelès, I can go to the "snore" room. In Switzerland, I turn on the TV as a counterbalance, which is what brought me to Friedman's sentence, the first sentence I heard.

Over the years I've been upset at things that America has done, the lies I've been told. Never, never have I felt so afraid.

I don't think of myself as intellectual, but I do know I've been and am well read. As I age and with easy access to international media, the realization of the dirty underbelly of world politics has increased. 

So many times in the past I felt I knew what was happening when people told me I didn't know what I was talking about. And then time proved me right.

I knew there was no good reason for Vietnam, something McNamara admitted in a book long after the last American soldier had left.

I knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq long before it was admitted.

I knew and know that Americans lost the right to habeas corpus in the Patriot Act and no one seems upset. It has never been restored.

Even before Edward Snowdon, I suspected the government were spying on its citizens. I knew they'd spied on anti-ATM groups under Nixon.

Among the many channels from several countries, I watch CNN and Fox. Fox says Hillary says Biden shouldn't concede the election. CNN added the rest of the quote which said on the night of the election. This manipulation of news by taking things out of context is not limited to one station. Words have meaning and weight and how they are used paint different pictures. All those pictures are bleak today.

Already the lower courts have been packed in the U.S. Some 300 new judges, 100 of which should have been appointed under Obama, swing a balance that is disheartening at best and scary at the worse. With the change in the Supreme Court, America risks losing all the social progress made from my childhood after WWII. It risks losing the Constitution if Trump steals the election. 

With the hatred, vitriol, the inequality, the racism, lies and violence that exists and adding the guns and the ignorance, the country is ripe for civil war.

Like Tom Friedman, I am terrified.