The Obama Project@WindonWater.net

Many people are rightfully concerned about the creation of a police state in Arizona (and now, Texas, since apparently, Texas intends to put a similar law in place. MY fear is more long-term, more about the confluence of economic interests and insidious law. In America, we already have an example of a history of laws passing over time that gradually targetted a particular people, in pursuit of the agricultural interests of the south – and that example is what eventually became the legal framework of slavery. Here is a brief overview of some of the issues:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p263.html

Whatever the status of these first Africans to arrive at Jamestown, it is clear that by 1640, at least one African had been declared a slave. This African was ordered by the court “to serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life here or elsewhere.”

The grounds for this harsh sentence presumabley (sic) lay in the fact that he was non-Christian rather than in the fact that he was physically dark. But religious beliefs could change, while skin color could not. Within a generation race, not religion, was being made the defining characteristic of enslaved Virginians, The terrible transformation to racial slavery was underway.

emphasis mine

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p270.html

• Philip Cowen Case: At her death in 1664, a Mrs. Amye Beazlye left to her cousin a black servant named Philip Cowen. The will stated that Cowen should work for the cousin for eight years, then be given his freedom and three barrels of corn and a suit of clothes. At the end of the eight years, the cousin extended the contract three years. At the end of those three years, he informed Cowen that another nine years of service was due. In 1675, Cowen petitioned the court for his freedom. The court sided with Cowen, asking the owner to release him from servitude and to pay him the corn and the cost of a suit.

• Fernando Case: A bondservant for life, Fernando petitioned the court in 1667 for his freedom, arguing that, since he was a Christian and had spent several years in England, he should serve no longer than an Englishman was required to serve. The court dismissed the suit. Fernando appealed to a higher court. (Unfortunately, no record of the higher court’s decision exists.)

(there are two other cases at this link)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p262.html

Three servants working for a farmer named Hugh Gwyn ran away to Maryland. Two were white; one was black. They were captured in Maryland and returned to Jamestown, where the court sentenced all three to thirty lashes — a severe punishment even by the standards of 17th-century Virginia. The two white men were sentenced to an additional four years of servitude — one more year for Gwyn followed by three more for the colony. But, in addition to the whipping, the black man, a man named John Punch, was ordered to “serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere.” John Punch no longer had hope for freedom.

That’s the legal background to the gradual erosion of even the limited rights African Americans had at the founding of this nation, until the legal framework was built up to decide, once and for all, that brown people born slaves should remain so their entire lives, and not as people even, but as property. So, a people arrive in the country with iffy legal status are gradually reduced to permanent slave status. But how about people whose legal status is known? How about free blacks?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p325.html

The passage of the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, fueled a huge and vastly profitable underground industry that took full advantage of the inferior legal status of free and enslaved blacks. The law made it possible for a white person to claim any black person as a fugitive, and placed the burden of proof on the captive. Free blacks living in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and other cities near the borders of slave states were especially vulnerable, though several well-known cases demonstrate that no state was immune.

Slave speculators (or slavers) — who legally purchased the rights to runaways, captured them, and then resold them at a profit — often seized blacks at random, banking on their inability to prove their status to the satisfaction of a magistrate. In one case, a slave speculator who attempted to seize AME Bishop Richard Allen found himself in debtors’ prison, charged with attempted kidnapping, false accusation and perjury by Allen, who dropped the charges several months later.

I would like to think that we are so far past this as a country that this could never happen to Mexicans in the south, who are working as day laborers in agricultural fields, but since in some cases Mexicans have already seen slavery conditions, and given our low level of sympathy for Mexicans as our suspicions about the legal migrant status is provoked, are they really so far off from the precarious position African Americans were in so long ago?

I don’t think so.

QT

How about because we’re still waging two wars? It occurs to me that even people utterly repulsed by the torture memos would want to ensure that we didn’t have a sudden brain drain, or sudden disruption in the rank and file of the CIA. The higher ups should be fall guys to protect the overall CIA, because I’m not sure we can actually afford the great disruption inherent in the threat of prosecutions at the lower levels.

QT

The Bigger Picture | By Andrew Sullivan.

I want to take a moment to thank God for the work that Andrew Sullivan has done on this issue.  Andrew Sullivan has a relentlessness that, misapplied, is awful to watch (the “Trip is not Sarah Palin’s baby” thing is an example).  But as is so often the case, what you dislike about a person is often the thing you most admire.  With determination, persistence, and focus – Sullivan stayed on top of this torture issue – and the fruits, such as they are, are now here to see.

I have to admit that I actively avoided the issue for months.  Having become a bit of a fan of The Atlantic, I nevertheless frequently skimmed over or altogether skipped reading Sullivan’s torture posts.  I have to admit – it is a case of cynicism that caused that.  As an African-American, well aware of US history of slavery, brutality, and callous disregard for African-American lives, it wasn’t hard for me to fathom that the United States probably did torture people, and that this was probably nothing new, and really nothing I was going to get worked up about.  Yeah, it’s bad.. but so are a lot of things…. I admit to having a hope that with President Obama, a lot of the bad things would get better, maybe not all at once, but still…  I admit to being perfectly ok with Obama hiding the ugly stuff under the rug – I assumed it was there, had always been hidden, and saw no reason why the nation’s first black president had to take on the job of putting it out in the public – so long as he got the job done of ending some of the worst of it.

As I said – it’s a cynical viewpoint – one that assumes the worst of the United States, while at the same time, hoping for the best, and believing, despite the cynicism, that better is possible.

Now that the memos have been released, I find that my cynicism, so deeply embedded, nevertheless, at no point accounted for anything so awful.  I honestly don’t know what I thought – I’m just taking stock of it all now.  I never imagined there could be such a thing as naive cynicism – but I have to admit that my cynicism was naive.  I was indifferent to the torture issue because I cynically assumed it was par for the course – I naively never believed it was anything this bad.
I want to echo Andrew’s sentiment:

If you want to know how democracies die, read these memos. Read how gifted professionals in the CIA were able to convince experienced doctors that what they were doing was ethical and legal. Read how American psychologists were able to find justifications for the imposition of psychological torture, and were able to analyze its effects without ever stopping and asking: what on earth are we doing?

Read how no one is even close to debating “ticking time bomb” scenarios as they strap people to boards and drown them until they break. Then read how they adjusted the waterboarding, for fear it was too much, for fear that they were actually in danger of suffocating their captives, and then read how they found self-described loopholes in the law to tell themselves that what the US had once prosecuted as torture could not possibly be torture because we’re doing it, and we’re different from the Viet Cong. We’re doing torture right and for the right reasons and with the right motive. Many of the people who did this are mild, kind, courteous, family men and women, who somehow were able to defend slamming human beings against walls in the daytime while watching the Charlie Rose show over a glass of wine at night. We’ve seen this syndrome before, in other places and at other times. Yes: it can happen here. And imagine how this already functioning torture machine would have operated in the wake of another attack under a president Romney or Giuliani.

That speaks volumes.  I guess, cynicism and all, I never believed the US could do anything this bone-chillingly awful.  But we have done it, and we have to account for it.  I’m deeply grateful that we have begun the process.
QT