Making Enemies of Friends

I keep wondering when this shit is going to happen to me -- not just when I travel to the US -- but even here in my own country. I'm just the wrong skin colour -- and being held up by border security agents, whose only qualification for the job seems to be the ability to have a total disconnect with their fellow humans, is now happening to just about anyone, with no regard for good, ole fashion, stereotypes. What's the world coming to when even the invidious public servants don't meet expectations?

The world -- our democratic and free loving world -- is going the way of the totalitarian regimes. The enemy is winning, when we grow to accept the story scribed by Emily Feder at AlterNet. Feder describes the thuggery experienced while detained by Homeland Security enforcers at JFK, recently.

In the past five years I have worked for human rights and refugee advocacy organizations in Serbia, Russia and Croatia, including the International Rescue Committee and USAID. I have traveled to many different places, some supposedly repressive, and have never seen people treated with the kind of animosity that Homeland Security showed that night. In Syria, border control officers were stern but polite. At other borders there have been bureaucracies to contend with -- excruciating for both Americans and other foreign nationals. I've met Russian officials with dead, suspicious looks in their eyes and arms tired from stamping so many visas, but in America, the Homeland Security officials I encountered were very much alive -- like vultures waiting to eat.

And that's just it, isn't it? The zeal with which they do it -- with which everyday people, who may not have a bad bone in their body, apply themselves when they convince themselves that everyone is a potential enemy. Therein lies the end of our democracy and freedom. We, the people, doing it to our friends, our neighbours, our families. There is no organized campaign to take away our freedoms by terrorists. Terrorists could care less about our freedoms. They care about their power. The organized campaign to take away our freedoms is from within, and we're the only ones with the power to stop it. We're the only ones who can stop bullying for personal gratification and the belief that we're serving the state. We're the ones who can say no and have an intolerance for the bullying when we witness it.