Sunday, December 18, 2011

Indefinite Detention

I really don't understand why there haven't been riots or demonstrations or front-page editorials protesting or at least marking the end of the United States as we know it. Yes, our Constitution has been slipping away for awhile, but now it seems to be truly a dead letter. It's now legally possible, apparently, for the authorities to detain someone, even a US citizen, forever, without due process. Doesn't that pretty much put paid to any protection the Founding Fathers meant us to have? If someone drops down this rabbit hole, will anyone even know it? Will that person be able to bring a case to the Supreme Court? What will the Court do? I am completely desolate and sick at heart. Is anyone else?

We now LIVE IN A POLICE STATE. It's official. (Well, I live in Mexico, but many people that I love live in the US and it is my native land.) It's no joke. It's serious. I want to scream and rant, but business seems to go on as usual. In the NY Times, other subjects are discussed, as if they mattered. Don't they get it? The state now has the power to take them away, on a whim--oh, if they are associated with someone who is suspected of being a terrorist. Oh I forgot, there does have to be some rationale. But what arm of government could not invent that?

Thursday, December 1, 2011

The New Inquiry and The Whine

Leaving aside the fact that The Times didn't provide a hyperlink to The New Inquiry (a journal produced by sadly but unsurprisingly out-of-work young literati), and in fact ran the story in the Fashion section, I am still somewhat appalled by the repeat appearance of The Whine from one of their (The New Inquiry's) editors: "I did everything right...." etcetera etcetera. Since when does doing everything right mean you will get the brass ring? This attitude seems to me at this point incredibly jejeune, naive and grossly, excessively innocent coming from a supposedly savvy, well-read crowd. A lot of people do or try to do "everything right" by their lights and get nowhere at all. Why should young, privileged literati be any different? Gosh, no one ever promised you a rose garden, darlings.