Nov. 11, 2002 - 17:50 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Just Like Family

I have a vested interest in the USA, it is my country. It with a zillion of other citizens and some thousands of illegal aliens is shared with me, I love it, really I do.

But there are some things that make me wonder and some things that hearken back to our first years here. Seems to have set some kind of pattern. The people who are misnamed Indians were here before we were. As a government we made many treaties with the Native Americans, never that I know of have those treaties been honored. The people of our land have been moved and removed again and again when the land they were moved to seemed to have great value to non-Indians some of them to desert country that could be classified uninhabitable. And the BIA still can't account for their money and the apparent loss of much of it in an acceptable way.

I won't say that people of Japanese extraction or those who were naturalized here were as cruelly treated as many of the 'Indians' were, but their lives were pretty well shot and their time in our concentration camps took away their means of livelihood and dispossesed them to be put out on a damn prairie in wooden barracks surrounded with barbed wire and armed guards. Yet people of German extraction or naturalized ones were not treated the same way during World War Two.

Seems like the greater the conflict the more paranoiac we become. And we tend to have the philosophy that if people look like us they have the same aims, but if they don't look likes they are immediately suspect.

Now we have hundreds of prisoners of different nationalities who are in a, get this -- holding facility -- in Guantanamo, Cuba -- not called a prison nuh unh -- a holding facility. Not accused, no trial date set and no way can those people get a lawyer. Heaven forbid.

On the flip side we as a country have accomplished miracles of civilization that are not yet available to people of other countries. Through our industry (before the corporations started shipping the work overseas) we built a wonderful place that is good to inhabit - peacefully by most of us. We as a country have aided other countries bountifully and still are. We preach democracy with our mouth while doing some very undemocratic things to others.

But I sit here and wonder at our present day actions and mull over the thought, what would the reaction be if the foo was on the other shut ? I can't google while I am trying to make an entry so I can't date it but it seems that our newspapers were counting the days that some of our citizens were imprisoned in Iran and as a nation we were fighting mad because of the unfairness of that.

Seems like to me that things we have tried to establish as being good and ethical are now being ignored by our government. What earthly purpose can such treatment have ?

Is it possible that we will hold them until they die of old age ? Or will we finally turn them loose after ages of time to become the next wave of those who will because of the bitterness over their unfair treatment preach terrorism ?

There are many things wrong in our country, but also many things right. My country is much like my uncle who did as much wrong as he did right. We didn't exile him and set him apart. We even loved the old bird and welcomed him when he came around, as long as he behaved. I am somewhat of the mind that right or wrong my beloved country is Just Like Family . . . . . . . . . . .

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