All of US in Wonderland (written in 2005)

	Surely I have fallen down a long and dark tunnel. How else to explain that 
all that was once familiar is now so strange. How else to explain that I find 
myself in a strange country so different from the United States that I once 
knew.

	The country that I lived in before was one in which I took great pride. It 
had its problems, but a major component of its history was its ongoing 
struggle to solve its problems, and it had a rather considerable record of 
success in doing so. People everywhere envied Americans, for our wealth and 
power, certainly, but also for our constitutional system, which protected 
individual rights and placed limits on the power of our government, and for 
the opportunity to succeed which, in theory at least, our society offered to 
everyone. 

	In the world, my country championed the right of every individual to freedom, 
equality, and opportunity. We were instrumental in the founding of the United 
Nations and the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We 
took a leadership role in awakening the world to the threats to our 
environment from pollution and global warming and in developing technologies 
that would help us respond to the threats. At home we fought a war on poverty 
and worked to ensure that every American, regardless of race, gender, or 
ethnic background, was guaranteed equal rights. We even took modest steps to 
eliminate discrimination based on sexual orientation. We offered everyone the 
opportunity to practice his or her religion freely or to choose not to 
believe in or practice any religion. Our free, fair, and peaceful elections 
were a model for the world, and our system of justice went to great lengths 
to see that every individual accused of a crime was provided every 
opportunity to prove his or her innocence.

	The United States in which I find myself today, however, is a changed place. 
We are now almost universally hated around the world and looked at as a rogue 
nation. Our president and members of his administration are charged with at 
best manipulating intelligence information and at worst lying to justify the 
invasion of a sovereign country in violation of international law and the 
United Nations Charter. We have declared that the Geneva convention on the 
treatment of prisoners of war does not apply to us, and we have used torture 
on people in our custody. Our CIA is charged with secretly transferring 
individuals, some kidnapped from the streets of friendly countries, to former 
Soviet prisons in Eastern Europe for interrogation and then, when the story 
leaked out, transferring them again to secret locations in Northern Africa. 
Critics of the war on terror are investigated and condemned for undermining 
the morale of the troops in the field. The troops must not be told, it seems,
that they were sent to Iraq and over 2,100 of them to their deaths, in a 
totally unnecessary war. No. More must stay and die so that those who
died earlier shall not have died in vain.

	Our environmental leadership has been sacrificed on the altar of corporate 
profit while our leadership in polluting and in the consumption of the 
world's energy resources continues unabated. We have withdrawn from the Kyoto 
Accord, and we did our best to block progress at the recent meeting in 
Montreal. The Vice President has fought for years in court to keep secret 
information about the role that oil and gas companies had in the formulation 
of our national energy policy - companies that gave vast amounts of money to 
help the President and Vice President get elected. While the administration 
touts its "clean air" and "healthy forests" initiatives, environmental
laws are attacked or undermined, and the agencies that enforce those laws are
in the hands of the very companies whose policies made them necessary in the
first place. As the polar ice cap melts, ocean waters warm, currents are
disrupted, and storms intensify and proliferate, we are told that global
warming is just a theory, not proven sufficiently to justify concern.

	Our war on poverty has been lost, and the effort abandoned. With every year
the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" in American society grows
wider and the opportunities for those in the "have not" category to lift
themselves out are more limited. The homeless, many of them mentally ill,
populate the streets and parks of our cities. Politicians rail against
welfare programs that benefit the underprivileged in our society, while
corporate welfare soars to new heights, with a significant portion of it
going to corporations that benefit from our adventures abroad. The amount of
tax dollars wasted is almost incomprehensible. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld 
has admitted that the Pentagon cannot account for over $2.3 trillion dollars 
that has somehow been misplaced since World War II. Meanwhile the Congress 
moves to enact further tax cuts, the benefit of which will flow to the 
wealthiest Americans while programs for the poor, including Medicare and 
student loans, are cut to pay for it. Those who have the temerity to call
attention to the inequity of it all are accused of engaging in class warfare.
The society that proclaimed a war on poverty now seems to have declared a war
on the poor.

	The record in civil rights is not much better as legislatures chip away at a 
woman's right to choose to have an abortion; judges are nominated to the 
federal bench who are openly hostile to that right; constitutional amendments 
are passed in many of the states - and proposed in Congress - to prevent 
homosexuals from being married (the same homosexuals who not that long ago 
were pilloried for their promiscuity); access to the courts for those 
claiming discrimination is limited; affirmative action programs designed to 
help those who for centuries were the victims of discrimination are declared 
unconstitutional because they discriminate; and states that engage in 
discrimination are, in some instances, protected from lawsuits by the Supreme 
Court.

	While our constitutional right to the free exercise of religion remains 
strong, the equally important protection from establishment of religion, 
which actually precedes free exercise in the First Amendment, in recognition 
of the importance attached to it by James Madison, is endangered. 
Increasingly our national debates are influenced by fundamentalist Christians 
whose strident messages of hate, intolerance, and fear make a mockery of the 
toleration, love, and forgiveness preached by Jesus. Politicians campaign on 
their religious beliefs. An office of faith-based initiatives operates in the 
White House, funneling funds to fundamentalist groups that provided essential 
support to the President's campaign. The Scopes trial is refought as 
religious zealots gain seats on school boards and seek to force their views
of creation into science courses taught in our schools. 

	As for our free and fair elections, we have a president elected first in an 
election decided by our Supreme Court and second in an election tainted by 
wide-spread questions about manipulation of electronic voting machines 
manufactured and distributed by wealthy members of the President's party. 
Each election brings new records in terms of the amount of money raised and 
spent and new questions about what those who contribute get for their money. 
The president and the vice president, both oilmen, received a substantial 
proportion of their campaign contributions from energy and defense industries 
and put in place policies that have brought enormous profits to those 
industries. Vice President Cheney received an $20,000,000 good-by present, 
along with deferred compensation payments and extensive stock options, when 
he left his company, Haliburton, to run for office. In the years since,
Haliburton has been awarded highly lucrative, no-bid contracts for work in 
both Iraq and in the area devastated by Hurricane Katrina. At home, oil 
prices have soared with the result that oil companies are making unheard of 
profits with Exxon-Mobile experiencing the most profitable quarter in the 
history of corporations.

	Scandals abound. The Vice President's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, has been 
indicted in a nasty scheme to punish someone who told the truth about events 
leading up to the Iraq war, and the possibility remains that the President's 
chief advisor, Karl Rove, may yet be indicted in the same matter. The 
majority whip of the House of Representatives, Tom DeLay, faces trial in a 
complicated money laundering scheme that, with the assistance of higher-ups 
in the Department of Justice, helped increase the Republican majority in the 
House of Representatives. The majority leader of the Senate, Bill Frist
faces an investigation and possible criminal charges stemming from insider 
stock trading activities, and the Administrator of Procurement Policy of the 
executive branch, David Safavian, has been arrested and charged with 
corruption. A House member, Randy Cunningham has resigned, admitting to
accepting large amounts of money from lobbyists, and an ongoing investigation
into the affairs of lobbyist Jack Abramoff threatens to bring down other 
members of the House.

	In the wake of the September 11 attack, legislation was rushed through 
Congress granting far-reaching powers to the executive branch and making 
significant incursions on the civil liberties of Americans. A secret court 
approves secret searches, and the president authorizes the National Security 
Agency to intercept international telephone and email communications of 
American citizens without any warrant - even from a secret court. The 
President asserts the right to declare any American citizen an enemy 
combatant and have them taken into custody and held for as long as the
president deems necessary with no access to lawyers, family members, or the
press. All is for our own good, we are told. The policies have kept us safe.
Plots have been thwarted. But all must be kept secret. We must not be informed
about the thwarted plots or the government's actions for fear it would help the
ever-present terrorists. 

	Meanwhile Congress engages in bitter partisan infighting over any number of 
different matters, including the budget, and the nation's deficit spirals out 
of control. The trade imbalance reaches new heights almost monthly, partly 
but not entirely due to our enormous outlays for foreign oil, and the Chinese 
government now owns huge amounts of government bonds. But, not long ago, in 
the face of numerous reports and court rulings finding that a woman in 
Florida was brain dead, the Congress rushed back to Washington from a break 
to pass legislation requiring yet another review before her life support 
could be removed, and the president rushed back from one of his frequent 
vacations at his Texas ranch to sign the bill into law. In Wonderland an 
American citizen, fully competent, can be declared by the government to have 
no rights, but an American citizen, brain dead, has extraordinary rights it 
seems. A president who lies about a tawdry sexual affair is impeached, while 
a president who lies about reasons for going to war or who assumes extra 
constitutional powers infringing on the most basic and well established 
rights of American citizens is not. 

	Surely we have all fallen down a long tunnel. Surely all of this is not 
reality. Surely we will awaken soon back in the United States, that shining 
city on a hill, and Wonderland, like a bad dream will fade quickly from our 
memory. But what if this is not a dream? Haven't we always had corruption in 
our politics? Haven't the interests of those with money always predominated? 
Haven't we interfered with the domestic politics of other nations before - 
Iran, Guatamala, Cuba, Viet Nam, Chile, Nicaragua, Panama? Haven't we had 
restrictions placed on our liberties before - the Alien and Sedition Acts of 
1798, the Espionage Act of World War I, the Smith Act? Haven't our leaders 
always lied to us - the supposed Gulf of Tonkin attack, Nixon's, "I am not a 
crook", Reagan and Iran Contra, Clinton's "I did not have sex with that 
woman"? Perhaps it's the shining city on the hill that's the dream.

			(Copyright 2005 James S. Todd)