America

I'm disappointed in myself, a little bit.
Lately, I've really been struggling to understand other people's political viewpoints.
I pride myself on being really open-minded. But with this political-viewpoint problem, I can't wrap my mind around how someone could think some of the things that I disagree with.
I spend a lot of time trying, too. I sit there. I get the pro-life thing (to a certain extent). I get the death penalty thing (again, to a certain extent). I get the religious thing (don't know why - definitely disagree, but I at least understand). But most of it - I guess it's the whole package, seems absolutely absurd to me.

But what I'm going to talk about today sort of goes past the politics (but not far), and delves into what I think of as a human rights problem.

I read an article today about a man who has been detained for 6 months with no charges filed against him in Switzerland (WikiLeaks related).
So I sent out a little tweet about it:
katiemarybarry 

"In civilized places, you don't hold people without evidence and without charges" - says US lawyer. What about Gitmo?  newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/201…

In my mind, that's totally true. We hold ourselves up to be these virtuous, saintly Americans, and yet we engage in the very acts that we condemn. 

Here's the response I received: 

mjgranger1 

@KatieMaryBarry GItmo is used for unlawful combatants in our struggle with Islamist extremists who want to kill us. We don't need "charges."

Who defines them as "unlawful combatants" or as "Islamist extremists" or that they "want to kill us"? We do. And that's the part that's messed up.

mjgranger has written a book about how Guantanamo Bay has saved our lives and blah blah blah, so he's probably just trolling twitter trying to find people to engage in arguments with so the book can be labeled controversial.

But it's still super lame. and super hypocritical. 

I always think of that Ghandi quote, the one that resonates with me more and more every single day of my life: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

Here we are proclaiming the greatness of the United States through our worldly posturing, military aggression, and good-samaritan pretenses, yet we fail to act like the free and brave we claim to be. And there's certainly no hint of justice.