The World According to Chuck

Politics are very interesting to me these days, domestic politics, and I’m talking really about issues; I’m talking about what has happened to the political parties, particularly the GOP, and how that’s going to work out. I have plenty of opinions, but mostly I just watch out of civic curiosity.

There’s plenty of other stuff to worry me, but a lot of that has to do with the creepiness of the mood in this country, and I have to stop — I’m sensing it from a very select demographic, from blog comments and Facebook updates, that sort of Web-based overview. I have to remind myself that crazy people are attracted to forums where they can be crazy loudly.

And afraid. Fear became a commodity after 9/11 — not just the natural fear we all had, wondering and worried, but the fear that led to all sorts of bad shit.

Bad information, too, and really bad memories. By all accounts, this stupid rich kid who tried to blow up his nether regions and an airplane on Christmas Day has been a huge law enforcement success, tons of information and, last I heard, 15 terrorists being apprehended, but listen hard enough and you’d think that because he wasn’t immediately pushed out of the plane (as fun as that would have been), beheaded on the tarmac or tortured until he sang some convincing Gilbert & Sullivan we’ve put ourselves in enormous danger. Because he was arrested and interrogated, and eventually will end up in court and in prison for the rest of his life. Treated, in other words, exactly like Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber,” was by the Bush administration. Treated the way Ronald Reagan said terrorists should be treated. Not as warriors. As thugs.

Anyway. You’ve heard this or you don’t care, but I read this quote again from William Young, the judge in the Reid case, and I thought I’d do my part. I worry, I guess, that we’re really not this kind of country anymore, the kind that refuses to crawl into the basement, the kind that doesn’t beg our politicians to protect us, give up our rights and respect for law and just please please make the bad people go away. A country of pussies, in other words. I worry about this all the time. Still, it was worth reading again, if only to remember that at least we’re supposed to be this way.

We are not afraid of any of your terrorist co-conspirators, Mr. Reid. We are Americans. We have been through the fire before.

There is all too much war talk here. And I say that to everyone with the utmost respect. Here in this court where we deal with individuals as individuals, and care for individuals as individuals, as human beings we reach out for justice.

You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist.

You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist.

To give you that reference, to call you a soldier gives you far too much stature.

Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or that happens to be your view, you are a terrorist. And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not treat with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.

So war talk is way out of line in this court. You’re a big fellow. But you’re not that big. You’re no warrior. I know warriors. You are a terrorist. A species of criminal guilty of multiple attempted murders. In a very real sense Trooper Santiago had it right when first you were taken off that plane and into custody and you wondered where the press and where the TV crews were and he said you’re no big deal.

You’re no big deal…

It seems to me you hate the one thing that to us is most precious. You hate our freedom. Our individual freedom. Our individual freedom to live as we choose, to come and go as we choose, to believe or not believe as we individually choose. Here, in this society, the very winds carry freedom. They carry it everywhere from sea to shining sea.

It is because we prize individual freedom so much that you are here in this beautiful courtroom. So that everyone can see, truly see that justice is administered fairly, individually, and discretely. It is for freedom’s seek that your lawyers are striving so vigorously on your behalf and have filed appeals, will go on in their, their representation of you before other judges. We care about it. Because we all know that the way we treat you, Mr. Reid, is the measure of our own liberties.

Make no mistake though. It is yet true that we will bear any burden; pay any price, to preserve our freedoms. Look around this courtroom. Mark it well. The world is not going to long remember what you or I say here. Day after tomorrow it will be forgotten. But this, however, will long endure. Here, in this courtroom, and courtrooms all across America, the American people will gather to see that justice, individual justice, justice, not war, individual justice is in fact being done.

The very President of the United States through his officers will have to come into courtrooms and lay out evidence on which specific matters can be judged, and juries of citizens will gather to sit and judge that evidence democratically, to mold and shape and refine our sense of justice.

See that flag, Mr. Reid? That’s the flag of the United States of America. That flag will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That flag still stands for freedom. You know it always will. Custody, Mr. Officer. Stand him down.