Julia Barrett's World

I don’t like him anymore.

Back in, oh, I don’t know, ’04, I pointed to the TV and I said, “One day that man is going to be president.”

Back in maybe ’07?  I saw a lonely young woman sitting at a tiny table set up outside a supermarket with a single (creased) sign taped to her table and I paid her for the sign and I taped it to my house.

Back in ’08 I sent Mc’oodles of Mc’money I didn’t really have to support his Mc’campaign.

“Don’t worry,” I said to any and all doubters.  ”Nobody can be worse than GWB, LOL!  This is gonna be great, you’ll see!”

Back in ’09, despite misgivings about the focus on the boondoggle of a healthcare bill instead of a focus on the flailing economy, I said, “It’ll be okay.  We need to fix healthcare… kind of.”  But I felt a little nauseated when I said those words.

(I have my own plan to fix our somewhat broken healthcare system – it’s simple and elegant but nobody’s asked me.  Just like I want a goddamn flat tax, and I want to stop pouring our hard-earned money down the drains of countries who hate us– or rather into the pockets of the ruling elite of those countries who hate us (who often funnel the money to various anti-American organizations), especially when we have hungry children in America and homeless families in America, and I want to stop getting involved in these stupid never-ending foreign civil wars, but again nobody’s asked me, so…)

I think it was in ’11 that I began to forget we even had a president.  Felt kinda like nobody was minding the store.  Meanwhile that 1% with money were busy doing what people with money always do – laughing, partying, throwing their cash away on goop, appearing in People Magazine – and generally having a pretty darn good time patting each other on the back, drinking super expensive bubbly while hanging out in a big tax-dollar supported house, while somebody kept insisting people like us, as in people like my husband and myself who work our asses off to support our family and help others (healthcare fields) and live a very modest life in an expensive state, should be footing the bill.  Cuz apparently we fall under the label of fat cats.  Don’t tell my eleven year old car that…

It was in ’12 that I experienced an epiphany.  Seriously, a jaw-dropping epiphany.  Don’t feel like giving the details but I heard someone speak and I realized that while this person tried to project himself as an everyman, he was arrogant and elitist.  He was a big phony– all style, no substance.  And my heart did a 180′ turn– gave me an unambiguous smack upside the head, all the while repeating– Something smells like stinky gym socks.  And I gritted my Democratic/Independent teeth and voted for the other guy even though I knew I’d cast away my vote for a hopeless cause and I didn’t even like the other guy and I didn’t agree with his party’s platform.

I rarely talk politics (or religion).  My views and opinions are my own.  I try to keep them private.  And I respect your privacy.

But I am convinced of this truth:  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I swear, bureaucracies are inherently corrupt.

At ten years of age I was out burning my training bra– well, actually it was a tee-shirt, I didn’t get my first training bra until I was thirteen– and protesting the Nixon Administration.  I find myself with similar misgivings about the current State of our Nation.  Except now I’m afraid.  Nixon wasn’t going to put a ten year old girl on his enemies list.

See that bull’s eye on my back?  This may be America, but I tell you I’m very nervous about speaking my mind.  And I have never before been afraid to speak my mind.

You should watch the Will Smith/Gene Hackman movie, Enemy of the State.  The film poses the same questions.

Congressman Phil Hammersley (Jason Robards):   “Telecommunications Security and Privacy Act. Invasion of privacy is more like it. – You read the Post? This bill is not the first step towards the surveillance society. It is the surveillance society.

I’m not gonna sit in congress and pass a law that lets the government point a camera and a microphone at anything they damn well please.”

Carla Dean (Regina King):  “Oh, well there goes the Fourth Amendment… what’s left of it.”

Edward Lyle (Gene Hackman):  “The government’s been in bed with the entire telecommunications industry since the forties. They’ve infected everything. They get into your bank statements, computer files, email, listen to your phone calls… Every wire, every airwave. The more technology used, the easier it is for them to keep tabs on you. It’s a brave new world out there. At least it’d better be.”

Thomas Reynolds (Jon Voight):  “We never dealt with domestic. With us, it was always war. We won the war. Now we’re fighting the peace. It’s a lot more volatile. Now we’ve got ten million crackpots out there with sniper scopes, sarin gas and C-4. Ten-year-olds go on the Net, downloading encryption we can barely break, not to mention instructions on how to make a low-yield nuclear device. Privacy’s been dead for years because we can’t risk it. The only privacy that’s left is the inside of your head. Maybe that’s enough. You think we’re the enemy of democracy, you and I? I think we’re democracy’s last hope.”

Larry King:  “How do we draw the line – draw the line between protection of national security, obviously the government’s need to obtain intelligence data, and the protection of civil liberties, particularly the sanctity of my home? You’ve got no right to come into my home!”

Be back in the closet tomorrow but had to say something today.