America is exceptional...

We have Hallmark moments in which we bathe in our glory.

We have Hollywood movies that make us believe in the righteousness of our mission, no matter the transgressions portrayed. 

We have leaders who make speeches invoking moments of triumph in the struggle for individual rights as they have the audacity to violate fundamental human and civil rights, even commit war crimes, at the same moment. 

On Inauguration Day, three of us stood on line for nearly two hours to pass through a security checkpoint leading to the public viewing area for the the inaugural procession of Barack Obama. Under our arms we carried signs, a constellation of HUMAN RIGHTS, legal, economic and poetic rights, rooted in values of love and respect for others and for ourselves: THE RIGHT TO LIVE FREE OF RACISM, THE RIGHT TO ECONOMIC JUSTICE, THE RIGHT TO THRIVE, THE RIGHT TO RESPECT, THE RIGHT TO STOP ABUSE OF POWER, THE RIGHT TO QUESTION. A sign on the security fence warned that NO WEAPONS, EXPLOSIVES, GUNS, BACKPACKS, BALLOONS, etc. could be brought beyond the checkpoint but that signs up to twenty feet by thirty-six inches were permitted. Our signs are much smaller.

When we reached the security checkpoint, we were pulled aside, surrounded by uniformed police and secret service, asked what organization we were with, and ultimately told that we could not hold up the signs together because we might "create a message" along the parade route. We mentioned the First Amendment but it was made clear that this was not a day for Free Speech except where designated by their authority. We were escorted by secret service to an area at the back of the crowd, told not to move beyond a tree and no further than ten feet from it or we would be removed. We were put under constant surveillance by our own undercover security detail that did not leave our side.

Later in the day, it was reported that three people were killed in Yemen by U.S. drone-strikes, as Barack Obama was being sworn in and celebrated. In written media accounts, these men were carefully described as "alleged" or "suspected" Al-Qaeda operatives.

During and after George Bush's presidency, this country faced the stark truth that our government and military conducted a premeditated, open torture policy that was justified to protect our national security and normalized through a construction of language, calling torture, "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Now we have moved on to a new day of "enhanced security measures" to protect our "exceptional" lives here in the United States, signature strikes using unmanned military aircraft, drones, "targeting the enemy over there before they strike us over here," -- an official, preemptive policy of extrajudicial execution by assassinations ordered by Barack Obama. 

Once again as a nation, we manipulate our hearts and minds to believe what should be deemed an abuse of power, a heinous crime to be an acceptable course of action by our government... to kill people in our name, with no due process, no clarity, no proof of guilt or innocence... in most cases without even knowing the names of those who have been obliterated... in many cases to kill people for crimes which have not even been committed. 

What will we do?

What we experienced on Inauguration Day was blatantly unconstitutional but it too has become normalized. This is not a democracy. There is a status quo that will, at all costs, be maintained and glorified. War is waged illegally, secret assassinations are ordered by the president, people are indefinitely detained, corporations are protected as though they have human/personal rights and activists and artists, as well as many others, are targeted by police and prosecutors to intimidate and inhibit dissent and action. As Barack Obama tells the nation "we must act," who will be heard and who silenced, who will live and who will die, what is right and what is wrong?

We exist within an endless loop of aggression and confusion. As "our journey is not complete" will we take a different path?