We Are Better Than This [View all]

[McCamy Taylor]

We didn't rape and torture prisoners. We didn't allow a man to die of hypothermia in custody. We didn't start a warrantless domestic wiretap program before 9-11, or use 9-11 as an excuse to fulfill the plan set out in the Project for the New America Century, namely the "liberation" of Iraq's oil.

But fellow Americans did.

We didn't shoot an unarmed young man for the crime of wearing a hoodie while being Black. Or choke the life from a middle aged man for the crime of being overweight and unhealthy while being Black. We didn't blow away a child for the crime of holding a toy gun while being Black.

But fellow Americans did.

We didn't do this:



And we didn't do this:



Nor this:



And we certainly didn't do this (because it happened before we were born):



But fellow Americans did. And if we shelter those who committed these crimes, if we give them aid and deny their victims justice, then we really are no better than they are. And all those words about "inalienable rights" and "all men created equal" are just words with no more meaning than the latest slogan for a diet soda. And the rest of the world has every right to condemn us all as war criminals and mass murderers.

If you think you are better than "this" ask yourself why Henry Kissinger is a free and very wealthy man while Trayvon Martin is dead.