When I was a kid, it never occurred to me that there’d come a day when I’d think twice before divulging my nationality, but it’s getting awfully tough to be proud to be an American. I know we (and when I say we, I mean they) have done a lot of bad shit over the years (you know, damn near exerminating the people who already lived here, that whole slavery thing, South & Central America, to name a few). Still, we managed to be the good guys, we had all the cool stuff, our money didn’t look like it was printed by Parker Brothers – hell, we even sent people to the moon and invented the Internet. Being an American (especially a white male one) was pretty darn good (particularly my generation, ‘cuz we never actually had to do anything for it, except take what our parents’ generation had given us, and bitch about it).

Now, though…. Our fearless leader and his Wild Dick want to “reserve the right” to use torture, and yesterday we and the rest of the world (especially an already inflamed Muslim world) were treated to more pictures of just what it is that “right” they want so badly looks like. People – humans – in the cradle of civilization, being beaten bloody (or to death) and sexually humiliated in a most decidedly inhumane and uncivilized manner by a government that has the audacity to believe it has the right to sit in judgement of others. If they did these things to my dog, I would rip out their throats – or die trying. What in God’s name – yeah, in God’s name, and in our names, too – what would you expect to happen when you do these things to their fathers and brothers, sons, daughters, and mothers? How can this be allowed – let alone encouraged to happen? How can the ability to do these things actually be coveted by our “leaders,” and excused (or at least ignored) by our vaunted American media and half of our population?

You know, I really don’t think this country can survive much more of this. It’s not that an angry and disgusted Muslim population will be even more motivated to do us harm (though that certainly has to be the case). It’s that we are rotting from the top down, and the inside out. And every time our government does these things in our name, we rot a little bit more. Pretty soon, there won’t be anything left worth saving.