Witnessing The Burning of the Last Refuge (for Bob Kincaid aka “The Voice of Reason”)

Disturbing incursions, wars over ghosts in the administration, immigration all of these things combine to install a national irrationality that has spewed over its edges, spilling across an already open border we find ourselves as a nation squealing about the smallest of events and discussing television when faced with the realities of our time.

Backgrounds becoming public, war supplies going public, entourages touring bases in war zones. This is a time in which the enemy has custody of the situation room. A time when prisons across the world, conditions in a prison run by a government that enacted the death penalty as a rule of law, when conditions in American prisons grow like dangerous chemicals under the lens, when AIDS almost guarantees a twenty-year sentence in a maximum security institution a life sentence. After the events of Sept. 11, 2001 sales of American flags soared to new heights while attacks on Arab civilians by flag owners became rampant.

Elections have now become suspect; campaigns have begun endorsing religion over law, religion over policy, and religion against the first amendment. Lobbyists have finally been targets of scrutiny while any real change will come about slowly by politicians who vote themselves raises on a regular basis while cutting spending for education. The Patriot Act ensures the now defunct act of censorship, when speaking your mind becomes the airing of the charges against you, and the nine hundred pound elephant in the room has had his benefits cut while serving in a war zone.

- Chris Mansel