Opinion | Civil Liberties Under Siege
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Opinion | Civil Liberties Under Siege

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Opinion | Civil Liberties Under Siege
Crystal Van Houtte

In America, it seems like every single day our rights are under attack. The GOP seems to have a vested interest in gaslighting the American public. Since when did stripping the human rights of all American citizens become the number one goal of our government? The easy answer would be to ask whether or not we ever had true freedom, to begin with.

Depending on who you are the short answer would be no. For many, it seems as if life has been nothing short of a never ending siege of discrimination and institutional racism. There are many that claim ignorance of the daily battles fought by their fellow Americans. Ignorance cannot exist in an age when technology is so widespread, evidence of these battles is in the pocket of every citizen.

Every smartphone with access to the internet is capable of providing irrefutable video evidence of the struggles our fellow Americans face every single day. It is ridiculous to realize that there are people that truly believe that racism ended in the United States the moment that Martin Luther King Jr was murdered. That is an absurd notion considering the millions of people that supported segregation and the citizens that participated in nationwide lynchings did not die at the same time as Martin Luther King Jr.

These racists and murderers went on to live their lives as normal, uninterrupted. They went on to have children and pass on the same moral deficiencies to their children and grandchildren. The racist police officers that participated in these human rights violations kept their jobs. The prosecutors kept their jobs. The judges kept their jobs. The politicians kept their positions within the highest levels of government, all whilst holding the same amount of hate, vitriol and murderous rage in the core of whats left of their decaying souls.

If anyone was paying attention to the amount of time these people remained in office, things might have turned out differently. It's funny that law enforcement uses facial recognition and aging software to identify suspects involved in past crimes, except when it comes to identifying citizens in photos showing entire towns participating in lynchings.

It seems as if every day we are given yet another example of blatant human rights violations disguised as legislation. Since when did stripping American citizens of all of their human rights become the "Prime Directive" of the United States Government? The GOP has been going after everything from health care to the right to serve in the armed forces and seemingly everything in between.

There have been members of the GOP that have gone on pointless crusades to strip transgender persons of the right to use the public restroom that corresponds with their identity. They are currently trying to remove transgender persons from their positions within the armed services. These politicians have painted transgender people as monsters, rapists, and sexual deviants. There are more members of the GOP that have been arrested for sexual misconduct in public restrooms than transgender people. The reason for that is because there have been zero transgender people accused of, or arrested for sexual misconduct in public restrooms.

The GOP is gaslighting the American public regularly in an effort to normalize the civil and human rights violations they plan to commit. Our government has been infiltrated by "Christian Extremists". These extremists are using their twisted interpretation of the various scriptures to validate their immoral and illegal actions. They hide behind scripture they are content to ignore in their personal lives and public lives.

Education is the only way to combat the ignorance that has saturated America. Critical thinking should be a mandatory course taught in public school beginning in kindergarten. There are a few questions today Americans should be asking themselves. Why are public schools being defunded? Why would a politician submit or pass legislation allowing parents to keep their children out of school because they believe the Bible is the only book they will need to read? Why are our rights being stripped? Why are politicians trying to blur the lines of separation, between church and state? Why do politicians have a vested interest supporting the systematic dumbing down of American citizens? What will be left of our country if they continue to ignore the constitution?

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