[dropcap]I’m going to say it:[/dropcap] I am ashamed to be a US citizen. This doesn’t come easily, because having lived abroad and seen some pretty nasty places in my time, I know there are a lot of great things about this country, and a lot of great people who live here, but lately, I’ve reached the conclusion that the US is a sick and twisted country, in which the bad far outweighs the good.

I can remember first feeling revolted about my country several times. The first was when I realized, at the tender age of 17, what an atrocity the US was committing against the people of Vietnam in my name — the rape and murderous destruction of peasant villages and the napalming of children in the South, and the carpet bombing of North Vietnam (including dikes, schools and hospitals). Later, I was shocked and revolted when I belatedly learned how my country had rounded up native born and naturalized Japanese-Americans and Japanese legal residents into concentration camps during WWII, and how the national government had been complicit in the taking of those vilely incarcerated people’s farms, homes and businesses by conniving white fascists in California.

But those crimes, horrific as they were, pale in the face of what I see this country doing now.

Let me count some of the ways that this country makes me sick:

1. It’s not just the latest release of a heavily redacted report on the Bush/Cheney administration’s deliberate program of torture, launched in 2001 in the wake of 9-11, and carried on for years against not just alleged terrorists, but even against people known or suspected to be completely innocent of anything. It’s that nothing has been done, or likely will be done, to punish those who authorized and advocated for these war crimes and crimes against humanity. And it’s not just that, but that so many of my fellow Americans are okay with that. Even in the media, including on NPR, I hear reporters saying that one of the “questions” about the government’s torture program is whether it “worked” or not in obtaining information about acts of terrorism. Because it doesn’t matter whether torture “worked” or not. The US and the rest of the nations of the world signed a treaty after World War II saying that torture is a criminal act (the penalty includes death under international law!). And so is covering up or failing to punish the crime of torture.

We’re plenty fed up, too.  And we should add to this list that it’s hard to live in a country where most people go around like zombies happily ensconced in a cocoon of mass disinformation, frivolous distractions, and puerile self-absorption, while the planet falls to pieces.

2. The police in the United States have become so militarized in both a physical sense and in terms of their training and self-image, that they are now more of an army of occupation than “peace officers” (there’s an anachronistic term you don’t even hear used anymore). Over and over we see police aggressively using force, including deadly force, in situations that call for calm and understanding. The most sickening thing to me, was watching a squad car in Cleveland race directly onto a park lawn right up to an enclosed gazebo where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was sitting, alone, playing with a toy gun. In less than two seconds, one of the cops exits the car and shoots the boy fatally in the stomach. There was absolutely no call for this execution. No one was around being threatened by the kid. The cops should have pulled up safely at a distance, assessed the situation, and then called on Rice to exit the gazebo and drop the gun, even if they feared it was real. Or they should have ordered him to stay put and drop the gun, and then, if he didn’t comply, waited for back up, including a trained negotiator. Instead, they just raced in like it was a hostage rescue attempt, and blew a little kid away. Then they did nothing to help him after shooting him. Ugh! And yet, there is not a wave of universal outrage over this monstrous police murder.

Nor is there universal outrage at the cops involved in the execution slaying of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO or in the completely pointless choking death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York, both of whose uniformed killers were exonerated by grossly manipulated and misled grand juries. Instead, we hear whites interviewed on TV shows saying that the cops did the right thing.

3. But that’s just part of it. I’m disgusted by having as our president a man who lacks the intestinal fortitude to call out these above crimes and to insist that he will prosecute those who ordered the military and the CIA to use torture on captives in the so-called War on Terror. President Obama should be demanding that his so-called Justice Department aggressively prosecute those cops who are killing unarmed civilians if local prosecutors won’t do it, and he should be ordering the prosecution of everyone who ordered, authorized, enabled or covered up torture by US government agents. (No wonder President Obama has been diagnosed with acid reflux: at least the man’s alimentary canal appears to have a conscience!)

4. I’m disgusted that according to the Prison Policy Initiative, the US has at any given moment some 2.4 million people locked up (only two-thirds of whom have even been convicted of a crime, with most of the rest awaiting trial because they can’t post the excessive bail set by our corrupt court system). And no wonder: Just between the late ‘80s and 2008, the number of federal laws for which someone can end up being jailed has soared from 3000 to 4450, and it keeps rising as charlatans in Congress keep passing laws to create ever more “crimes” to punish. And that doesn’t count state and local governments, which explains why the US, with 5% of the world’s population, accounts for 25% of the world’s prison inmates. Myself, I was threatened with jail not long ago by a thug cop in a neighboring town for hitch-hiking — an activity that actually is legal in my state, and that, if done improperly, is at most a citation offense like a parking violation calling for a ticket, not an arrest. No matter — if I hadn’t put down my thumb, this bully in a uniform with sidearm would have cuffed me, and trumped up something: resisting arrest, disturbing the peace or some such tripe. We live in a punishment-obsessed society, overseen by cops who seem to derive pleasure in lording it over the public.

5. I’m sickened to see community after community pass laws making it illegal to feed the homeless. This in a country where in the wake of the Great Recession, we still have a real unemployment and underemployment rate of between 18% and 20% depending on how you’re counting.

6. I’m ashamed and angry that Wall Street is essentially one gigantic crime scene — the place where trillions of dollars of wealth over the last decade has been siphoned out of the pockets of ordinary Americans into the hands of the wealthiest 1% or 5%, making this now the most unequal society among the 34 developed nations of the world. Not one leading banker from the nation’s top so-called too-big-to-fail banks has even been charged with a crime, much less convicted and jailed for the biggest swindle the world has ever seen. On those rare occasions when the Justice Department has gone after some of these bankster crimes, it has reached “settlements” in the form of meaningless fines, and hasn’t even, as part of the deal, required any of these crooked executives to leave their lucrative positions of power, or even to admit wrongdoing. In fact, these crooks in pinstripes instead of jail stripes are regularly invited guests at the White House and Congress, called upon to give their “wisdom” on points of government policy, for which they then reward their hosts generously with perks and “campaign contributions” that are little more than bribes.

7. I’m outraged and ashamed that my country spends well over $1 trillion a year on its military, and has military personnel based in over 800 locations around the globe. This at a time when 50 million Americans are reportedly “food insecure” — another way of saying that 50 million people, many of them children, go hungry at some point in the year — and when support programs like Food Stamps and Unemployment Compensation are being cut to save money. Worse yet, there is no national scandal over this. In fact, many Americans, perhaps a majority, think that all that spending on the military is a good thing, because it supposedly “keeps us safe” and maybe “creates jobs.” The sad truth is that today, the US, my country, is the world’s largest terrorist state — based objectively on its recent unrivaled history of illegally invading other lands, conducting drone killings across borders, kidnapping, torturing and disappearing people, and funding and assisting in the overthrow of foreign, often democratically elected, governments.

8. I’m sick at heart because half a century after the Freedom Riders and courageous local people won an end to Jim Crow laws in the South that had for generations kept black people from voting, at least half the country, and not just in the south but everywhere, are now trying to make it hard or impossible for blacks, hispanics and other people of color to vote. And our corrupted court system is backing them in many cases, right up to the US Supreme Court, which is now dominated by fascists, proto-fascists, and religio-fascists.

9. I’m embarrassed that my fellow Americans, by and large, care more about whether they can get the latest iPhone, or whether they have a god-given right to own an unlicensed automatic weapon, than about whether we still have a right to privacy, a right not to be spied on by the government, or whether corporations should be allowed, as now under Citizens United, to buy government officials directly, like sides of beef.

10. I’m disgusted that my countrymen and women no longer believe it is important for society to provide everyone with the basic services that allow all people a fair shot at climbing out of poverty. There is no longer a sense that everyone should be able to attend a decently funded public school, or have access to a tax-funded state college for free or for a small tuition — the kind that could be covered with a 10-hour work-study job. There is no longer any sense that all Americans should be entitled to quality health care. Even what support there is for the so-called Affordable Care Act, far from being about making quality care available for all, is mostly from individuals who selfishly want to be able to afford insurance for themselves. It’s not about making it available to all. It’s like, if the ACA enables you to afford insurance, you’re for it, but it you have employer-provided insurance, you’re against it. This is basically true in every area. Americans today have lost any communal sense of shared responsibility and shared struggle. People used to talk (incorrectly, I think) about the ‘60s generation being the “me” generation. Actually, it’s pretty much the entire US that has become a “me” country.

11. Finally, I can’t forget the issue of climate change. The US has unquestionably been the primary contributor to climate change over the last century, as the most industrialized nation in the world. Even today, as it’s carbon emissions are surpassed by China, the undeniable fact is that on a per capita basis, we Americans dump far more carbon into the atmosphere per person than anyone in China, by a factor of five or more. Yet our country has been a primary obstacle to any real efforts to slow or reverse climate change. The US, during this administration and the last, has actively subverted efforts to reach international agreements to limit greenhouse gases, even using the National Security Agency’s spying abilities to monitor other countries’ negotiation positons and to blackmail leaders. It is simply sickening too, how the selfishness of Americans even extends to caring not a whit about the horrors that will be faced by not just our grandchildren, but even our children (the World Bank, no environmental radical hotbed, warns that today’s teens will face a world that is a staggering 6-8 degrees Fahrenheit hotter by the time they are 80!). This is selfishness — or — madness on a scale that is to me incomprehensible.

I could go on, but I think eleven reasons to be ashamed of one’s country ought to be more than enough.

It is for me.

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dave Lindorff is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

[dropcap]In case people[/dropcap] didn’t get it earlier, it’s time to recognize that the ancient institution of the grand jury has outlived its usefulness, and should be eliminated, as its only real purpose today is to give prosecutors political cover and an added cudgel with which to intimidate witnesses.

Originally established back 1215 as part of the Magna Carta in England, the intent was to put some constraint on the ability of the king to prosecute opponents. In modern times, its use has been reduced, and in fact, throughout the world in countries where the justice system is based upon British Common Law, it has been eliminated — with the notable exception of the United States.

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The first instance of a grand jury can be traced back to the Assize of Clarendon, an 1166 act of Henry II of England.^[5] In fact, Henry’s chief effect on the development of the English monarchy was to increase the jurisdiction of the royal courts at the expense of the feudal courts. Itinerant justices on regular circuits were sent out once each year to enforce the “King’s Peace”. To make this system of royal criminal justice more effective, Henry employed the method of inquest used by William the Conqueror in the Domesday Book. In each shire, a body of important men was sworn (juré) to report to the sheriff all crimes committed since the last session of the circuit court. Thus originated the modern grand jury that presents information for an indictment.^[6] The grand jury was later recognized by King John in Magna Carta in 1215 on demand of the nobility.^[7]

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We should be asking why the US, where justice and the rule of law have been so exceptionally corrupted, perverted and and subverted in recent decades, with the virtual elimination of trial by jury in criminal cases, the undermining of habeas corpus, and the ubiquity of excessive bail, not to mention wide-spread racism in all phases of the legal process, from arrest and arraignment to jury selection and sentencing, is the US the lone major country still holding on to grand juries. (Hint: It can’t be for anything good.)

What we have seen in Ferguson, MO in the case of the grand jury “investigation” there of white Ferguson Police Office Darren Willson and his killing of the unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, and in New York City, and in the case of the grand jury “investigation” of NY Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo and his killing, by illegal choke hold, of Eric Garner, the unarmed black father of six, are two examples of a grand jury being used to provide the state, and specifically two elected district attorneys, with an excuse and political cover not to prosecute criminal police officers.

In Ferguson, an unarmed youth who was simply walking down the middle of a largely empty street, was gunned down by a police officer while he was on the ground pleading for mercy. In New York, a 43-year-old man, trying to support his family by selling cigarettes on the sidewalk was piled on by four police officers, one of whom, while the victim was being held on prone on the sidewalk, his face ground into the concrete, choked him to death with an arm hold that had long been specifically banned by the NYPD because of the number of deaths it had caused.

The prosecutor in the first case, Robert McCulloch, hails from a family of police officers — his father and brothers were all cops, and his father had reportedly been slain during a call by a black man with a sniper rifle. On that basis alone, he should have stepped aside in this particular case because of an unseemly appearance of and potential for bias. But it gets worse. After the grand jury reached its controversial “decision” not to indict Wilson for any violation at all in the slaying of Brown, it was reported that Democrat McCulloch, in addition to being St. Louis County’s top prosecutor, is also president of an organization called The Backstoppers, Inc., a charity that raises money to support cops in Missouri and Illinois, and to compound the felony, that organization had been selling T-shirts emblazoned with the phrase: “I support Officer Wilson.”

In New York, where there are five boroughs and five elected prosecutors, the district attorney who presided over the grand jury that declined to find any violation in Officer Panteleo’s killing of Garner, is Dan Donovan, a politically ambitious Republican in the city’s one Republican-majority borough. To win a GOP nomination to any higher office in the state, Donovan needs to establish his “tough on crime” reputation, which in the Republican Party tends to be a codeword for “tough on minorities.”  It also means being an unquestioning backer of police.  As Jeffrey Fagan, a Columbia University law professor specializing in police accountability and criminal law, explained the importance of this grand jury in a local publication called The Gothamist:

“It’s politically costly for Dan Donovan to indict a police officer on Staten Island. He can easily shift the political and legal burden to the Department of Justice to decide whether to pursue criminal charges. He’s washed his hands of it.”

Of course, grand juries are most often used to indict criminals who aren’t police officers, but in that case, they actually are completely superfluous. While at the federal level, grand juries are required for any felony indictment, at the state or county level, prosecutors have the full authority to present charges against suspects for crimes without going through the process of a grand jury hearing. In fact, the whole idea of a grand jury investigation in a criminal case at the state level is a huge waste of time and money, particularly for those citizens who are impaneled and have to sit through the process of hearing witnesses.

As jurist Sol Wachtler, a former chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals, once famously said of the institution of the grand jury that “any prosecutor who wanted to could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.”  His point was that prosecutors control all the information that the lay people on the grand jury hear about a case in question, and also provide the legal information those citizen jurors need in terms of what different charges, for example first or second-degree murder, manslaughter, or involuntary manslaughter, entail. (In the Ferguson case, we know from grand jury transcripts that McColloch misinformed jurors about the law, inaccurately informing them that in Missouri, it’s legal for police to shoot and kill “fleeing felons.” It is not legal to do so, and the DA surely knew that. We don’t know what Staten Island DA told his grand jury, because the transcript, as with most grand juries, is sealed.)

While both grand jurors and petit jurors have the right to reach their own conclusions in a case, regardless of the evidence and of any instructions from, respectively, a prosecutor or a judge, it is rare enough to see petit jurors reach a decision different from what they are instructed by a judge and rarer still to see a grand jury ignore the recommendations of a prosecutor.

So if grand juries are abused for the purpose of giving political cover to district attorneys, and aren’t needed to bring charges against criminals, why do we have them? Well, it turns out that prosecutors love them for another reason. They get to bring in witnesses and suspected accomplices of criminal suspects and then compel them to testify about what they know — before any trial even takes place.

Witnesses at a grand jury hearing (which is always closed to the public, unlike a courtroom), are required to answer all questions put to them, unless they plead protection under the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. That’s a powerful investigative tool for a local prosecutor, and one district attorneys would be loath to give up. After all, the FBI has the advantage, in investigating a crime, that it is a federal felony to lie to an FBI agent, even when not placed under oath, but it is not a crime to lie to a state or local police officer or detective. It’s also a tool that can be overused or improperly used in politically-motivated prosecutions, since simply leaking word that someone in a grand jury hearing “took the Fifth” can destroy a career, even though there can actually be many non-criminal reasons for doing so — for example exposing a marital infidelity, or perhaps a hidden but embarrassing sexual proclivity.

All in all, we’d all be much better off, and our civil liberties, human rights, and the rule of law would be better protected if grand juries in the US were scrapped as they have been in most of the rest of the English-speaking world.

For starters, corrupted, biased and politically ambitious prosecutors like McCollom and Donovan would have to stand on their own two feet and take full responsibility for any controversial decision not to prosecute police officers who clearly, as demonstrated by video evidence, used excessive force and killed unarmed citizens not guilty of any crime.

The mounting toll of such extrajudicial murders by increasingly militarized and brutal US police of innocent, unarmed people, now running in excess of 1400 per year, demands that we have prosecutors willing to hold police to account, and that, when they don’t, the public knows who to hold responsible for that inaction.

Dave Lindorff is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).