What is so special about American soil? What is so special about the field in Kansas, the trees in Michigan, the dirt roads of Southern Illinois that these men can not be near them? I do not believe in the sacredness of ground. I do not believe that America is God's special country that God loves more than all the other countries, and that He loves the Chesapeake Bay more than Guantanamo Bay or the Mississippi more than the Nile. Other people believe that, and they are being allowed to run our government, they are being allowed to hijack not just the public discourse but the lives and civil liberties and freedom of one hundred and ninety-six men because they think our dirt is fucking special and suddenly, anyone who does not like America or might be a criminal can not be near it. As if their subversion, their antipathy, their righteous grievances against us will travel like pixie dust through the rocks and pebbles and get in our groundwater.
And, see, speaking as someone who DOES, in fact, believe in the sacredness of ground...I still agree. Because while I believe the ground is sacred, I don't believe that the ground of THIS nation, the USA, is somehow particularly or specially sacred. Our ground is sacred; but so is the ground of every other nation on earth, equally. So this rhetoric, this "Not on our soil!" bullshit, is just one more manifestation of America's fascination with itself and our national fetish for declaring ourselves the Super-Special Niftiest Nation Evar!
Because when we say "Not on our soil!", what we really mean is, "These people are too Evil to contaminate us*. But they're good enough for all the rest of you lesser nations, so here, take them!"
Fellow Americans of mine, that's enough. Can we please get over ourselves now? Pretty please?
*This is, of course, assuming that the prisoners of Guatanamo Bay who would be released are, actually, evil, and not innocents caught up in our shitstorm of overzealousness.
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