Big Brother

[Guest guest]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_katherin_050920_big_brother.htm

 

Big Brother

 

An open letter to readers and to the United States government

 

by Katherine Brengle

 

http://www.opednews.com

 

As many of my old readers know, I haven't contributed anything to the

progressive dialogue in months. What many surely do not know is that I

have been on hiatus because my husband was preparing to deploy to the

Middle East, where he finally landed today.

 

I have been understandably angry, depressed, and unfocused over the

past three months. For someone in my position, someone who writes

about the evils of war and critically about the direction in which our

country is moving, someone who stands in snow and rain and under the

hot sun trying to reach out to ordinary Americans and open their eyes

to these very issues, this is an even harder than usual situation to

be in.

 

In light of all this, soon after we found out that my husband had been

activated and would soon be deployed, I needed to lash out without

hurting anyone. I turned to an old online journal I hadn't been using

much, and posted a brief, vague, very angry message expressing my

general rage at what was happening to my family.

 

End of story.

 

Until this morning. This morning I was informed that someone in the

military had stumbled across my speck of a diatribe and was quite

agitated. I was asked to remove it.

 

I'm all for homeland security (although I find the phrase itself more

than a little creepy), so I double checked to make sure I hadn't

inadvertently, in my anger, given out sensitive information about my

husband or his location. I had not.

 

Now, I may be young, but I am not naive.

 

No one " stumbled " across my angry scribbling. In the case that anyone

did happen to find it, purely by accident, my last name is not my

husband's last name, and there would have been no reason for the

reader to look further into me.

 

The sad truth is, someone probably saw my husband addressing a letter

or asked him my name, recognized it (wow, I'm famous) or Googled it,

and came up with some stuff he didn't agree with.

 

It's not easy being a liberal, antiwar writer with a military man for

a husband, but it also isn't a free pass for the government, or any

portion of it, to demand that I keep quiet or censor myself.

 

I was and am fully within my Constitutional rights to speak out

against this war, and any other action of my government that I find

objectionable, regardless of who I am married to. In fact, I believe

that I am obligated to do so.

 

End of story.

 

Katherine Brengle is a freelance writer and the wife of a deployed

United States service member.