Witch hunts decried

I recently expressed to my congresspeople my concerns regarding U.S. sanctions against Cuba, and received a couple of those noncommittal responses drafted by some staff person, Xeroxed and on file for sending out to people like me. I don’t know why I bother, these responses always make me angry. Same old stories, same old lies.

Well, what can one expect from a Congress that supports a witch hunt against its own president? If they can’t get him on Whitewater, they’ll get him on something else. Like the Bangor cop who told me when I fought a parking ticket and a $40 tow job in court and won, “I’m going to charge you with” something, I don’t remember the specific charge. But I ran right over the the city solicitor who said, of course not, that can’t be done, they can’t switch the charges.

The must have been the old days, because now it’s being done all the time, only they’ve smartened up a bit. Now they give you a list of charges a mile long, and if they keep the witch hunt up long enough, they are bound to get you for one of them. Like the game warden who said 90 percent of the people are breaking the law and don’t know it. Like the man who was watching his grandson fishing in the river. The man wasn’t fishing, didn’t even have a pole, but he did have a Maine fishing license which the warden looked at. What he didn’t have was a Maine vehicle registration. He’d just recently moved here from Mass., and hadn’t switched it over yet, so they stuck him with a $100 fine.

I know what witch hunts are like. They alter your soul, shatter your faith in human nature, God and country. You want to fight back in defense, but you know that whatever you say or do with be used against you. The target of a witch hunt has no defense. So you get angry. Real angry. You fantasize about becoming a hunter instead of the hunted. But it’s not in your nature. That’s not what you want for your life. So you try to disappear, leave town, flee the country, get out of this most litigious society in all the world in all of history. A lot of lawyers make a lot of money doing witch hunts. I don’t admire Clinton for much of anything he’s done — I think he sold out the Democratic party — but I have to give him credit for still walking around trying to be president.

To get back to Cuba. The United States has been trying to destroy Castro for 38 years. When the CIA’s attempt to assassinate the man failed, Congress turned against the Cuban people by “isolating the island nation through comprehensive economic sanctions,” hoping that by starving out the whole country, Castro’s own people would do what the CIA hadn’t been able to do — kill him. “The United States will remove sanctions,” says this letter from my Congresswoman, when “Castro adheres to international human rights standards and allows international supervised elections.” Is trying to starve out a nation of people not human rights violation?

And Cuba’s lack of elections. Are elections like ours so all-fired democratic and admirable? Where’s the democracy when only 28 percent of constitutionally eligible voters show up at the poles? And since majority rules in this great democracy, those ruling may be doing so with the support of only 15 percent of us. What democracy? Is a life sentence for stealing a six-pack of beer in Michigan not a human rights violation? Is expelling a 10-year-old boy from school for kissing a girl in the hallway not a human rights violation? Is freedom from witch hunts not an inalienable right?

Pamela Bell lives in Orono.