We're Getting the Country We Deserve, Aren't We?

First posted as a comment on Truthdig, 9-19-07


There’s no question that fascism has come to the US.

We have a rogue president and vice president claiming unprecedented, flagrantly anti-constitutional powers.

We have an elaborate, un-checked domestic corporate/government spying apparatus unleashed on all of us. If you think they’re not spying on everyone who expresses concern or plans to run against them, guess again.

We have sabotaged voting machines manufactured by the president's partisans, and fraudulent elections shored up by a partisan high Court.

We have a fanatical Christianist military command willing to impose its bizarre beliefs on our military academies, by threat of retaliation if necessary.

We have a completely docile media fully owned and controlled by the military-industrial complex that’s fully owned and controlled by the Carlyle Group that’s fully owned and controlled by the president and his men and his Middle Eastern allies.

Instead of asking why the GOP is enabling and sustaining this coup d’etat, our media distort facts, indicting only Democrats who at least are speaking out even though they don’t have the numbers to run Congress. When they’re not blaming the Democrats, they’re feeding us nothing but Britney and OJ. Bread and circuses.

We have a paralyzed and largely bought-and-paid-for Congress.

We have BlackwaterUSA, the president’s personal praetorian guard owned by a fanatical Christianist billionaire who is locked into a cyclical group-grope with our tax dollars and has been written out of range of any law that I know of, here and in Iraq.

We have the most secret government in US history. Fanatically secretive. Known to have removed warehouses full of documents to places unknown. That's our national history we're talking about.

We have a president ready, able, and willing to kill hundreds of thousands merely because he wants to be “a war president,” poised now to nuke Iran on a lie, and happy to perjure himself and gut the Constitution he swore to uphold, again and again.

We have a once-brave people terrified by our shadows, and lining up to sell its children down the river environmentally, constitutionally, and economically if Herr Bush only barks loud enough.

Instead of seeing the real threat, we are focused on a bunch of Mexican peasants. As if.

Our jobs are going or have gone, our houses are worth less by the hour, our economy is teetering in the hands of a hostile China, and our living standard is lower than it was in 1973. But our CEOs make 500 times what the line worker makes, so be still. It will all trickle down by and by.

Our public education system has been eroded or sabotaged or supplanted by a Christo-fascist turn-key home schooling program (fully orchestrated curriculum), and university education is for the elite, alone. That ain't you or me, baby.

Our predatory leaders are willing to rape and pillage New Orleans for their own gain, and able to watch 1,500 people drown and say nobody knew this could happen. We're hearing a lot of that shit lately.

So if we don’t have fascism and a citizenry deliberatly rendered powerless and poised on destitution, exactly what are we lacking? It’s here. It patrolled the streets of New Orleans and it will be coming soon to a theatre near you.

We are at the rising of the curtain at a drama that’s been 30 years in the works, and these are the main acts. Ralph Reed said we wouldn’t see them coming until we were in the body bags. I didn’t realize that he meant that literally until I sat and watched them drown New Orleans.

The question is, where are the “patriots” when you need them? Where are the Freepers and all the people who were flapping panicked about black helicopters now that the black helicopters are actually here? What kind of "patriotism" do they represent that opens the doors to rapacious fascists and clams them on the people who are hanging two lanterns in the old church tower.

This isn’t the country my Dad fought for in WWII. He was a paratrooper and lost his eye in North Africa. I’m glad he’s dead, because I don’t think he could endure this.

Why are we enduring it? Are we just frozen in our tracks? Have we no memory of revolution, or do we just find it embarrassing?

I just wonder what the senior military, intelligence, and diplomacy officers think of all this. They surely must see what’s going down. Are they just waiting for their turn through the revolving door? Or, like Alan Greenspan and John Warner, waiting for retirement (when they have their fortunes) to speak out?

We’re getting the country we deserve, aren’t we?