The old America of everyone's dreams has now been replaced by

another one in which venal, corrupt and power hungry men rule over a cowed population, gripped by fear, prisoners of their own prejudices about dark-skinned Arabs, followers of a different religion.Almost every fear-- racial, economic, physical and psychological-- has been deployed against us by powerful men, who have corrupted our democracy and now can rule with impunity, accountable to no one because they even control the electoral process that gives them legitimacy in the eyes of the people.

"It can't happen here?". It has already happened and we are living it.

"What need we fear who knows it when no one can call us to account?"

..seems to have had the life choked out of it.

It's been very much this way for a long time. People were not greatly more enlightened in this country five, ten, or twenty years ago- au contraire- and politicians were as corrupt then as now, it was just spread around more.

What has happened is that the benign-ness has gone out of public life. The pressure of the Modern world- the unavoidability and pain of the transitions and changes of order to accommodate- has just become more intense. No reactionary foolishness can actually change any of that, but an escapist attempt to live in the past and accept change passively by an unwise majority is the politics of the time. And it's easy to exploit for foolish and banal purposes.

In some sense we can only wait it out. Our job is to be prepared for the day when the escapism breaks down.

the Hill in the socalled Free World and could afford to hide its true intentions behind a mask of reasonableness and humanitarianism knowing that its "vital interests" would always prevail. That order is rapidly breaking down, with China, Japan, India, Brazil and other emerging powers challenging our supremacy in many markets, including military technology.In many ways I see our expedition in Iraq as a last gasp of an imperial power to reassert itself when all signs point to its decay. Our population, ignorant as usual and drenched with the banalities of our media, is oblivious to the larger context of the war, our economic decline and our potential collapse. Reminds me of the revelry on the Titanic before the iceberg hit.

Interesting analogy, with the titanic hitting the iceberg and all. I've heard some (including my room mate here at college) say that the US is somewhat like the Roman Empire in a way. Hopefully we don't face the same fate.