two nations

We are supposed to be one nation under God, but it seems we are two nations in the same country.

We have the Conservatives, or more specifically the Right Wing, who have no problem calling for the
FINAL SOLUTION of the Liberal Problem in the US. Nobody calls them on it, but they
call those who tell them this, YOU ARE A LIBERAL AND A LIAR and you should not even be
in power.

Then we have the Liberals or moderates (they are liberals as well, by the definition of the RW).

Two nations, and the last time this country was this divided was 1858... which leads to the next
question.

Will this be solved in a Civil War? The possibility is chilling but one not to be ignored. Civil wars
are not civil, as they divide families, friends and nations. The end, when any war starts, is not certain. (Yes, boys and girls the Union could have lost in 1860.) The least certain of any war is a
Civil War, and the end result of this may be the end of the Republic.

Alternatively the Right will succeed and take over all avenues of power and make this a one party fascist state. If this should be the result, before the borders are closed many will be able to fee, and for the first time a country of immigrants will have Political Refugees, who will have good reasons to be afraid, and ask for political asylum. After all the Right will not bat an eye if the Gulag network is built and people are sent to Work Camps.

Then there is the least fearful of these screaming. If democracy is to survive, compromise must be observed (Something that Groover Norquist does not believe in). These words are not mine, but those of one of founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin. This basic ingredient must return, but is it?

Lets see, we have the hysterical right screaming treason every time the lies are exposed, and I mean the lies from the Administration. We have a Justice Department now bugging the offices of a Mayor (sans warrant, was he a terrorist or just a Democrat?). We have no problem with outing National Security Assets, in the name of political expediency ... boys and girls the nations to do this were once our sworn enemies, in order: the USSR, Germany and Italy ... where murder, slime and exposure of political enemies were part of the toolkit of terror, that the state used to keep any criticism in check. Is the CIA outing an aberration of US Politics or is it accepted, since he is only a Democrat? No, I do not expect many to understand the seriousness of this.

So as we all look into the abyss the die of history has been cast.

What will it be?

Civil War

A long night (and the end of the Republic,) and that will also come to an end ... as it always does

Or will we emerge from this temporary insanity and realize that compromise is what makes democracies flourish. Only time will tell.

the repuke einsatzgruppen will be along to handle us all shortly. please have your papers ready. the right wing will soon have jack booted brown shirted thugs and we shall all bow down to the mighty corporate state.

i for one welcome our soon to be overlords. As one of your more hindquarter licking underlings, i shall serve as a communicator to the unwashed masses, and will see to it that productivity in the sugar mines shall be at an all time high!

/good grief

quietly into the night.

You do, that is your problem.

with this "civil war" you fantasize about. How's it going to shake down? Uh, the California army vrs. the Georgia army and they'll like, what, meet in Oklahoma? Or maybe Kansas?! I doubt Reynolds Wrap makes a thick-enough gauge of tinfoil for the kinda hat you're wearing. I got a feeling you're just doing this to try and feed Rush Limbaugh "ammo" and see if it makes it on the air.

John Lennon was so right! "you say want revolution, weeeeeeeelllll, you know....we all to change the world." I gently suggest you listen to the rest of the lyrics of the song. You need to listen carefully. Peace. (But what I'm really saying is...peace!)

Get yourself A documentary History of the United States,
and read particularly, John C Calhoun's essays predating the
Civil War.

That is what I sugest you do, study some history, and get some
perspective.

And if you think I fantasize about war, you hardly know me.

Been there done that for real... and as most people who have been there, done that, we don't fantasize and we know the cost... we
also know that war is truly the last option.

But the radicals on both sides don't know this. They are the ones
fantasizing about war and the country is so divided that a small
spark may be all it takes.

it's completely irrelevant! And utterly useless as a contemporary resource. Read Marshall McLuhan if you want accurate history. Calhoun's quaint, but don't you find him a tad native? Life was so simple then.

until the shooting started.

he warned congress repeteadly.

Santayana is apropriate here. Those who refuse to learn from history (as you obviously do) are bound to repeat it.

Take those blinders off...

I know this is an ugly truth, but one we must face.

I am not saying Fort Sumpter (or the equivalent) will
be under attack tomorrow, that woudl be foolish, but the
trends of a DIVIDED and POLARIZED nation are here with us, in
the here and now.

That also includes another danger, Cult of Personality for
George Bush... for that I sugest you read what has now become almsot
a book of prophecy, 1984 by Goerge Orwell

I have to say, you are very Fair and Balanced.

(though I have yet to see you make one constructive comment or point...just a load of crap)

You suck, pal. I'd say you shoudl go and amuse your friedns with you rapier wit, but I'm guessin' there aren't too many of those around you, are there?

I asked a very valid question.

The right has been screaming get them liberals out of power

(BILL O'Reilly is just an exmaple, and nobody has told him
that he is wrong...)

Groover Norquist has said, and I paraphrase, the government must
be made so small to be drowned in a bathtub and the true jewell, "Compromise is akin to date rape)

You want solutions?

The first solution is for you to realize that this is very serious.

What you perceive (and so do I) as separtation of church and state...
keeping religion out of schoools, the Right beleives is truly
an attack on their abilty to practice their religion.

So in some ways WE ARE that divided.

I vote for option three, sanity returns and we wake up from this
temporary insanity, but first we need to diagnose the problem... as
a nation we are that polarized, as polarized as we were in 1858.

Chew on that. Because the solutions will come from that realization.

The first solution, we need to attack and call the fascist what they are: Fascists...

Look further down and you will see what I thought of your post.

I know you're pissed. Morans (sic) like stupdwrld can do that to you. But I am not the one ridiculing you and that message was not intended for you.

was not replying to you. He was replying to stupdworld (Post #1)

"the first solution" beats the hell out of sitting here imagining some apocalyptic future. Letting the mind wander accomplishes nothing. Thats the big chip on my shoulder about these types of posts.

attacking sounds more like the order of the day.

who you were answering to

I think this is stretching it abit far.


We still have a constitution and aslong as we have academics as officers we wont see any "fascist" state whatever.

Most officers really only want the best for the country

The German army was very well trained and the officer
Corp was very well educated.

tell you waht, 2004 is the critical election.

He wins, expect a loyalty oath from the Armed Forces soon
after

We still have the constitution.

notice those 14 points that are posted on a regular basis
about the nature of fascist states.

I know the truth is ugly, but we may have to face the posibility
that you and I will have to defend that constitution. Are you
willing?

i let some soldiers do it for me

I guess those of us who have taken the oath will have to do
it for you.

Yuo welcome

Then how come they can detain AAMERICAN CITIZENS indefinately without charges or access to a lawyer?

ultimately people care more about the value of the homes than they do about anything else.

Remember what John C Calhoun wrote in 1850 about the
Slavery question, which he was positive, if not solved...

would lead to Civil War, he used the term Disunion. Nobody believed him until Fort Sumpter.

We are at a similar moment in our history I fear... and the
questioon is whether this is to become a conservative Christian
Nation (which takes the rights away from everybody else), or
remains a pluralistic nation.

Most did not care about slavery either in 1858... many of those
people who did not care for the issue, but about the crops, went
away to war and never came home... we know they died to preserve this union, at places like Shiloh.

I've had the feeling that we have been staring at this
precipice since the attack on the Federal Murrah building in OK.
After a series of emails with my brother in law, it suddenly
cristalized as a very real posibility.

I guess this is more apropriate today than it has been in a long
time, for this is the way I feel

The Gettysburg Address
On the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA
November 19, 1863

Abraham Lincoln

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . . can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . . we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . . and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . . shall not perish from this earth.

There will not be a civil war in the near future.

The civil war is just the political extremists(from both wings) wet dream

I have been to war... I have been under fire.

The posibility, which I used to discount like you, that we
may be staring that in the face scares me shitless and it is
not one possiblity I wanted to consider for real.

Unlike the extremists on both sides, I have played soldier
for keeps, I have been shot at, and I have removed bleeding
human beings from small battlefields...

But the nation is polarized, and I am sad that you
will not even consider this... granted like the farmers in
Upper State New York who marched onto Gettysburg, you will know
its on after the shooting starts.

As I said, this would be the ultimate tragedy in the US...

Next to that would be the rise of a total state, which we
spent the better part of fifty years fighting.

That is why I truly hope we wake up from this nightmare and
this is just one case of temporary insanity that grabs this nation
every so often... the 1950s being the last time.

Buchanan's Culture War, declared in 1992. And I hate to say it but the democratic left isn't doing very well.

Nadine raises the possibility of this spilling over into a hot war. I think it's not impossible. However, I think we'll see a huge escalation of our cold war first. Things will get much more divisive and tense before we start getting sixties style rioting in the streets, followed by police state repression, followed by our Kent States, followed by ... what? Nadine's dystopia?

It's possible.

I think we overlook the implied message from GWB when he brought back into power the likes of Otto Reich, Elliot Abrams, John Poindextor, Robert Shapiro, John Negroponte -- foot soldiers of the oppression of democracy in Latin America during the Reagan eighties and GHWB nineties. Could it be that this administration expects escalating dissent at home? And therefore is ready to "Latin Americanize" the United States? Every action has its reaction. What will the public reaction to the next Bush War be?

Crazy times we live in. Let's hope for the best. 2004 will be a watershed year, no doubt.

I do think we have already have had the first shots of the
hot war fired...

Those are the Murrah building...

Many an attack on Abortion Clinics and the murders of
doctors.

I do not intend to minimize the Murrah building but those
two events (the attack on the Federal Buildinng aka the
Federal Government, and at the time the LIBERAL
Federal Government) and the murders of abortion doctors
are in some ways the prelims for that hot war.

I should remind folks that wars, especially civil wars, do not
just start all of a sudden. We have had skirmishes already.

Now when the hot war starts, the real one... it will be sudden
and surprising, just as Fort Sumpter was... and we may be able
to avoid it... still.

But we may have to put the end to this with much blood sweat and
tears. (Thanks to William Rivers Pitt)

While predicting specific events is difficult, observing trends and postulating general outcomes is not as hard (though no more guaranteed of success).

I agree with you. I see two possibilities (three, really, but at this point I would not give the genuine Restoration of the Old American Republic at a 5% chance):

1) Civil War

More and more people ae becoming impoverished. More and more people are waking up to the fact that they are as voiceless and powerless as Soviets under the Bushevik Empire (with a Corporate TV Pravda blaring a carnival of nonsense and lies), more and more people are waking up to the fact that elections are partially rigged now . When legal means are taken away to resist, shout, make changes as the Founding Fathers envisioned...the next phase is inevitable and predictable, at least that is what history says.

NOTE: Of course, the things I say above have not yet fully come to pass, but they are approaching rapidly and the seeds of all of them have already been planted and are sprouting shoots and roots.

2) Soviet-style Totalitarianism can suppress Civil Conflict

That stands for itself. A sufficiently oppressive, brutal regime (and one in which information floats on a sea of lies so that no one knows what is true or not) can make people cow in confusion and fear.

And while, at this very moment, perhaps some of the Right might voice some concern if Re-education Camps (or whatever it will be this time around--Totalitarianism is chimeric), the Bushevik rend is to purge the "moderates". Eventually,, as we've seen, the definition "conservative" (already meaningless--the Busheviks are Totalitarians) will be pushed so far right that, yes, it will in fact only include people who would cheer suhc things on (the rest branded "liberals" and "traitors")

Just a generation or two has to die off (people born and raised under the Old Republic) and this will be much easier for the Busheviks.

Nobody with historical perspective claims to be
able to predict specific events.

Santayana is apropriate here... "Those who refuse to learn
from history are bound to repeat it."

Of course there is another saying that I truly hope is true since
it would be hope.

The first time that history happens it is a tragedy, the second
time it is a commedy. The original writer was Groucho Marx,and
we can all hope he is right. As much as this is painful to watch...
if it is a tragedy, and then a commedy, then they will not succeed
ultimately.

Though history also teaches us that in the end police states do not
succeed either as they end up eating their own.

Republicans can be ugly and childish, but let's face it, there's not much going on upstairs. I've listened to the hate radio shows where the call-ins say how they want to use their guns against liberals and purge the country of pinko commies. They have guns, but no brains. Most liberals I know are very intelligent, and though many of us have a long fuse, the right wing doesn't want to piss us off by trying the facist brownshirt thing like they did pre-WWII. They just don't.

Know this how? With control of the military, who needs anything upstairs. The troops followed orders from their commander in chief just like they've been trained to do, and now they are being killed at the rate of 3 every week.

What makes you think that they won't obey the Shrub if he orders them to do the same thing here.

While I agree that we have not reached the point of no return, it does not mean it can't happen.

Being tolerant is an admirable trait, but a lot of tolerant people have died throughout history, because they felt that bad things wouldn't happen.

If nothing else we should at least be ready should the brown shirted thugs decide that we are the weaker species.

How does that Boy Scout motto go, oh yes "BE PREPARED"

I mean, like my parents?! My Aunt Grace? My friend Mike. Granted, they are hard-headed wrong sometimes but they are hardly on the warpath that posters like Tom Paine envisions. They're just not. They're wrong, but as society inevitably grows more liberal -- as it has throughout U.S. history -- people morph along with it. Skirts get shorter; belly-buttons show; the Beatles are heard as old-fashioned musak. Progressivism is an inevitable historical path, not a vile glimpse of hell on Earth.

Here we are chatting-away, in freedom, on a new, immeasurably-valuable communication medium that never existed before. We have power; the cultural power of change. Earlier this week we finally saw a Republican who HAD to be pro-Gay and pro-Abortion in order to have a CHANGE of getting elected. That's inevitable cultural change.

The super-heavy politicos want everything now, and they threaten war if they don't get everything now. Yes, the right is wrong but their rank-and-file are not going to take to the streets to kill you.

of this party. They are not the representatives of this party.

Do me a favor and read this article and then take it to your
parents, if they are to gain my respect and loose my fear,
they have to take back their party from these loons.

http://www.calpundit.com/archives/002393.html

it is a blog, with links it is mid page

http://www.calpundit.com/

And I also said that a couple generations (those who spent a majority of their lives in the Old Republic and those who were part of the generations who defeated Granpa Prescott Bush's Business Partners, the Nazis) have to pass away before the mores will shift to be "more accepting" of night rides, gulags, or whatever it will be this time around.

I agree, we still enjoy a high-level of freedom, but that is a result, IMHO of two things:

1) As Hitler could not proceed immediately to 1943 from his takeover in 1933, neither can the Busheviks. As I said above, Totalitraianism is chimeric it must insinuate in a particular nation according to that nation's cultutral past and tradition (in our case...the idea of Liberty and Free Speech) and it must also assiduously avoid acting in ways which cause comparisons to previously discredited forms of Totalitarianism, such as that practiced by Granpa Prescott's Business Partners.

http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html

If you wait for the Busheviks to overtly look like Nazis, you will have a long wait.

2) Like the Roman Republic, the core characteristic of Americans is that we've sort of "sworn an oath" never to bend our knee before Kings. Like Rome, our nation started by throwing off the yoke of a King. That is why Augustus called himself "Emperor" and maintained the facade of the Imperial Senate. He knew the minute he called himself "king", though nothing else would have changed, that one bit of semantics would have sent the Romans into rebellion mostlikely (at least early on) because a Roman NEVER bows to a King!

You have the same situation with a nation in which damned near everyone is armed. If the Busheviks wat to completely capture the fat prize that was the Old American Republic, they will want to capture it intact, not rife with violence and Civil War.

Thus they must go slowly, avoid the appearance of what is reality: That Amerikan Subjects have no voice, no say in electing their National Leaders. As nothing remains static I suspect this will eventually be true for every office down to dogcatcher...but not yet. And don't expect the Democratic Party to disapper. In this future, which is NOT a give, the Democratic Party will have to be maintained and propped up by the Bushevik. Again, appearances are all important, and a de facto One Party State might remind people of Imperial Rome and Grandpa Prescott's Business Partners.

I do not think any of the hardcore shit will happen for at least 20 years (though I've been called an optimist for saying so), and I want to make it clear:

I do NOT wish for Civil War or Police State. I have examined the trends and am postulating most likely outcome. You can't play with the fires of hatred as LimbaugO'ReichlyHannityCoulter and the iothers are, for political gain, and not eventually get burned.

Though I'm not sure that, if they started Gulagging Liberals tomorrow, that Coulter wouldn't cheer them on. She has been advocating ideas which naturally lead to such a Final Solution for quite some time now, as have the rest.

Yes, for the moment the rank-and-file Busheviks who so lovingly fantasize about murdering us on Free Republic are still relatively few. Give it 20 years of unchecked "fair and balanced" Goebbels v2.0 and the passing of a generation or two and see where we are.

I hope I am wrong, but history says probably not.

The pharoahs are trying to bury us in the tomb, one last time. It will not happen...but we are very very close to it happening.

This is a window of opportunity--to use the internet, global travel, music, film, art, diplomacy--that will decide it.

The old slave owners and the deposed aristocrats, the cheaply lead and those that guide them, they have united to create an illusion through all available forms of propaganda that makes us all slaves to the machine.

It is dark now. California was not a good sign. The lure of the False Populist, the joyful celebration at accepting a Trojan Horse by those who were swindled...it all was very disturbing.

We have much to do before November 2004.

But we must and we will. I'll get 100 people myself to vote next year. I won't stop. This is make or break time for us mammals.

What nadinbrzezinski about civil war is completely true. Don't underestimate the reality here: we experienced a takeover of our elected government. Until that is resolved, things will only get worse and more desperate. It is that serious.

I just said what I have been fearing for a while

and just like yuo, I do hope for option three. Oh and I am
intending to do my very best to make option three come to be... a wake up for the country.

And and two will end in a generation lost, and billions
of dollars lost... most importantly a generation lost...about
oh millions of dead and injured and displaced...not a pretty
sight.

to prove something to themselves.

short penises go away... but you are right those who
actually woudl relish this happening think war is a game.

so we can live the kinds of lives we want. We could take the Northeast, all the states along the northern border and the west coast (give Alaska and Hawaii back to the native peoples). We can establish a real democracy, the kinds of social programs that make people's live better, guarantee civil liberties, etc. etc. The repukes can have the south and midwest -- the south won the war after all -- and they can construct their mean spirited, fascist state and leave us alone.

The right and left are so polarized - there is no compromise. They see red, we see blue. Maybe we should become two separate countries.

if that happened. They are still pissed at losing the Civil War to "liberals" or haven't you noticed?

Also, for the same reason Germany, Russia, and teh Austia-Hunagry Emprie had to destroy Poland when she developed an American-style Constitution.

Autocracies cannot bear having Free Nations next to them, luring their people away and poisoning the ones who remain with "liberal" ideas like Free Speech and reliable voting mechanism.

There is no way the Bushevik Amerikan Empire would EVER TOLERATE such a state next to the Empire, for the same reason Catherine the Great couldn't.

So forget about that.

which I think will somehow happen, by 2008, I fully expect the constitution of the US to have either been so trod under as to be illegible or reinterpreted to allow a totalitarian state. I see facts like privitization of public resources, aglomeration of corporate power, frightening fundamentalist Christian ideology, the destruction of public eduation, and the impoverization of the middle and lower classes as tools in reforming America into a more or less fascist or feudal state. It scares the piss out of me. What three years ago would have been audacious politics is run of the mill. Voters are being disenfranchized and overruled by Republican legislatures. Why is it so hard for some people to see that something is rotten in the State of Politics?

thinking that it could not be this bad.

Back in Graduate school I once asked, how could
the German people allowed Hitler to stay in power?

Before anybody starts with the Bush is not\ is Hitler,
realize this was a question that my teacher, a veteran
of the Korean War, could not answer.

I think now we all know how he could stay in power, little
by little they have done things that are changing the
country in front of us, and most people are in denial.

I just know that the election of 2004 is the most important
election in US History, or at least the modern
period...

from California to New York and declare one side "RightMerica" and the Other side "LeftMerica"..

Then we can throw Ahnold back over the border into Texas and let him rule there. See if they can find a cowboy hat that will fit his huge fetal head.

I'm actually serious here.

BUT, One problem would be that the RightMerica would ARM themselves, use Nukes, whatever, against the LeftMerica and enslave the Peaceful ones there - stick them in Corporate prisons and grope their women.

Then they'd take the wall down and charge everyone to use the Nice clean parks and buildings of LeftMerica --

So you see, there really is no point to doing it at all..

They've already won. The corporate prisons are next, imagine travel agents at home in front of a computer making plans for rich guys to travel with a cuff around their leg that's hooked to monitoring equipment at prisioner mission control.

They want to monitor ALL THE FOOD? Oh, that's rich - that's scifi and will serve only corporations and nothing else. ALL THAT IS HAPPENING to this Nation is only about the BOTTOM LINE for Corps and nothing else..

Call the Terrorists "disgruntled employees" rather than "enemy combatants" - corporate wars have been going on for a long time, used to be a joke, but now that we are all Fodder and the Idiot Boss's son is in charge on a scale unimagined it can only get worse..

Remember in Soylent Green how the woman was considered "furniture" and came along with the house? Think about how The Gropenator acts. Don't have to be psychic to figure out what's coming. We're like the animal in "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" that's been genetically engineered to "want to be eaten".. we've all been trained to want to be fucked by corps and those in power, by and for the media.

Me? I'm leaving the country as soon as I can sell the house. I'm going elsewhere til it gets better, and if it gets worse and they won't let me back in or it's too Nazified by then, well then fuck it - it's not my country anymore at that point.

Time to become a global citizen anyway.

Then there is this little oath, you remember it, I
took...

And there is the hope of millions...

Then there is this thing about Nazi Germany... and those who
waited for far too long.

I think our last hope is 2004, and even then
we may still face a cvil war, because if they loose at the
ballot box, they will tell the lies to get their lackeys
inflamed.

I tell you the day that civil war starts it will be sudden and
shocking... and it will take blood and sweat and tears... and
taht may be the end of the Republic.

We need all Free Americans to stay here and give battle (hopefully nonviolent, but as we can see, this may not be an option the Busheviks will allow in 20 years) to restore the Old Republic!

Don't leave. Stay.

Please?

Triangulation is still the dominant Democratic strategy. Bipartisanship and accomodation will not reverse the destructive direction that you see for the nation.

Enlightened thoughts about the need for compromise don't guarantee us a thing.

We are well on the way to becoming a one party fascist state. The gloves are off, the Republicans are not even pretending to believe in democaracy anymore (just look at what is happening in Texas). They control the Government and the media already.

There will be a long night, and no doubt some sort of resistence, but no civil war.