We're now living in a dictatorship. So what are we going to do about it?

Torture, spying on American citizens with no warrants, extraordinary rendition, rigged elections, a bought and paid for media, an illegal war; the list goes on.

If I knew what to do about any of this, you'd be reading it right now. But neither I, nor anyone else, seems to have an answer. As outraged as we are, we are as ineffective as a deer caught in the headlights.

The checks and balances that saved us from dictatorship in the past are worthless today. The Republicans will never impeach Bush and Cheney nor hold their henchmen responsible for anything. The Democrats are afraid to speak out, since they can easily be branded as dupes if there's another major Al Qaeda attack. All of us taking to the streets with pitchforks would be suicide. Vote the bastards out? Sure, if we could get a fair vote count.

Anger and frustration in the country has reached an exploding point because we're totally helpless to put a stop to the criminals who rule us.

So if you have a solution of any kind, everyone would love to hear it.

it helps..............

other than that we just have to wait for the collapse and prod it along as best we can....

Or of this nation?

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

While they just keep doing it.

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

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

Seeing as I've been re-visiting the Nazi era lately and doing a lot of reading. So thanks!

We are not helpless unless we say we are. Read your post from the perspective of Bush, assuming he is a really nasty guy. He would absolutly love the tone, it would fill him a sense of power, your confession of total weakness. Read it from the eyes of a freeper, who would see you as chicken little, exclaiming your powerlessness. These are the people you need to be addressing, speaking to, amongst others. And to yourself, because we really are not that weak. We are the majority of the American people, those who do not like Bush. Military personel are all coming back from Iraq and doing what? Running for congress as democrats! :) So are they really going to side with Bush on everything? Not unless they think they are alone in their convictions or there is no hope. Members of the intelligence community are going out on limbs JUST to leak Bush's lawbreaking. The resistance to him is wide and deepening, and its hugely helped by people just doing what little they can day to day.

The resistance to him is wide and deepening.

The resistance to him is wide and deepening.

The resistance to him is wide and deepening.


Say it again. Believe it. "Members of the intelligence community are going out on limbs JUST to leak Bush's lawbreaking."

Our country's honor and integrity WILL BE restored.




It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult undertaking which, more than anything else, will determine its successful outcome. ~ William James

If they're held at all, we will be shouted down, the media will mute and distort them.

Shall we take to the streets? We will be arrested.

The question stands: WHAT DO WE DO????

It seems like a lot of what the Bush Administration has been doing is now coming to light. So many issues... Abramoff related scandals, Voter Fraud/GAO report, Fitzgerald investigations, Katrina victims, wiretapping...to name a few.

"Impeachment" is in the air.

It's time to internalize that and be positive.


The time may come for peacefully "taking to the streets". Those who want to be arrested will do something illegal just to gain attention. Sometimes that's good, but lately the arrests I've read about have had little effect, are more of an embarrasment, and have contributed to the negative "liberal" persona.

How I miss Dr. Martin Luther King.

the tricky thing is that we don't actually have to do anything that extreme, we don't want a marginalized image, or anything that allows people to distract from Bush right now. I really resonated with what mia said about about MLK, that's more the sort of thing we need, the idea of the reverend, the mom-and pop decent american standing up against injustice in the government. To answer your question, I think that's what we need to BE individually. Moral, centered, focused, brave and willing to speak for the MAINSTREAM against this stuff. that needs we need to act like the mainstream, because we ARE the mainstream. I think it takes love, a sense of community, and courage. We need to come together, and individually we need to work toward that goal.

I'm staying and fighting.

I have to go because my mom is sick (she lives in another country) and needs my help....but it will be nice not to have to be in a country like the one we are living in now...

My bad. Sort of.

but the masses truly are stupefied and narcotized with television, bad food, dvd players, the apprentice, american idol, and starving from check to check. an enire society living the life of an addict, too nullified to do anything, let alone see a problem. and sorry, having tightly controlled, fenced in, and monitored protests won't accomplish shit.

the reactionaries learned from the 60s. they won't let a groundswell of popular, grass roots action spring up like that again (cf. howard dean). plus the patriot act has made COINTELPRO into federal law. dissenters are terrorists for all intents and purposes and can be disappeared as such.

who in their right mind would do anything to upset the apple cart? oh, that's right, you'd have to see that something is wrong first.



"they got the guns, but we got the numbers."

well, THEY still have the guns.

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

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice - "Resist the beginnings" and "consider the end." But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have changed here before they went as far as they did; they didn't, but they might have. And everyone counts on that might.

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don't want to "go out of your way to make trouble." Why not? - Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

I honestly believe that our country is on the brink of falling into the dark ages.

One poster here has suggested the power of positive thinking. Another advises that we not let Bushco know that they have us by the short hairs, as if they didn't already know that.

We're dealing with an administration (and their enablers) that couldn't care less what we think. They have all the power, we have all the outrage, and their attitude was voiced by Cheney on the floor of the senate: "Go fuck yourself." (I think it was Harry Reid he said it to, but I'm not sure.)

So again I ask, what can we do?