There's a bad moon a-rising ......

.... and moons control tides. The tide of fascism is a-rising right along with that bad moon.

We thought the tide would at first encroach on the feet of 'little people'. People like fringe activists or some other class of 'disposables'. And to some very minor extent, that happened .... Gitmo, Abu, Padilla. But in the larger scheme of things these were small potatoes.

But now we may be seeing the frontal assault on our democracy. The unprecedented raid on Jefferson's house (bad guy or not, this is, quite simply, an unprecedented assault on the separation of powers), the threat to the media (whether a fact or a sham perpetrated on the citizenry by collusion of the threateners and threatenees), the ongoing fake elections, and more.

Then we have the unprecedented comments from the retired generals. Just yesterday, watching General Batiste on teevee, caused me chills. This is a man who clearly had a few more years and a few more stars ahead of him. Instead, he said he felt a moral obligation to retire solely in order to speak out. I can only imagine how deep the discontent within the military might be.

Where will this end? Is our hope for a modicum of control resulting from wins in the midterms just more fantasy? Not for any possible failings of the Democrats, but from the very real chance that we will be vote-cheated out of a majority in at least one house.

I am incredibly wary of the future. Might we, indeed, already be too far down the road to honest-to-god fascism and dictatorship?

This post is not hyperbolic. I am truly and deeply fearful that our country is **already** gone.

A compromised voting system.

A compromised government with one branch holding power completely disproportional to the other two.

A compromised fourth estate.

A military that ....... wow. Might *they* be our final final chance?

These are not good days.

I fear, even more than the fascism/police state, the end of the Enlightenment. The proud ignorance of our fellow citizens. The rise of church power to rival that of the Dark Ages, along with the persecution of anyone who is different or does not believe the dribble. I fear the United States is gone for good.

Edited to correct awful grammar!

in a supernatural sky god, angels, divine dead guys coming back to "save" us all, and so on, it's hard to be confident that people will ever embrace reason. They are so willing to swallow superstition; no wonder we've gone astray and all branches of our system are so dangerous. Americans are easily lead by false prophets wearing either religious robes or a politician's suit and tie.

There was a really startling presentation on line narrated by Mike Malloy about the 14 conditions determined by some professor that qualified a government to be a fascist state and we already had all of them when it was posted shortly after the '04 election ruse. I had a semi computer crash and lost the link. Maybe someone else has it.

When Hayden and Gonzales defended the NSA spying by basically saying it's legal 'cause we say so, I felt sick to my stomach as the 4th amendment went poof.

I know it's scary but still I've a very deep sense that some how they will not get away with their blatant criminality for much longer.

(speakers on!)

http://www.bushflash.com/14.html

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4. Supremacy of the Military
5. Rampant Sexism
6. Controlled Mass Media
7. Obsession with National Security
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
9. Corporate Power is Protected
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
14. Fraudulent Elections

http://impeach.ws/?p=5

I think that it is already too late. There are sections of the country that are so far gone as to be irretrievable. I fear that the best case scenario will be civil war; we just can't go on as divided as we are. We may actually be living on the bad moon right now...

I'm not one bit sure the so-called social divide is either that deep or that wide. IT is easy to take a side when it is safe to do so. But when the weight of tyanny is spread over the whole of the country, there will be far less a divide between citizens. The social divide will quickly be replaced by a divide between the citizens and the rulers.

It is actually in this propensity for disparate groups to join against a common enemy that I find any sense of hope.

Dictator are the ones who will be on the other side of the civil war. That is a huge percentage of the population who are members of the Cult of the Leader. They are good Nazis and will kill you in a heartbeat - I know some of them, and they are scary. That is the divide I was talking about, not really a cultural one but a political one. When the fascists go bloody (and they will) the Christianist fundies will side with them and that will give the whole mess a "cultural" flavor, but it won't really be cultural, it will be a power thing...

The fundies are feeling very unloved by the junta. They're increasingly vocal about not seeing progress on their agenda.

While what you say is, indeed, true, it may not be enough to keep them in line. If there's any fractionalizing of their ranks, some will, indeed, join with us, if for no other reason than to oppose the junta.

(old Chinese curse)

and we do. I have one friend (a marine and Viet-nam Vet) who has already left the United States in large part because of what he sees as a trend toward fascism (and brainlessness), and one brother who is seriously talking about seeking greater liberty elsewhere if there is no relief coming in this present election cycle.


Myself, I plan to stay and do what I can. One does not solve such problems by running from them.

I very much share your fears, but I remember William Blake's adage that, "Hope and Fear ARE Vision." And I remember the very real fears of British intellectuals during the period in which Blake wrote that Britain was headed back to tyranny.

There are grounds for fear.

There are still grounds for hope.

It is time to make a stand.

All weekend I kept smiling over my despair, because I didn't quite have the words to name it. I couldn't shake the feeling that somewhere we had crossed over the line, that the idea of our country's descent into Nazi-like madness wasn't a threat, but a fact.

I still haven't been able to shake this feeling, and it terrifies me. I have no faith in elections. I have no faith in most of our Democratic leadership. I have hope, but no faith, and this is a precarious place for any heart to be.

:shrug: