We are in a severe national crisis. Right now.

No one is saying it, maybe because it's too horrible to think about, but it's happening none the less, right before our eyes, in real time, right now. We are in a national melt down, the shit has hit the fan, the ship is sinking, whatever metaphor you'd like to use, it's happening right now.

The next two years of bush will be absolutely catastrophic, we have not seen the worst, we have only seen the tip of the historic ice berg we are about to hit. America as a nation is grievously if not mortally wounded, though only a tiny handful see it.

I know I'm being over dramatic and I'm slinging hyperboles, but really, we are in a national state of emergency, they just haven't officially announced it yet.

I can't get it out of my head that every thing's not going to be just fine, and that all holy hell is about to break loose. I need a chill pill.

The enemy are abandoning their positions in the Congress.
Time for the two pronged counter attack against the Chimp and his corporate masters.
We know the one thing he wants is eternal war. He's going to Stall.
Every day they can keep the blood flowing is more cash for the profiteers.
How did that song go? "every dollar we make another brother drops."
So we need to press relentlessly for an immediate end to our involvement in the war.
We also need to fill the prisons with corporate thieves. We can release everyone in for pot to make room for them.
These assh*les have been stealing with both hands. The only way for them to escape the Big House should be to immediately return what they have stolen.

They are literally brinksmen, taking it all the way to the brink just because we allow it.

Their last stand, scorched earth policy as they go down shows them to be true Nazis.

we thrive on the rejection of the real. We substitute actual economies and energy budgets with mass hallucinations that work far better than a physics based realty possibly could.

Peak oil will be fixed by the hydrogen economy pumped by nuclear reactors.

The Chinese will ALWAYS lend us 7% of or GDP every year.

The homeless are really just people who like camping.

Voting machines are quick and easy and help the handicapped vote. Counting is for wussies; it's voting that matters.

etc, etc., etc,

It's easy, try it. Of course it helps to be really, really stoned so go do that first.

Power is not good for any one or any country. With all great powers they fall so I think our time is at hand. The people will re-line them self and go on. I do not fear. As with Nelson's arch we will meet at our own arch as we are building them at great speed so we can look back at what we have done. I do not even think it is to sad just it will make life harder for my children and theirs. We knew it would have to come.

Of course, I'm just a dumb college freshman, so no one listens to me. My favorite phrase is "careening blissfully toward catastrophe".

I've been doing a research paper for the end of the semester on the fall of the Roman Empire, and let me tell you, it's a long way down from the top. Rome lost all de facto political stability after the death of Augustus Caesar in 14CE. There was no method of selecting a successor, so the entire course of the Empire second Empire onward was a dizzying decline. It took 462 years for the Empire to be completely conquered, and things deteriorated steadily during that entire time.

I have also found that many of the parallels drawn between the late Romans and modern America are disturbingly apt. The enforced ignorance and docility of the public, the disappearance of the middle class and the consolidation of wealth, the sickening excess, the breakdown of the rule of law, the burgeoning sense of entitlement (there is a big difference between legitimate government oversight of public utilities and the economically necessary welfare state and our system). You can't say that everything is there, but it's enough, especially considering that we have problems the Romans never approached (dependence of non-renewable fuels, environmental degradation).

and those very few at the top they make rich, who feel entitled to a government that keeps wages, benefits, public spending, and their taxes low, to maximize their wealth, and that assures them the opportunity to buy Legislation through the Courts and campaign finance laws.

But you can't argue that there aren't a lot of lazy people who live off the public dime. I'm not saying we should abolish the welfare state; I'm just saying that we need to kick out the people who abuse it. There will be more resources for the people who genuinely need government help. I will say that welfare queens are a very, very small part of our national problems and the burden they place on our system is not nearly comparable to that of the corporate welfare whores.

In fact, the same people in whom I see a "burgeoning sense of entitlement" are major victims of our corporate system. It is only be the comprehensive efforts of corporations that they are so mislead in the first place. I didn't mean to villainize people who are born into a culture of entitlement and derived of any opportunity to experience anything else; they are the victims of our system as much as anyone else. But I stand by my assertion that the existence of that attitude is part, however small, of our impending national doom.

Presuming that that is to whom you refer. If you are a college Freshman, you have grown up in an era when demonization of the poor and myths about welfare promulgated as fact are virtually all you are likely to have heard.

I would suggest that you find out exactly how much "the public dole" adds up to for, say, a mother and child on "welfare" in your State. Some research on who's actually on "welfare," typical rates of movement off "welfare" (and back on, and why), and actual welfare law in your State. Maybe go down to your local Social Services and actually talk to some people there.

And then maybe consider the question of where all the jobs are that these supposedly lazy people should be working at? And do any that do exist have Health Care? And what happens to you if have one of these jobs with no health care and make just enough that you aren't eligible for Medicaid?

I think you might find yourself surprised.

I don't think that this is one of our major problems. Once again, I agree that corporations are a much bigger threat to the common good than people who hose the state out of a measley few welfare dollars every month. What I meant in my first post, and perhaps I failed to articulate this properly, is that the poor are kept complacent by the myths of the ruling class. Some think they can refuse to work and live off of the rest of us; many are convinced that education and a drive to succeed are pretentious and that the right thing is to remain poor. Again, like I said in my last post, these people are victims of the system. That does not mean that they are not indicative of a problem in our system.

My father works for Comcast (which I despise) and sees people abusing welfare almost everyday. A lot of people, when he tells them that he will have to disconnect their cable if they do not pay their bill, get indignant. They feel entitled to $400 worth of pay-per-view a month whether they can afford it or not. I understand that these people have been deceived and trained by the corporate media to be subservient.

I have no misconception that life on welfare is pleasant or comfortable, and I know that the system discourages people from moving off of welfare through various means. Life for these people is hard, I know; what I meant by the "burgeoning sense of entitlement" was that more and more people are living this way and learning that it is acceptable. I think everyone can agree that this is bad for our country.

Gluck with that. Not really relevant to the point made in the initial post. Wake the fuck up. The country is sinking and needs more than your prose.

his puppet handlers were not prepared for that

Can you spell chicken little? I swear, so many people just thrive off of doom and gloom and making pronouncements about how its the end of the world. Take that chill pill, man. And stop playing a cut rate Cassandra.