I don’t know what my country is anymore.
I still know some of the people, intelligent folks who’ve resisted the quixotic temptations offered by competing brands of simplistic political rhetoric, but I no longer recognize my government.
I’m sure the myth I swallowed during my youthful indoctrination of American Exceptionalism was verging towards complete rot by the time I hit kindergarten, but I bought the fable and believed it with all of my heart for most of my life.
America was the citizen’s country, a democratic republic which enshrined the rule of law, safeguarded people’s civil liberties with a venerated Bill of Rights. An open system that held political representatives accountable to their constituents, overseen by an impartial judiciary sworn to protect even the lowliest among us from governmental aggression or abuse.
None of this is true anymore.
Our once common rule of fair law has become a monster of unfathomable obstruction, a vile body of work that has criminalized most average citizens by incremental fine print, while selectively protecting the gross actions of corporations, our wealthy elite and the government.
Civil liberties have been shredded in the wake of September 11th, all in the name of protecting our freedom and punishing terrorists. Of course, the war on drugs nibbled away at our constitutional rights long before we willingly gave up everything else on the altar of Osama Bin Ladin’s atrocity. The recent cases gutting fourth amendment protection serve as the people’s latest debasement in the government’s profitable agenda that digs into taxpayer’s pockets in order to control the substances they ingest.
It breaks my heart that so few even recognize their sheer nakedness in the face of open tyranny.
Discounting a handful of honest souls serving in good faith, the majority of our politicians are comfortably owned by corporate interests. Men and women who’ve chosen the shroud of public service to mask their guise as expedient whores, hungry cunts who gladly wrap their lying lips around lucrative corporate dick at the Republic’s expense. It’s little wonder the state of our nation resembles a tawdry outhouse overflowing with perverted excess, spilling buckets of red ink across corrupted balance sheets.
Our children, reduced to nothing more than convenient sources of future cannon fodder and general tax revenue by three generations of benign neglect, have no voice when we, the ordinary people, get ginned up for elections of populist change that are predominately funded by multi-national corporations, wall street banks and America’s wealthiest class. Highly specialized interests who make damn sure no real change, conservative or liberal, is anywhere in sight when the cheering dies down.
Our courts, packed with political appointees and elected curs, give short shrift to their vaulted positions as the nation’s gatekeepers tasked with ensuring individual rights and fair trials in the face of aggressive overreach by government. Justice in this country now depends on a defendant’s ability to hire an expensive attorney or be damned as a felon. Face it, our legislative arm has created a lucrative police and prison industry in modern-day america that’s fully backed by a broken, corrupt judiciary.
We imprison far more people per capita than any other nation on earth. Our government does this and we condone it, do you ever question that strange fact? Our police forces resemble a scary version of combat troops, they’ve become an intimidating fact of life rather than comforting presence on our city streets.
The people of this nation are not in control of the executive, legislative or judicial branches, haven’t been for a long time. We’ve become comfortable serfs, satisfied with a few expensive, unfunded entitlements, cheap credit and massive amounts of mindless television.
I don’t what we are anymore.
Here’s a well reasoned and entirely understandable description of why the world’s economic system is completely screwed, essentially by secrecy. It won’t make you feel any better, but it may help you understand it better. It did me.
I second all that.
I just had a thought: since everyone is suing everyone, and the big Gov thinks it can sue Arizona, I say that one State can sue another State if its constituency has elected a thief or felon into office; also other states can hold, say. . . California. . . responsible if their elected Senator sponsors a bill that directly effects the economy and life-blood of another state.
Eh. Fuckin’ roll with it is right. They wanna use Legal-fu? Tort-kwan-do? Let’s get in the fight with some Drunken Master skills!
What she said.
[...] me a better writer. But I have a long way to go. Take a look at this little gem from Daphne at Jaded Haven: Men and women who’ve chosen the shroud of public service to mask their guise as expedient [...]
My thoughts exactly. And when I look around me for signs of intelligent life, I am totally disgusted. I don’t recognize these people…
I’m finally beginning to understand why people around the globe despise our government.
Good article, Kenny.
Hi Daphne
It;s what YOU are that counts. We is unrecognisable for most of us.
It seems the closer you get to the flag pole in DC these days, you run into more and more of these types. The further we go down this path the more similar it becomes to the Weimar Republic prior to WW2 when conservative christian capitalist were battling socialist unionist all over the streets of Germany. Jefferson’s “watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots” was in full sway. I wonder if we have already elected our Hitler of the National Socialist Party?
Looks like rainy weather ahead.
A tad late to the pity party…but you get the government you deserve.
Pour yourself another glass of wine and have a seat. There’s nothing you can do. Why bother?
Maybe, just maybe there are possibilities for our salvation out there…but you probably wouldn’t want to risk straining a gizzard trying to think of them.
It’s all over. Woe is us.
[...] A sad and salty sitrep from Daphne of where the nation is, this summer of 2011. [...]
Adjust your optics to a wider spectrum by observing through the lens of Peak Oil Theory, which is well understood by the “Elite” who are hastily making preparations for the permanent global aggregate decline in cheap (as measured terms of EROEI, not Dollars) energy. Culling the global herd tops their list, but the biggest impediment to that task – The United States with its Rule Of Law and Civil Liberties and Free Market concepts – must be removed. Poison-induced suicide appears to be their method. And it seems to be working quite well.
I am woefully ignorant of matters economic, other than the obvious, such as it makes no sense to print worthless currency to use to “spend our way out of a recession”. Or the insanity of not including energy and food in the CPI.
I have to point out, though, that Uncle Kenny’s linked article on the destruction of economic facts has the author praising legislation written by Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, two of the scummiest, least ethical of all the worse-than-child-molester politicians. Right up there with Schumer and Pelosi. If he can praise Dodd and Frank (btw, Chris’ father was the architect of the 1968 Gun Control Act, which he copied almost verbatim from German pre-war gun control legislation fostered by Adolf Hitler, so the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree), it makes me suspect the rest of his article. Kind of like saying, “and Adolf got the trains running on time”, while forgetting that the trains were loaded with Jews and gypsies and Poles being sent to their death.
Just saying.
@Gal
No we do NOT deserve this government. We CAN and WILL overthrow it. I WILL strain every fiber of my being thinking of them. As an American with disabilities I HATE feeling like a third class citizen in a country where I can trace my ancestory back to the 1700′s on BOTH my maternal and paternal sides. We were duped into it yet we have learned from our mistake and vow never to let it happen again. We know the true spirit of the left is that of socialism which is what we do NOT want here. Why do you think the Tea Party came about overnight if it wasnt for MILLIONS of Americans who saw the writing on the wall and did NOT like what they were reading. You need to watch the video and listen to the Disturbed verson of Genesis’ Land of Confusion. The fat man in there represents Sorros but in the end that fat man got what was coming to him. Sorros WILL get what is coming to him: a one way ticket to meet his father Satan because heaven has no room for the likes of him. I can be assured of that fact.
Hi Daphne,
A roiling, tossing sea of metaphor, and me in a small dingy.
Dave
Gal Spunes said>
A tad late to the pity party…but you get the government you deserve.
Pour yourself another glass of wine and have a seat. There’s nothing you can do. Why bother?
Maybe, just maybe there are possibilities for our salvation out there…but you probably wouldn’t want to risk straining a gizzard trying to think of them.
It’s all over. Woe is us.<
With respect, we do not get the government we deserve, we get the government we will tolerate. More and more of the productive class, you know, the people that actually make stuff, that create wealth, are increasingly unwilling to tolerate their government. They are starting to starve the monkeys.
Every regulation or rule has it's unintended consequences; one is that every restraint of free trade creates a black market. Think about that.
It isn't "over". The changes headed our way, and the changes we will contribute to are just beginning. The American fable we thought we knew is rotting, no doubt, but real America is still out there, and the future has not been written yet. What ideals will you pass on to the future? What will you DO to ensure those ideals, that philosophy, are passed on?
Grief is one of the stages of coping with any loss, and the loss of what we hoped America was is a staggering loss, no doubt. But it is GONE, and wishing won't bring it back. Maybe nothing will, but you can bet that the architects of the mess we are in aren't wailing and wringing their hands. They're still building, still weaving their webs.
What are you going to do to make the future different?
@ Reg T
Thoes trains of Hitler was also filled with the disabled as well. His education in eugenics was from American sources like Sanger. I read a story where this nun was living in a small rural village in Austria that had a history of inbreding due to the remote nature of it. Because of this there were citizens of intellectually challenged nature amoungst the populations. But they were NOT a burden to society whatsoever. They learned and did menial tasks around the village to help out. One day white vans from a government agency entered the village and rounded up all the citizens of intellectually challenged status and hauled them off. The nun and the villagers asked where they were going and the agents said that they could not contact these individuals for two weeks for fear of causing homesickness amoung them. Well the nun and the villagers figured out what happened to these villagers. They were all euthanized. The death panels that Palin talked about are very much real and would not ONLY target the elderly but the disabled as well.
http://aipnews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=12514&posts=6
Jimmy Madison-
I am unable to conceive that the people of America, in their present temper, or under any circumstances which can speedily happen, will choose, and every second year repeat the choice of men who would be disposed to form and pursue a scheme of tyranny or treachery….who would either desire or dare to betray the solemn trust committed to them. What change of circumstances time, and a fuller population of our country may produce requires a prophetic spirit to declare, which makes no part of my pretensions.
De Tocqueville-
Administrative centralization only serves to weaken those nations who submit to it, because it has the constant effect of diminishing their sense of civic pride. One can appreciate that with the increase of centralization the capacity of the one and the incapacity of the other become more striking.
I am of the opinion that, in the democratic ages which are opening upon us that centralization will be the natural government. The pleasure it procures them of interfering with everyone and holding everything in their hands atones to them for its dangers.
Not only is a democratic people led by its own taste to centralize its government, but the passions of all the men by whom it is governed constantly urge it in the same direction. It may easily be foreseen that almost all the able and ambitious members of a democratic community will labor unceasingly to extend the powers of government, because they all hope at some time or other to wield those powers themselves. It would be a waste of time to attempt to prove to them that extreme centralization may be injurious to the state, since they are centralizing it for their own benefit. Among the public men of democracies, there are hardly any but men of great disinterestedness or extreme mediocrity who seek to oppose the centralization of government; the former are scarce, the latter powerless.
Garet Garrett
You do not defend a world that is already lost. When was it lost? That you cannot say precisely. We know only that it was surrendered peacefully, without a struggle, almost unawares. There it is, and there it will remain until, if ever, it shall be re-conquered. Certainly government will never surrender it without a struggle.
Aechylus
In the lack of judgement great harm rises, but one vote can set a house right.
That would be some vote. But the Greek was right–one vote, not several, not by increments. It is by increments that we lost.
As yet, there is no person and no organization prepared to offer a pact worthy of that vote. That is bedeviling, because worthy understandings have become abundant; it is leadership which is scarce and powerless. Even worse, it is leadership which stands in the way.
I don’t know how old you are, but I have felt this way for some time now. And I feel we are approaching an age of martyrs, because I will not stand for this much longer, and I am too old to care about my own life anymore.
My only real wish is that I not live long enough to see the total destruction of my country, the one I served and bragged on and saluted most of my younger years. I will either die of other causes before there is no more USA, or I will die trying to preserve it.
The choice is really up to “them.”
@Ms American Patriot,
I actually think speaking personally and professionally of our current demented Retard in Charge Obama..Stick with Disturbed. Change the song. Deify. replace the Bush soundbites they used with Obama soundbites..and it fits PERFECTLY.
Daphne,
Well said. Some of this I’ve been saying for several years or more. a couple of my favorite authors have been saying it a LOT longer. Try this one on for size:
http://kindwordand2x4.blogspot.com/2009/03/welcome-to-my-nightmare.html
or this one:
http://kindwordand2x4.blogspot.com/2011/04/common-sense-august-3rd-2008.html
“Civil liberties have been shredded in the wake of September 11th, all in the name of protecting our freedom and punishing terrorists. ”
This is totally misleading to the point of creating the wrong conclusion in the mind of the reader. Liberties had already gone through the shredder. 9/11 merely increased the rate of destruction and increased the scope into areas previously avoided by government. The Drug War(tm) has been vastly successful in expanding government size and power; 9/11 just helped things along in different areas.
@msamericanpatriot: Prone to hyperbole much? Your inane banter is about at stupid and irresponsible as I have read.