Deep inside, we all know it. Everything is wrong. It's just wrong. This is not the way our life or our world is supposed to be. Do you feel this way, as I do? I wake up each morning and feel a sense of doom, impending disaster, as if I am living in a fascistic state. Science is under attack. Medicine and medical research is under attack. Education is under attack. Everything we grew up to believe in has been subverted. All the gains we have made in the 20th century, including development of international institutions, have been undermined. It feels like someone pulled the plug, and all the water in our bathtubs is running out. Nothing is going the way it should be. Dylan was right...music sucks (with a few noteworthy exceptions). Turn on MTV, and nobody is smiling anymore...the tone is grim and sad. We're all suffering, with the exception of a few wealthy folks. The national debt is $8 trillion and growing.
Antitrust law is a joke in this country. Our infrastructure is crumbling. We have blackouts and brownouts each summer. Large corporations find more and more ways to skirt the law. More and more giveaways to the wealthy and powerful. The lower classes, the unions are fucked. We're talking about massive expansion of nuclear power and increases in coal power. We know the icecaps are melting, and species all around the world are endangered. Our oceans are being depleted and seriously overfished. The Mediterranean seas is now so full of algae and jellyfish that you can't swim there any more. Mad cow disease is not being tested, and so hundreds or thousands of Americans are being infected with Creutzfeld-Jacov Disease. Genetic crops are now spreading to such an extent that natural corn and grasslands and natural potatoes will eventually be replaced by genetically altered crops, with unpredictable consequences for our health. Television and the movies are a wasteland. Our minds are atrophying. Public radio and television are being taken over by corporations and by the right wing. We are becoming a detestible civilization, endorsing torture and abuse on a massive scale. Millions of us are taking medications to calm ourselves down so we can sleep at night, because we are so completely horrified, deep in our souls.
Where Bush's Arrogance Has Taken Us
By Jim Hightower
AlterNet.org
Wednesday 23 August 2006
An illegal war, a long list of eroded rights, and a country run by and for the benefit of corporate campaign donors - all courtesy of the imperial presidency.
During his gubernatorial days in Texas, George W let slip a one-sentence thought that unintentionally gave us a peek into his political soul. In hindsight, it should've been loudly broadcast all across our land so people could've absorbed it, contemplated its portent - and roundly rejected the guy's bid for the presidency. On May 21, 1999, reacting to some satirical criticism of him, Bush snapped: "There ought to be limits to freedom."
Gosh, so many freedoms to limit, so little time! But in five short years, the BushCheneyRummy regime has made remarkable strides toward dismembering the genius of the Founders, going at our Constitution and Bill of Rights like famished alligators chasing a couple of poodles.
Forget about such niceties as separation of powers, checks and balances (crucial to the practice of democracy), the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, and open government-these guys are on an autocratic tear. Whenever they've been challenged (all too rarely), they simply shout "war on terror," "commander-in-chief," "support our troops," "executive privilege," "I'm the decider," or some other slam-the-door political phrase designed to silence any opposition. Indeed, opponents are branded "enemies" who must be demonized, personally attacked, and, if possible, destroyed. Bush's find-the-loopholes lawyers assert that a president has the right to lie (even about going to war), to imprison people indefinitely (without charges, lawyers, hearings, courts, or hope), to torture people, to spy on Americans without court or congressional review, to prosecute reporters who dare to report, to rewrite laws on executive whim?and on and on