We all thought the Cold War ended in 1989, when the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe fell. We were all absolutely certain that the Cold War was over in 1991, when the Soviet Union itself fell apart. We thought we had won the Cold War once and for all. But we were wrong.
Stop and think. What was the Cold War about? What was the objective? The objective was to prevent the world from being taken over by a brutal, aggressive, paranoid superpower ruled by an amoral, dishonest, hypocritical political party. Sound familiar?
Ever since the 2000 Presidential election, and especially since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the United States has been growing to resemble the late unlamented Soviet Union to a worrying degree. Fraudulent elections? We've got `em. One-party state? Not there yet, but we've been moving closer. Human rights? Eroding as we speak. Secret arrests? Got `em. Imprisonment without due process? Already there. State-controlled media? Not as blatant as it was in the USSR, but bad, and getting worse. Government by deception? You already know the answer to that one.
And it isn't just domestically that the US is coming to resemble the USSR. Our foreign policy is coming to resemble theirs as well. Instead of an alliance of equals, the Bush administration only wants subservient client states, and no back talk. If our NATO allies in "Old Europe" aren't willing to toe the line, then out the window goes NATO. Instead of the rule of law and the Geneva Conventions, we now have the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war, "enemy combatants", and a plan for world domination penned by the unreconstructed Stalinists of PNAC. And to top it all off, we've now got our very own Eastern-Europe-style satellite state in Iraq, with all the classic features: a puppet regime installed by fiat and propped up by a foreign army of occupation.
Let's face it, folks, we can still lose the Cold War, and we're in the process of losing it right now. Once again, the world is threatened by a superpower that will be satisfied with nothing less that absolute global domination. This time, though, the threat is us. It's no coincidence that George W. Bush has taken to parroting Stalin's old saw that "those who are not with us are against us."
That's why this is the most important Presidential election of our times: because this election will determine whether the United States will go back to being itself, or whether it will continue its transformation into a carbon copy of the Soviet Union.