This is not a gbcw diary to the dkos community. It might be a gbcw diary to the country i was born and grew up in, though, because I no longer recognize it. I'm not holding on to a Norman Rockwell vision of America, mind you, though the 1050's superficially resembled it in many ways. And I earned my activist chops in the 1960's like so many of us. Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine opened my eyes to the way economic subjugation and disaster capitalism rode on the coat tails of Chicago Economics. But lately things seem to be changing at a rate faster than I can get a handle on, and my buddhist world view is predicated on the fact that everything changes.
I know the many arguments against calling it quits and emigrating. Minorities have been living in the face of institutional violence as long as this country has existed. Renunciation of citizenship now has severe economic consequence. Use your citizen power in the voting booth. Keep fighting the good fight.
Arguments for it are the usual suspects. Widespread surveillance. Collusion between corporate security, intelligence agencies and law enforcement. A government owned by financial interests. A dismal environmental future.
To borrow a phrase, though, this is no country for old men. I am tired. Not physically depressed ( I am on PTSD meds, so "I've got that goin' for me") but really tired of sustaining the fight in me to remain active. I want to enjoy my grandchildren. My son, in his forty somethings, is worried also, and he sees nothing good coming out of the next election. Jack London presciently foresaw the possibility of a fascist state in our good old U.S. Of A. I won't use the word fascist, however, because frankly, I don't know what we've got.
In this community of ours I've seen many words bandied about; plutocracy, corporatocracy, oligarchy. I actually think we may have something that doesn't have a name yet, something that because of all the new technology, is something that has not existed before.
And I fear it has become too big to defeat.