Dude, where's my country?

"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."
Martin Niemöller

We are now 6 months out from the next election cycle.  America will again look at itself in the mirror and maybe 30% of those eligible will actually vote.  The vast majority of those will vote based on their fears and misconceptions, few will vote for a vision or a future.  Negativism will overwhelm us as corporate money will flood the airwaves with messages by inauspicious sounding groups like "Citizens for a Clean America" funded quietly by the oil industry.

 If there should be any lesson learned from the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, it is just how much power corporate America and the corporate world yields over all our lives.  Citizens pull the ballot levers yet corporations control the levers of power.  Perspective in life tends to be narrowed by the confluence of our own experience yet as a student of history, I make my best effort to look beyond the immediate and seek the context.  No matter how many different ways I try to approach it, I always come back to the same conclusion.  Step by step, seemingly imperceptible act after act this country is engaged in a long and determined march toward fascism.   It happens so slowly that each right we surrender seems to be an acceptable compromise.  Before you know it, there is little left to compromise.  Hopefully when we reach our conclusion where the last vestiges of citizen control disappear,  I will no longer walk this earth. 

It seems like there is this dangerous disconnect between people and government.  We are dangerously close to the point where people no longer have faith in government,  the very body that unites us as a people, as a nation.  The irony is that the most vocally pro-American group that push this is the extreme right.  The flag is carried by their elected polticians that eagerly condem the institution that pays their salary the cause of all that is wrong in the nation.  Yet when catastrophe strikes, they are the first to look to the government for assistance and the police to secure them or the army to protect them.

When the institution of government is completely degraded, government loses all pretensions and merely becomes a vehicle for personal enrichment.  Those that vote simply vote for the person they want to see rob the most.  This is life in the third world, where politics is based on clan.  You vote for who you perceive will protect you and enrich you the most.

As an employee of the government, it never ceases to amaze me when you listen to the anti-government rhetoric coming out of the mouths of the people that work around me. These people are employed by and owe their livelihoods to the institution they denigrate.   It reminds me of growing up in Alaska.  People would rail against Federal Government intrusion and how they should be kicked out of the state.  There was an Alaska Independence party of which Sarah Palin's husband was once a member.  The reality is that the entire economy of the state depends on the Federal Government and Alaska, dollar per person, receives more money from the American taxpayer than any other state. 

So what happens to us when government is no longer seen as capable?  I think most people don't even know what government does.  How it regulates air pollution or water pollution.  How it keeps food safe to eat and what is the consequence of failure.  The oil well that is currently turning the Gulf of Mexico into something akin to an oil pit at Jiffy Lube was allowed to operate by the previous administration who, decided they didn't need to follow safety rules that other nations use or conduct environmental impact studies. 

Now it seems like the right is turning to a tactic well proven histories greatest villains.  If you want to solidify power, target a minority.  Identify a population that can't defend itself and use it as a tool.  This is what is going on in Arizona and is in danger of spreading across the country.  First they passed a law that allows the police to stop anyone they "suspect" is an illegal alien.  This can't help but create the image of a Nazi in a war movie demanding to see a hapless citizens papers.  This law was quickly followed by another that says that people in public schools can be fired if their accent is too thick.  I am anxiously awaiting to see them fire the first southern red neck.  Frankly, I don't understand them either.

The latest is a law banning the teaching of classes that focus on specific cultures i.e. Latin American History or Asian Studies.  How about Native American Studies?  They were in Arizona before anyone one and now the state has the power to force them to prove they are really Americans.  A radio talk show host named "Lionel" used to say something like, "I think we should tell everyone to go back where they came from and let's start with those Indians."  Sadly, in South Carolina a state coming to terms with a huge migrant Hispanic population, they are considering similar laws.


It is all simply insane.  The scariest part is that national polls support this legislation because the whites feel so under siege.  For every person I hear that supports this I ask them how they would feel if the police could show up at their door and demand to see legal documents for the ownership of their guns.

Like a vultures circling over a carcass, corporations and the powerful wait to dive and pluck the next piece of flesh from the body of our democracy.  If I was a history or social studies teacher the first thing I would pound in to my students heads is that Democracy and Capitalism are not one in the same.  Americans seem to think that one embodies the other and this is simply not true.  They can coexist yet it is a fragile relationship based on mutual respect.  One need only look to China for an example of what happens when one exists entirely at the expense of the other.  The free market and money is everywhere, freedom is not.  Decisions are made for the people, not by the people.   China is much more fascistic then communistic.  Communism was a wild notion left in the heap of failed efforts to govern.  Most Americans have no idea what fascism is.  They think only of of Hitler who like the fictional corporate front previously noted "Citizens for a Clean America," called his movement "National Socialism."  Fascism is not persecution of the Jews or invading neighbors.  It is the result of an incestuous relationship between business and government.  When the two become one as a method of governing fascism blooms.  Ever dollar spent buying a politician works to discredit government in the eyes of America.  We begin to play a football game where one side is composed of giants and the other midgets.  There is no referee and the rule book vanished before the match.   

If nothing changes and citizens do not reclaim their voices, this is the path this nation is on.  Recent legislation in Congress entitled, "The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010," pushed by Joseph Lieberman and conceptually supported by Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe is proposing to give the President of the United States the power to block parts of the internet when for "national security" they see fit.  What happens when a corporation no longer wants us to see what they are doing?

By the way, if you live in China right now, sadly you are not reading this blog.  The portal has been blocked.