Democracy. An Idealistic Fairy Tale

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7616

Democracy. An Idealistic Fairy Tale
by Jon Faulkner | May 22 2007

Was there some single event - some crushing, lethal blow that brought the U.S. to its current state? Carl Sanburg wrote “The fog comes on little cat’s feet.” Slowly, over many years, a great nation lost sight of its purpose, its identity. “Death by a thousand cuts,” an Arab might say. There was a point, a moment when a line was crossed, when there was no going back. When the nobility, the inspired hope of a great nation’s people could not stand the test of time but remained as a bright, shimmering mirage before dissolving like morning mist.

In the eighties Reagan, prompted by the business community, began the deregulation frenzy and convinced Americans their government was contemptible, of little or no use? The assassination of JFK, followed by Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, stripped away the last of innocence, real or imagined that may have inspired a great nation to remember its dreams. Just two years later four kids lay dead at Kent State, and brought Americans face to face with who they were, and where they were going. The student’s crime had been protesting the war in Vietnam. "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism” wrote Howard Zinn, the American historian. Ohio’s republican governor, James Rhodes, celebrated the student’s murders. “They're worse than the brownshirts and the Communist element and the night riders and the vigilantes. They are the worst type of people that we harbor in America." That a man with such low character could find his way to a position of great power and influence in a free democracy speaks directly to the republic’s weakness. Thomas Jefferson knew such men would be drawn to high office. He warned the people. "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

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There have been ample warnings. Jefferson and Madison told American citizens to beware of corporate encroachment or lose their freedom. More than a few U.S. presidents have voiced the same warnings. Lincoln said, "When corporations have been enthroned an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people . . until wealth is aggregated in a few hands . . . and the Republic is destroyed."

The Bush Administration has been a dream come true for American business. The Iraq war has generated enormous profits for such corporate entities as Cheney’s Halliburton, Erik Prince’s Blackwater, and The Bechtel Corporation. Blackwater’s privatized military supplies 48,000 soldiers to supplement U.S. Army troops in Iraq. Bechtel Corporation raked in $680 million in a no bid contract. It stayed for three years before pulling out of Iraq and making off with enormous profits. Vice President Cheney is the former CEO of Halliburton Corporation. After playing a major role in convincing Americans that Iraq was a threat to U.S. sovereignty, Halliburton was awarded $21 billion in no bid contracts to provide services to the U.S. presence there. Cheney, in his position as Vice President, cheated Americans out of every dime he could find a way to steal. He has no rivals that come remotely close to this achievement. Cheney personifies the kind of corporate greed that destroys democracies - entire societies. He is a grotesquely ugly human being who hasn’t the slightest qualms over profiting from dead, U.S. soldiers. When such a man is tolerated in a position of power over other men’s lives, democracy is doomed.

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It’s very hard to imagine millions of Americans coming together to reclaim their democracy. Many don’t see anything amiss, even as Bush and Congress declare pre-emptive war on a sovereign nation, and substitute Habeas Corpus with the Military Commissions Act. Millions of the best and brightest died defending the world from Hitler’s fascist dictatorship. Sixty years later the same threat comes from within, and Americans line the streets to give it a rousing welcome. Enemies, they’re told, are hiding in every shadow. Dissent is treasonous. Freedom is the very thing allowing ghosts to slip across the border to harm us. Fear compels blind acceptance, and the tacit admission that freedom can’t save us.