Perhaps our govt. was Fascist/Imperialistic all along.

[Stanchetalarooni]

Perhaps our "Democracy" is all just so much window dressing as Frank Zappa so well pointed out during the Reagan era in one of his famous quotes (can someone help me out with the actual quote about folding up the stage and props and all that is left is a brick wall?.
Perhaps transparency in the machinations of govt has never really existed.
Perhaps The Constitution is not the foundation of our govt. but rather just some ornate showpiece.
Perhaps Big Business is and always was the true foundation.
Perhaps the Internet is the biggest microscope ever in allowing people to get closer than ever to see how things really are.
Perhaps the press were always shills (whores).
Perhaps the whole line of past Presidents were more Bush-like than not.
Perhaps once our country broke from England that it adopted the English'imperialistic ways.
Perhaps Washington and Franklin and Jefferson et al were nothing more than major corporations unto themselves.
Perhaps.
Perhaps.
Perhaps.

[sinkingfeeling]

1. I think everyone should read 'Dark Ages America'. It is mostly the

history of how we went from the Founding Fathers' vision to our current Empire...the choices that were made to form the military/industrial/religious complex. And it gives a stark picture of where we will end up within the next 30 to 100 years.

[Stanchetalarooni]

2. Thanks. Here is a review published on Amazon by Publishers Weekly.

I'll look for it at the library and perhaps send a copy to my son at college.
From Publishers Weekly
In this provocative, scattershot jeremiad, cultural historian Berman (The Twilight of American Culture) likens America to ancient Rome on the brink. On the geopolitical plane, he contends, the United States is a belligerent, overstretched empire, saddled with huge deficits and a hollowed-out economy, vulnerable to terrorist blowback and, worse, collapse if foreign creditors finally pull the plug. The rot is cultural and spiritual, too: Americans are cold, alienated shopaholics immured in suburban anomie, each encased in a private bubble of iTunes and media noise and indifferent to the public good. Culprits include globalization, technology and, more fundamentally, the individualism and commercialism that is the bedrock of American identity. Because American civilization is a "package deal," the author considers it impervious to piecemeal reform and, given Americans' ingrained "stupidity" and willful blindness, unsalvageable. Berman's attempts to tie every American dysfunction to an all-encompassing sickness of soul overreaches, leading him to lump together serious issues like poverty and the Abu Ghraib outrages with trivialities like annoying cell phone yakkers or the "freedom fries" phenomenon, which he bemoans as "symbolic of an emptiness at the core." Often stimulating and insightful in its particulars, his indictment, like the jingoism it abhors, is too sweeping and essentialist to fully capture American reality. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

[Stanchetalarooni]

4. And yet another review on Amazon from Booklist

From Booklist
A despairing analyst of contemporary America, Berman continues criticism begun in The Twilight of American Culture (2000). One character crystallizing Berman's thoughts is President George W. Bush, under whom, according to Berman, the U.S. is incipiently, if not actually, suffering a "presidential dictatorship," a "de facto Christian theocratic plutocracy." In that vein, Berman undertakes a wide-ranging condemnation of American economic and foreign policy of the past 50 years, which he believes has propelled America into disastrous decline. That Berman inveighs against free markets and thinks the cold war was partly a dynamic of the Soviet Union acting defensively infuses this work with a solidly leftist viewpoint. In Berman's vigorous arrangement of evidence, current events are propelling us upon an irreversibly downward trajectory toward a societal situation resembling the Dark Ages. However, Berman offers no positive ideas to reverse this perceived free fall, making his tome more of an alarm than a solution. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

[genie_weenie]

3. Ahh, The Constitution

the greatest fraud in History.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north445.html

The Myth that "We" are the government...

http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/anarchism/faq.html#part8

And finally the incomparable Lysander Spooner...
"The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation."

http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/notreas.html

[Kailassa]

5. I guess you're not American.

Because American education and media, even childrens' entertainment, have been blinding Americans to these facts for at least the last 100 years. Superman cartoons had "and the American Way" added late in WW11, until then he (supposedly) just stood for truth and justice.
http://www.archive.org/details/superman_eleventh_hour

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous: Carl Sagan

We all know about the Vietnam war.

"The only place you and I disagree . . . is with regard to the bombing. You're so goddamned concerned about the civilians, and I (in contrast) don't give a damn. I don't care." . . . "I'd rather use the nuclear bomb. . . Does that bother you? I just want you to think big." : Richard Nixon to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on the Watergate tapes.

Fewer Americans though understand what happens in the Philippines.

"I went down on my knees and prayed to Almighty God for light and guidance … and one night late it came to me this way.… We could not leave (the Philippines) to themselves--they were unfit for self-government--and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was.… There was nothing left for us to do but take them all and educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them.": President William McKinley

Our men . . . have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of 10 up.... Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to "make them talk," and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later. . . stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses.": Philadelphia Ledger newspaper in 1901, from its Manila correspondent during the US war with Spain for the control of the Philippines.

American policy had learned how to use their interference in foreign countries as a way to further increase the deification of America to Americans.

"If war aims are stated which seem to be solely concerned with Anglo-American imperialism, they will offer little to people in the rest of the world. The interests of other peoples should be stressed. This would have a better propaganda effect." - Private memo from The Council of Foreign Relations to the US State Department, 1941

But there appear to have been moments in history when great leaders foresaw the dangers in this path.

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear: Harry S. Truman

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power: Abraham Lincoln

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power.": President Franklin D.Roosevelt

However not all of them opposed it.

"The business of America is business": President Calvin Coolidge

[genie_weenie]

9. The * and Mckinley Comparrison

I always thought OIF should be compared more in lines with the post Spanish-American War Control of the Phillipines than with Vietnam. The tempermant of the President, the "easy" war followed by a insurgent guerilla war supported by the local populace, the unfortunate next step is the drain of constant fear of attack, anger at repeated deployments, leads to brutual and inhuman tactics used against the populace...

<sigh> Abu G, Fallujah Nov 2004...

[madmusic]

6. It's for the children

Add MORAL PANIC to the list...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300073879/102-1890243-7840146?v=glance&n=283155

Hear that flushing sound? It's the Constitution.

[DrunkenMaster]

7. Let's Review, Shall We?

A nation discovered by a poor navigator with herpes who took the very first natives he saw captives for the slave trade, populated by religious fanatics who were so extreme they had to leave their native land in order to practice their strange rites, governed by slave-owning racists who saw nothing wrong with exterminating tens of millions of Native Americans through the use of biological warfare and scalp bounties (including double bounties when an unborn fetus was cut from a Native mother's womb), peopled with idiots who were more than happy to hang or burn each other at the stake for the slightest wisp of a suggestion that they might embrace their natural drives and urges, all of whom have reproduced to the point where their progeny are now hell-bent on sucking the entire planet dry and then discarding it like a used juicebox on a gradeschool playground.

Nah, it's your imagination. We're the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

[Armstead]

8. Not to be a Pollyanna but.....

I think we have always been the sum total of who are are as a people at any given time -- for better and worse.

That's both the advantage and the drawback of democracy. It reflects the will and the collective values of the populace.

It's also dynamic. It constantly shifts based on what comes from the peoople. That includes our leaders. We get the leaders we deserve. If the majority of Americans are willing to tolerate fascist GOP right-wingers and complacent collaborationist Democratic leaders, that's what we get.

The institution of democracy is still strong enough that if people really got fed up with this bullshit, they can do something about it. But as long as enough people remain complacent, and allow these bastids to get away with it, that's what we'll get.

The fault (and the solution) dear Brutus.....

[Kailassa]

10. If America's voting systems and practices were found

in any other country, that country would not be considered a democracy.

Posted by Armstead:
I think we have always been the sum total of who are are as a people at any given time -- for better and worse.
That's both the advantage and the drawback of democracy. It reflects the will and the collective values of the populace.

I'm hoping that other countries do not believe this about America.
Because if that is true, then when buschco starts bombing Iran, the rest of the world has moral justification
for wiping the American people off the map.