We’re under attack, dear citizen

Democracy itself is clearly under attack in America. Congressional Tea Party extremists are circumventing the will of the people who elected Obama to office twice by sabotaging the President’s agenda anywhere and everywhere they can. They cost us billions by shutting down the government and they are blocking Obama’s judicial appointments for no other reason than they can. As Elizabeth Warren says, congressional Republicans are working feverishly to nullify the results of the last two presidential elections.

Then there are the right-wing billionaires, most notably represented by the Koch brothers, who are buying national and local candidates and quietly pushing their “privatize everything” ideological agenda through state houses just below the radar, again undermining the desires of the American people.

Finally, as I wrote about yesterday, we have a deep state or secret government run by high-level military and government officials who rule over surveillance operations that are not only unaccountable to voters, but unaccountable to the politicians who are supposed to oversee them.

The question is simple, but the answer is complex: How do the American people get their government back? Perhaps it’s already too late. It may be that the Pandora’s Box of policies and programs ripe for abuse that Bush and Cheney opened after 9/11 cannot be closed. In 2016 when we vote for our next president, our choices will probably be the establishment’s Democrat Hillary Clinton against some rabid lunatic like Cruz or the slightly less crazy Christie. Regardless, the end result will be 1) things will continue pretty much as they are (bad), or 2) the Republican will win and our country’s collapse will be hastened (worse).

There have been more and more articles in recent years discussing the similarities between the rise of the Third Reich in Germany during the twenties and thirties and America’s situation at the beginning of the 21^st century. Why didn’t the German citizens see what was happening and stop it? How could they stand by and watch as a madman ascended to power? How could they be so blind? For many converging reasons, I think the average German who opposed Hitler felt powerless in the same way that we who oppose our government’s actions feel powerless. There is no organized resistance party we can join to bring about change. The government won’t allow that. The goals and agendas of the opposition groups that do exist are far too diverse at this point for meaningful resistance. And too many people are still too financially comfortable to tip the balance in favor of real change.

So we write blogs and send letters to our representatives and grouse to friends and family, and all the while the drones keep killing and the NSA keeps listening and the rights we once believed we had as Americans keep disappearing. Our country is under attack while we continue sitting on our collective ass in a classroom listening to someone read My Pet Goat.