Soviet America

I'm really feeling uninspired today.  I keep staring at this page waiting for words to miraculously appear but my heart just isn't all that into it and hasn't been for about a week.  This happens every so often.  I read the real news online and just feel powerless to stop the erosion of the Republic of America as it slips further and further into some perverse Soviet style plutocracy.  It becomes, "Why bother?  Americans don't care so why should I?"  

It's not like this is hasn't happened before.  The Roman Empire was a Republic once, so was Germany.  But things change.  Men in power take more power.  The next generation takes more power still.  Each time they take this power they swear it's only temporary until this calamity passes or that one; that they will lay down their king-like powers in favor of Constitutional law, but it never happens.  The people of America forget their former freedoms like the barnyard critters from Orwell's Animal Farm.  Some animals are more equal than others.  And Americans believe it.  Of course billionaires should keep all that money.  Of course the rich shouldn't pay their fair share.  Of course the government can spy on us, tap our phones, read our private messages.  We are the little people and the people in power know what's best for us.

As it happens, the rich folk and the government don't give 2 squirts of piss about the little people.  It is the rich and their political cronies on both the right and left that created the financial troubles our country now "enjoys".  It is the rich and their political cronies who fund the Beck's & Limbaugh's to stir the Teabaggers up for insurrection.  And for what?  More power, more money, more exploitation of the masses. 

It is a cynical ploy, mapped and plotted in great detail by those who would lord it over us.  They do not want to yield their power or their massive amounts of wealth for the public good so they protect themselves with the military or the militarized police force that intimidates, harasses and often times kill regular civilians like you or me.  It all reminds me of what we as a nation used to say about the Soviet Union, how we defined them as evil, a force that needed defending against.  Like the Soviets we have an all powerful Stalin that we call President.  Like the Soviets only the rich are protected and have legal rights.  Like the Soviets, our intelligence agencies or police may arrest anyone at will and make them disappear forever.  Like the Soviets, we invade sovereign nations under the pretext of national security.  The list goes on.

Yet Americans swear they are free.  The great deception, the brilliance of the powers that reign over us lower classes.  Tell the slaves they are free because they are too stupid to know the difference, too weak and lacking the financial resources to do anything meaningful about it.  That's my America today.  Lacking even the common civility required to join together to fight our powerful foe, we backbite and name call rather than unite against tyranny and the abuses laid upon us all by greedy men.  Both Republikkkans and Dumbacrats are equally at fault in this.  They readily absorb the cash from the wealthy to win their offices and then turn on us out of deference to their deep pocketed contributors wishes.

Now America is a nation of domestic oppression and international war.  One can easily equate our once free land with both Soviets and Nazis.  I close with a paraphrase of Martin Niemoller: 

When the Americans came for the liberals, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a liberal;
Then they came for the feminists & gays, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a feminist or gay;
Then they came for the civil rights movement and immigrants, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not brown;
Then they came for the Muslims, and I did not speak out--
    because I was not a Muslim;
Then they came for me--
    and there was no one left to speak out for me.