We know now why a totally unknown governor was chosen as Republican VP. She has more than enough bile to represent her Party, she knows how to read, and has also enough bile to mock Community Organizers and volunteers who dedicate time, efforts and sacrifices for the common good of other citizens less fortunate. This attack against ordinary citizens is an abjection. I guess it is better for the Country to have a tea party at the White House with Barbie McCain, who thinks that anyone who lives near a foreign border has acquired "loads" of foreign policy experience. That would make Gonzalo, our gardener, a suitable choice for V.P., if only he could speak English. I have heard many insanities in Republican campaigns, and with Sarah Palin as a V.P. contender, this one even tops the 2004 run to the White House.

Just imagine what uproar it would be if a "Swift Boat" add attacked John McCain's war records to smear them the way John Kerry's records were in 2004. However, I do remember the 2000 Republican nomination saga when George Bush's campaign claimed that the injuries and tortures sustained by McCain during his 5 years imprisonment in Vietnam, led him to be prone to serious depressions and diminished his mental capabilities.

But, here again, Democrats have a strong sense of decency and fairness that Republicans are unable to demonstrate, not even for one another.

I vote based on results and records. Bill Clinton left office leaving a budget surplus, an economy booming, a functioning Judiciary, privacy laws enforced, and freedom for all. No need to remind people what happened to all of this, after 8 years of Republican domination.

If McCain is elected, it will not be "God Bless America", but instead this cry: "God, rescue America!".

All very cool quotes, but that doesn't mean that they will win. After all, Iraq certainly hasn't turned out the way expected by the neocons. Our attempts to solidify a favorable power structure in the black sea and the caspian basin aren't looking too good either. We pissed off the Uzbeks, the Kazakhs, and the Russians have just kicked some Georgian ass.

Lot's of power doesn't make one smart or wise. It does tend to make people sloppy and overconfident. The Sun never set on the British Empire until it did. Will we wake up? Who knows? It's my personal aesthetic to be optimistic.

There is no fate. There is no judgement day. Yet.

"It is in your nature to destroy yourselves," said The Machine.

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

- John Adams

The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.

- Milton Friedman

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.

- Abraham Lincoln

Some scholars suppose that the last fifty years of progressive middle-class freedom and prosperity has only been an aberration of history, since most of human history has been characterized by a large poor population dominated by a small ruling class. Fascism appears to be the natural disease of an industrial society for a number of reasons, and may indeed be the natural end of evolution of human society ...

Unless the U.S. electorate had been prepared to renounce its political irresponsibility and had been able to assert its authority through the Constitution over its government, the democratic authority of the people would inevitably be supplanted by one that is elitist and totalitarian. The U.S. electorate, as we have seen, was in no way so prepared, and now that government of the people, by the people, and for the people has perished from this earth. Neoconservative totalitarianism has successfully subverted the greatest democracy in the world, and has the will and the means to make that subversion permanent, and to extend it to other countries by coercion, fraud, and force.

Totalitarian Neoconservatism

It's a Republic, if we can keep it. The Framers were well aware of the fate of all prior Republics. They went to great lengths to control and limit the concentration of power because they understood that power always seeks to accrue more power to itself.

I have no doubt that there are groups of people out there seeking to manipulate others for their own gain. That's human nature. History has shown the rise and fall of many of these groups, even within our own short history. But these groups are shaped even as they shape others. And to the extent that we acquiesce and go along is our own choice. The buck stops here with each one of us, even if there is a wormtongue whispering in our ears.

And while the current karmic progression of the fate of this country may not look promising, there is always free will. There is no fate. There is no judgement day. Yet.

I think there are a lot of reasons why our IQ is dropping and we have increasingly transistioned from citizens to consumers. Part of it is the decline in the written word and the rise of the visual media. It's also because an increasing sense of entitlement to the fruits of our Empire. Our marketing is based upon instant gratification and that happiness is found chiefly through material possessions.

Work that one through.

The evidence suggests that corporatist power politics deliberately cultivates personal and political irresponsibility in the US population, and has done so more systematically and with increasing sophistication for over a hundred years. Taken to its logical conclusion, this trend results in a totalitarian US, in whole or in pieces, almost inevitably, and within only a few years.

Democracy, which has grown up in the last three hundred years, represents, with its emphasis upon individual responsibility and individual actions, the most difficult societal system, requiring a definite human maturity. Totalitarianism and especially fascism can in many ways be regarded as an escape from this difficulty into the irresponsibility of following a leader who deprives the people of their liberty and their maturity but promises them 'security' and 'economic progress'. To that end, personal immaturity and self-gratification are therefore celebrated and promoted by corporate America in particular, and in U.S. culture in general, because it prepares the electorate to give up its responsibility to maintain democracy in favor of totalitarian leadership.

Totalitarian Neoconservatism

The neocons have publicly promised to do this, and so far they've been slowed down only by setbacks resulting from their own hubris, but only slowed down.