Magellan's Log: Is It Dictatorship Yet?

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Is It Dictatorship Yet?

Doc Cuddy

Ignore for the moment the possibility that the present American government is illegitimate, having been installed by a pseudo-legalistic coup.

Consider only the behavior of that government and then, please, tell me how this government is not in fact a dictatorship:

1. At home and abroad, this government does what it will, knowing that its actions will either be ignored or blindly approved by a rubber-stamp Congress and a rubber-stamp judiciary.
How, please, is this different from a dictatorship?

2. Abroad, this government has since its inauguration (long before 9-11) unilaterally abrogated or ignored treaties to which the United States is a legal signatory.
How, please, is this different from a dictatorship?

3. At home, this government has consistently and persistently whittled away at the Bill of Rights, presenting authoritarian bills to be dutifully rubber-stamped by a non-deliberative Congress.
How, please, is this different from a dictatorship?

4. While using the language of democracy, this government has repeatedly and continuously given only lip-service to freedom of speech, praising the "right" of those who disagree to do so and then loudly proclaiming over and over that "you are either with us, or against us" in "the battle of good versus evil."
How, please, is this different from a dictatorship?

5. At home, through stacked courts and stacked regulatory bodies and through bills passed willy-nilly by the rubber-stamp Congress, this government has consistently favored the wealthiest one percent while chipping away at social programs for the poor.
How, please, is this different from a dictatorship?

6. Abroad, this government acts massively and globally on the absolute assumption that "might makes right," and gives only lip-service to diplomacy and compromise with those who disagree.
How, please, is this different from a dictatorship?

7. Facing historically unprecedented levels of national deficit, this government proposes a trillion dollars in tax cuts favoring the wealthiest one percent.
How, please, is this different from a dictatorship?

8. Polls consistently show widespread popular disagreement with these policies, yet where are the voices in the rubber-stamp Congress supporting this disagreement in the citizenry?
How, please, is this different from a dictatorship?

9. What we at the present time have is something very close to a sham democracy, a Potemkin village of representative government, a pretty façade decorated with all the good old American slogans, behind which a small group of people make the decisions they want to make and pull the levers of awesome American power that they want to pull, when they want to pull them. Where is the Congress that will say, "No, wait a minute, we need to discuss this." Where are the courts that will say, "No, stop it!" Nowhere in sight.
How, please, is this different from a dictatorship?

10. How, please, is Total Information Awareness different from Big Brother? How, please, is the Patriot Act different from the edicts of the Committee for Public Safety in the French Revolution? How, please, is regime change in whatever country we decide on different from the Nazis’ stated need for "Lebensraum"? How, please, is the "news" we get in the mass media with its ceaseless drumbeat set by the government different from Mao’s pervasive propaganda machine?

So. Is it dictatorship yet?

END

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