The beginning of the end

Ever wake up so disillusioned... that you can just barely write?

I was reading some great commentaries out on Daily Kos this morning, and I came across this - a diary entited "Will Bush walk away in 2009?". Many of the components add up to what I have believed may... maybe even will happen in our country within the next couple of years. There are just too many signs that we are headed down this road. The pieces are all in place. Any student of history can see them now. It is as though Bush and Co. are following a script... and perhaps they are.

I have known about the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive since shortly after it was released. I even blogged about it, while keeping my real fears to myself. I tried to take the Jon Stewart route and turn it into a joke. W in my yard with a bulldozer.

I have heard all about these Halliburton concentration camps, being built right here, in our country. What I hadn't known, was that there are actually satellite photos available. Actually seeing at them makes my blood run cold.

Nazis. All over again. God help us.

First, our Executive branch goes on a power-grabbing spree - and nobody stops them. The Republican congress just kept giving Bush and Cheney the rubber 'whatever you want' stamp - with Democrat capitulation of course, over and over again.

Next, government officials started beating their chests and promoting torture, flaunting the Geneva conventions. The media has already been compromised: all mainstream media now regularly 'black out' certain vital news stories and fill our heads with sensationalism and utter nonsense, while at the same time promoting violence and torture via '24' (on Fox, of course.) Army generals are having a terrible time trying to undo the damage... and convince army recruits that torture isn't the army way. It is, however, the Vice President's way.

Halliburton is building concentration camps on our national soil. And everyone is watching American Idol.

When I was in third grade and studying WWII, I apparently drew the short straw and found myself researching the Holocaust. I can't imagine who thought this would be a good idea - for a third grader to see photos of bodies stacked like cord wood - but I saw them. I saw photos of the inspection lines full of women, grandparents and children departing from the deportation trains. Left, work. Right, gas chambers.

I didn't sleep for weeks. No, more like months. And there were the nightmares, about marching Nazis with high, black, shiny boots... always marching, pounding on our door, carrying us away to be tortured and killed. In my memory, throughout my entire life, there is nothing that has ever scared me so much... as Nazis.

For a greater portion of my life I even denied my own German heritage. I could not be German. I would not accept being German, in any part. I blamed the German people for allowing the Nazis to go that far and for doing nothing to stop it.

I think I understand a little better now. Governments are subverted in a slow and secret creep. It is invariably an inside job. To see it coming, you have to look quite closely. People in this country don't look closely at anything these days. Ask them, and they'll say they're just 'too busy.' They're all working several jobs, racing all over town - kids in tow - and at night they collapse in front of American Idol. Our newspapers are full of useless fluff, with real news relegated to the middle sections with the ads. We are a culture of excess and denial.

And so of course, there was a golden opportunity. And someone- some group of Machiavellian plotters - saw that opportunity and raced into the vacuum.

The only thing left now is the wait for the inevitable boots marching in the streets, the banging on the door, and the trains. Perhaps in this day and age, they will simply use trucks.

My greatest fear coming true, and in my own country. I would rather have died of strep as a child than to have lived long enough to see this happen.

Oh sure, we may somehow avoid this total democratic collapse. But judging from the nervous capitulation - or perhaps partisan arrogance - of our Democratic 'majority,' I somehow think we won't. We are on a collision course with hell.

Will Bush really step down in 2009? Good question. Does he have to? Not anymore.