http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35TbGjt-weAThe more I understand the way things work in this country, the less I can convince myself that there is hope for the future.
From the end of World War 2 on, the United States built itself as the antithesis of Communism. No... More the Antithesis of the Soviet Union. As a nation, we labored hard at every turn to reach beyond the reach of the Soviet Union, to fly higher, to build bigger, to fight fiercer, live richer. But, the war never came, and the Soviet Union is gone. The Synthesis arising from the struggle between the two world powers never came, and America remains an Antithesis of a concept that no longer exists.
And so we leap at every shadow, jump at every sound, fearing that The Enemy is hiding just beyond our vision, seeking to destroy us as they had in the past. The labels might change, but the rhetoric is the same, the politics is the same, and hell, even most of the people involved are the same; Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al. We give our children the same sort of education about national and world history you'd expect if there was a fear that they could possibly grow into communist agents in service to the Soviets. We pound into their heads the perfection of the constitution, the perfection of our legal system, the perfection of our political system, and blame any deviation from perfection on the supposed Enemy, until all doubt about America being perfect is drained away and any thought of improving the country is wiped away. We're the good guys, damn it, we're always right.
So when they question the government, they don't actually question the government. They attack and remove individuals without daring to imagine that the system itself is broken. The most outrageous things done by the corporations and government of this country are not the illegal things they do, but the legal ones.