Every so often I read something on one web site or another that suggests (some flat out say) that we are heading for a major social upheaval. They say that Bush and Co will bring about a totalitarian state with a bogus emergency that would keep them in power indefinitely. Elections will resume when it is safe and prudent to do so. The Constitution will be held in abeyance until it is deemed safe to return to its provisions. Such people point to rumors of plans to use Blackwater as a paramilitary police force; rumors of plans to use Homeland Security as an internal federal-level police and imprisonment agency. They point to Bush's grandfather (Prescott Bush) and the plans he was involved in to establish a totalitarian government here, and suggest that the desire to do it runs in the blood. Didn't Bush say that having a dictatorship would be better, as long as he was the dictator? Why,yes, he did.
I laugh at these people and their predictions, and yet I can't shake them off. I can't convince myself that they couldn't happen. When I see people like Cheney -- who scares me more than Bush -- I think Yes, actually, they could. The idea of a bogus emergency sounds right up his alley. He's clearly of the opinion the ends - his ends -- justify the means. The idea of Bush acting as if he is above the Constitution has already been demonstrated. That general attitude seems to permeate the government. I see one agency lying to another. I see the orders of federal judges ignored. I see one part using loopholes to do end runs around the other. I see police acting in a more forceful, frequently paramilitary style. I see a virtually impotent Congress. I see bits and pieces, and it scares me. More than I like to admit, it scares me. What the hell are we coming to?
Not liking government officials is one thing. Feeling afraid of them, of what they may do, is something else again. I still think many of the people saying these things are nutcases... but there sure are a lot of them.
