America: Dead-Democracy Walking

By Frank J Ranelli
Created Oct 25 2006 - 10:43pm

America takes a walk down the "Green Mile." The apathy, silence and
complacency of the 21st century American.

By Frank J. Ranelli

Part III of the "American Democracy in Crisis" Series.

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When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated we, as a nation, were
suffering from some form of "moral confusion", he was partially right.
America is confused, but not morally in the sense that the dubious Secretary
of Defense was crowing about. America is confused about its purpose, its
civil duty, its foundation and what living in a democracy is all about.

America, and therefore Americans, is confused in relation to what our
responsibilities are as stewards of our own government. While every leading
poll indicates a deep resentment and distrust towards the current
administration, for the most part, Americans have stood mute. Most proclaim
to be too busy to notice or appear too self-absorbed in their own isolated
cocoon at the dawn of the 21st Century. A bumper sticker from Seven-Eleven
for 99 cents, which was made in China, and charged on a credit card, "ought
to do the trick", most say. A nod of approval to the few, brave, patriotic
souls who actually do take action to bring about change are given a trite
rousing of "keep up the good work" as the populous passes by on the way to
Wal-Mart.

Our confusion as a society is merely an enhanced model of complacency,
apathy and downright lethargy that has lead to a culture of complicity.
While parading around our newly found patriotism stuck on the back bumper
somewhere, a debt-ridden, natural resource-wasting, self-indulgent
population has been suckered into a pre-occupation with adulation of
material possessions at the expense of our own decorum and civic
obligations. Civic silence always leads to consent and consent without
opposition is a prologue to oppression leaving someone else to cast your
vote and therefore, your fate!

While polemic pundits on Fox News banter away awash in propaganda, forcing
an uninformed public to chose either "the red pill or the blue pill", no one
is noticing how deep the rabbit hole really does go. Average, "everyday
Alice" is neither wondering or in wonderland. Alice, between American Idol
and soccer practice is merely, deluded. Our "Alice", like most of us, has
bought the freedom for comfort and convenience idea that has been sold to us
by the political hacks in Washington.

Like Stepford Wives, we have been programmed to sell our national
birthrights for supposed safety while handing over liberty as payment to a
nefarious government, which fails to represent anyone but big business and
its profits. Congress continually trots out fringe, wedge issues, such as
abortion and gay marriage amendments to the Constitution, while eschewing
any real governance of our country. Genuine, meaningful legislation has been
replaced by rampant pay-for-play politics, nauseating cronyism, perverse
corruption and a legislative body that votes and marches in-line with the
most unpopular President in American history.

The middle class is disappearing faster than acres of wetland in the rain
forest, our government has moved from a democracy to an autocracy, heading
towards dictatorship, and America ostensibly is "alright with it all."
Ambiguous authorizations of our military to wage wars against distance
nations bridled by reasons that morphed at a moment's notice, along with
toxic bills that revoke habeas corpus and permit torture on the President's
whim are just "another day at the office" for people of the United States of
America.

Through it all, we have become afraid of our own shadows, endorsed the
subjugation and usurpation of basic, fundamental liberties in lieu of a
security blanket that only masks a deeper national fracturing of our psyche.
We, the American people, have enabled an abusive surrogate parent, in the
form of a malicious government, to divide this nation in order to conquer
it! We are prisoners of our own fear and it has come to this: "We the
People" are on the brink of extinction, set for summary execution and are
subject to be replaced by lords and masters, while the remaining few are
relegated to mere serfs and vassals in a feudal system of American Kings.

In spite of our walk down the "Green Mile" as a nation, there is a
diminutive, but growing hope that we will be granted an eleventh-hour stay
of execution. Our death sentence may be commuted to life or even asylum
granted by-proxy of a republican party that is enormously swollen with
hubris and spilling over its embankment. The republican river of deceit and
scandal has eroded its own banks through unrestrained control and given a
weak opposition -- the democrats -- a chance to no longer look frail and
ineffectual.

If America this November can set down the remote, crawl off the couch
long-enough to vote some adversary back into the system, she just might have
a fighting chance. If not, lady-liberty will continue to be abused by a
misogynistic, spousal government and may have her torch extinguished
forever. It has come to this America and now it's up to you to decide if we
make history or become history as a nation!

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson