Help! Help! I'm Being Repressed!

That, my generous readers, is the cry of the liberal in consternation over the hell hole into which GWB has transformed our once free and fair country. Everywhere you look you can see the tell tale signs. We have only read about them before, from history books on Hitler's Germany, in George Orwell's 1984, in that other book A Brave New World. Yes, it's all true now. If you say something bad about the government before you go to bed, you will be found dead in your cornflakes the next morning -- if you're lucky!

Okay. Yeah. One of my fellow students made the comment yesterday that she does "not support George Bush or his regime." She's a political science student. Regime is a very specific word. All I could think was that the bureaucracies have not changed, nor the structure of the government. Bush will not be in power when his term ends. Therefore, the regime is still the same. I have noted this idea of Bush's regime on other occasions and never gave it much thought until now. Now, that I am daily surrounded by the unthinking actions of the general public. People really do not take the time to think things through thoroughly. However, I did not start this in order to turn it into a gripe about illogical people. Rather, I began it to point out the slide toward extreme reasoning and emotions that our nation has taken.

It reminds me very much of the polarization that tore the country apart before the Civil War. This time, there is no physical boundary between the differences of opinion. Yet they are still very strong. Differences of opinion are no laughing matter either. One cannot get away with saying that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Some people's opinions are more equal than others. Or, to be blunt, we all think we're right and everyone else is wrong. We're not going to politely say that we're right, however. We're not going to calmly say, "I disagree." No, that is an inappropriate response. You have to scream your opponent down and make him wish he had never even thought about addressing you. That's the right way to do things. Make a public scene, throw a fit. Be a two year old in the grocery store whose mommy won't buy you more candy.

Which brings me back to the idea of our oppressive government. If our government were so oppressive, why is there no evidence of this? Why is it that we can make a public scene about how awful our government is and receive no consequences? Why aren't there people dead in their cornflakes the day after an enourmous protest?

Because our government is still an orderly, controlled government. That's why. And because the only power it has usurped from us, is the power we gave it. That's still not enough power to condemn us to death for one temper tantrum in front of the White House.