"With the same party controlling all branches of government, there has been minimal public debate over the policies of the current Bush administration, even as it launched two wars, reversed long-standing policies on worker safety and the environment and cut taxes for the rich while 2.7 million private-sector jobs have been lost and the number of unemployed Americans has increased by more than 45 percent under its watch," John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton point out in Banana Republicans -- How the Right Wing Is Turning America Into a One-Party State (Tarcher/Penguin 2004).
Don't expect the jackboots to march around the corner tomorrow. Don't expect homes to be indiscriminately raided. Don't expect citizens to be hauled off in the dead of night -- although that has been the case with indiscriminate arrests of many Muslim immigrants since 9/11.
Consider, however, the anti-democratic warning signs: the Patriot Act and subsequent civil liberties-busting legislation; election snafus seamlessly fading into history; a war carried out on the basis of misinformation and disinformation; secret prisons where captives are tortured.
Think about how things change slowly, yet dramatically, while good people either aren't paying attention or are too satisfied to raise their voices.
"As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." -- Justice William O. Douglas, US Supreme Court (1939-75)
The rest of this excellent article, excerpted from Dissident Voice, can be read here.
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