“MEET THE NEW BOSS - SAME AS THE OLD BOSS”

Or, When did we become the Soviet Union - the very thing we once despised and feared the most?

When did we develop secret police and those secret courts? When did we start spying on millions of countrymen without even probable cause? When did we start sending people to secret prisons without any trials or even sentences? Good grief, when did outright torture become acceptable?

When did we resort to stamping almost everything as top secret, especially anything showing incompetence or corruption of the party in power? When did all our old friends suddenly get labeled as enemies? When did the press become little more than a shill for the strongman in charge? When did we begin drowning out all voices of dissent? When did all those fat bald guys standing next to the strongman get the authority to call for freedom elsewhere while trampling it at home? When did the one man controlling the bureaucracy and the military also proclaim the legislating bodies and the courts had no power over him?

When did we become a one party system with elections being a joke or outright rigged? When did the rich party leaders start successfully diverting much of the nation’s economic productiveness into their personal pockets and pleasure palaces? When did political corruption become the norm, arrogantly so?

When did we stop caring about supporting our troops with the best armor and gear? When did they become just cannon fodder for the egos of the leader? When did it become okay to be an aggressor nation invading other countries without being attacked first? When did we conclude tanks and troops should be first choice before diplomacy? Why are all the party hacks and loyalists getting those ridiculous “medals of freedom” to hang on their suits? When did double speak and outright lies start getting ignored? When did fiction start trumping facts and politics vetoing science?

When did the workers get so numbly downtrodden and forbidden to organize? When did the definition of “patriots” get changed 180 degrees from its original defiant challenge of government to blind obedience? When did new laws start getting titles that almost invariably suggest the opposite of the law’s real intent?

When we commence attacking the UN we helped create, sending a clown to the General Assembly doing everything to disrupt debate except pounding with his shoe? When did we stop caring that most of the citizens of the world thought we had become terrorists?

When did we end up alone with Communist China and Cuba as having the most executions? When did we decide something called “Homeland” security is more important than Founding Fathers’ freedoms? When did “Red States” start getting cheers from “red necks”? When Did George Orwell’s Animal Farm stop being prophetic and became reality? Yep, when did we become the Soviet Union?

Better yet, WHY did we get fooled again?


*Thanks and a tip of the hat are owed to The Who's and their lyrics from "Don't Get Fooled Again." Check it out at http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Won't-Get-Fooled-Again-lyrics-The-Who/761EF79AAB42FA9C48256977002E72F9