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What is a good Democracy called?

1) Transparency in Government
Lost due to the inability to expose and control the ever-growing black budgets and black ops of the intelligence
community, which inevitably and increasingly impinge upon Americans' liberties at home.

2) Freedom of Speech and of the Press
Lost due to the unwillingness to prevent the corporate takeover of the mass media by conglomeration , thereby
knocking out one of the main beams of a popular democracy - an informed electorate.

3) Freedom of Religion
Lost due to the unwillingess to investigate whether a religion is nothing more than a cover for otherwise illegal activity
activity (like Rev Moon's conviction for racketeering), culminating in a refusal to remove tax-free status for the most
flagrant politicing with church resources. (Phony religions have "no redeeming spiritual value", but a whole lot of
"redeeming political value".) Also lost due to the unwillingness to shutdown violence and incitements to violence
emanating from religious movements organized like revoultionary cells.

4) Impartial Courts - a nation of laws, not men.
Lost due to the failure to stand up to slow-motion court-packing and Executive Agency corruption by the GOP over
a 20 year period.

5) An honest and transparent voting process
Lost due to the failure to prosecute partisan bias and rampant corruption in the election process: infamous state
election commissioner/GOP operatives in Florida and Ohio; a judicial coup d'etat in the year 2000; and the
privatization and veiling of the voting process by companies owned by GOP theocrats and thugs.

These key features form the core of popular democracy: access to accurate information, the ability to disseminate accurate
information, the ability to hold unpopular positions based on that information, the guarantee of a fair voting process, and
access to a fair and impartial precedent-abiding judicial system. With all these components functioning, blind fanaticism is
stopped in its tracks. It is discovered, exposed, and voted out or sued out of political and economic power.

But, the viral engineers have targetted those five key features and, in a form of political jiu-jitsu, used them as entry
points to gain access to the machinery of government while disabling any defensive response. Just as a virus goes
straight to the nucleus of an infected cell and jams the main protein making machinery, substituting machinery that
responds only to viral commands, the political virus of fanaticism places its agents in positions of power (such as
inside the intelligence community, or inside the corporate media, or inside a phony religious front organization, or
on a packed Federal court, or in a supposedly-impartial election board), and those agents respond only to commands
from the fanatics.

Now when you take these five features away, ask yourself if what remains is really a democracy. I submit you will
find a one-party state where "power comes from the barrel of a gun", crucial facts and decisions are hidden behind
a stonewall of secrecy, and an unaccountable elite treats the nation's resources as its private treasury and dishes out
payoffs to its buddies and punishment to its enemies without regard to fairness or evidence.

America is no longer a republic; it is a one-party state where anyone who disagrees is ignored or run over. If they
are troublesome but obscure, they may be "rendered" to a foreign government for interrogation. If they are troublesome
and powerful, an airplane accident may occur. (Assasinations are out of vogue because they lend themselves too easily
to "conspiracy theories".) If they are troublesome and popular, a smear campaign will commence. And, most Americans
will find this all boring or irrelevant or a conspiracy theory. Mass media is the most powerful drug I have ever seen. If the
rest of the civilized world intends to survive, its first act of self-defense must be to regulate media conglomeration more
tightly than cocaine dealership.

I write this with little hope for America, except that it may serve as the premier bad example of the most recently
evolved member of the species of religious fanaticism - corporate Christianity. What little hope I have for the survival
of rationality rests with the fact that, except for religious fanatics, human beings want to live with the least possible
conflict in the most sensible way they can comprehend.

The world will stop the fundamentalist monster that has hijacked America or the world itself will be killed - by
climate change, by environmental pollution, by resource depletion, or by insane fanatics with visions of nuclear
Armageddon. The fact that America will have to be brought low to save the world is a conclusion that events are
forcing upon me. We seem unable to save ourselves, no matter how outrageous the lies, corruption, and mayhem
inflicted upon us by the Bush Cabal. Given that Peak Oil is upon us, America seems about to go the way of Imperial
Spain after the New World gold ran out.


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