Faces of Evil, Traitors, and the End of All We Hold Dear

How did it come to this?  Where did we go wrong? Every day brings new outrages, new evidence that this once great nation is on its death bed.  How did we come to accept propositions and ideologies that in my lifetime, and not so many years ago, were unthinkable?

As I sit here in front of my computer pondering these questions I try to imagine how a person like George W. Bush would have been regarded in, say, 1945.  Bush is certainly one of the faces of evil we see today.  His imperious, arrogant, insolent, disdainful, and dismissive attitude toward what we called freedom, liberty, sovereignty, due respect for others, a proper concern for the poor, the environment, our place among nations, peace, and many other concepts would never have been accepted by the people a few short years ago.  But today…today we give him the bully pulpit and reserve judgment about his veracity every time he utters a word.  Whatever he proposes, whatever he declares to be the truth, we view it as at least worth considering, and we listen respectfully and do not ask embarrassing questions about his sanity or possible malicious intent.  Oh, no! He is THE President! 

What is a traitor anyway?  Is it treacherous to unilaterally shred the Bill of Rights?  Is it treachery to plot to attack countries that have not attacked us? To lie to the American people about the very reasons used to justify attacking another country?  Is it treachery to deliberately expose our nation to attack by refusing to protect us against saboteurs infiltrating our nation across open borders or sending Trojan Horses into our nation in shipping containers? Is it treachery to ignore the devastation wrought by the forces of nature?  No, these acts do not a traitor make in the eyes of our Congress. But only a few decades ago they would be treasonous acts.

Is it treachery to stand mute as millions of jobs are sent overseas to third world nations where slave labor can be substituted for American labor?  Is it treachery to allow corporations to export their capital to build the factories where this slave labor is used? Is it treachery to permit the impoverishment of America at the behest of corporations? Oh, no! This is just good business.

This nation has been transformed into a fascist predatory aggressor state without so much as a by your leave.  It is no longer possible to impeach a tyrant.  It is no longer necessary for a president to ask for a declaration of war. He is the sole decider.  We are doomed.