wither in the light

So, the 4th of July just passed, supposedly a celebration in honor of that other 4th of July, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. Go read it... it's pretty interesting. I suspect that the average American only knows that it was signed by John Hancock (who wrote large, so that the myopic King George would be better able to see his name, an act that has come to represent the will and defiance our country embodies) and they might possibly know a couple of catchphrases, such as "When in the course of human events" or "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". What people might not remember are the actual details, which Thomas Jefferson was kind enough to point out in the document. He did not take this lightly:

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes... But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government... The History of the present King [George]... is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States"

Prudence, indeed, would seem to dictate that the whims of one idiot should not bring a country crashing to the ground, but apparently someone forgot to tell that to King George. The complaints the colonists had included:

• HE has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.
  
• HE has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
  
• HE has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of the Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and the Convulsions within.
  
• HE has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
  
• HE has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries.
  
• HE has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance.
  
• HE has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures.
  
• HE has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
  
• HE has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
  
• FOR depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury
  
• FOR taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments
  
• HE is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation
  

Quite a list, that. See any resemblance to our Mad King George?
Jefferson also noted that:

A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People

Well said. The Declaration of Independence is starting to look like a lost Nostradamus scroll, a prophecy of things to come. Face it: on September 10th, 2001, even the hardline Republicans knew Bush was a fucktard. He looked so fucking relieved when 9-11 went down (well, after he finished reading to the school kiddies for 45 minutes after he was notified of the event), grateful that finally something had popped up to take the scrutiny off of his increasingly pathetic presidency. Now he has used that one event to completely rototill the fucking government, and all the Republicans are happy as they could be, even though Bush's actions have in some fundamental ways been the exact opposite of their supposed ideals... remember their droning chant of 'smaller federal government'? Well now, the dipshit that flings your Samsonite into the belly of an airplane is a federal employee, for your safety. Ditto for the guy that makes you take off your shoes and confiscates your toenail clippers when you enter the airport. The 'Department of Homeland Security' (are you fucking kidding me? How Big Brother is that?) needs to expand so the 'Total Information Awareness' program can compile enough data to build up a 'Minority Report'-like profile of terrorists so they can catch them before they have commited any crimes. Buy the wrong combination of books on Amazon.com, and you could end up with the Feds at your door, and hopefully it didn't escape your notice that they can now hold you indefinitely without pressing charges just for the suspicion that you might be a terrorist.

And take a look at the Information Awareness Office logo:



Hrrmmm.... maybe Big Brother is watching us.

Ok, so I got a little off-track there, back to my intended thread: for another prescient view of our current Idiot In Chief, see this article from The Onion. Published on 18 January, 2001, the article documents how with Bush in office "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over". Hopefully the following quote falls within the Fair-Use laws:

"My fellow Americans," Bush said, "at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us."

With unemployment at it's highest since 1958, federal debt piled up so high that your great-grandkids are going to be paying it off, and an economy so fucked that even Greenspan's wild interest-rate careenings can't save it, you'd think the American people would open their eyes to what is going on, and show some of the spunk our Founding Fathers showed when they threw off the chains of their own Idiot George. Instead, they place flag decals next to those fucking Jesus fish on their bumpers, and return to their complacent lives, thoughts unimpeded by any awareness of just how fucked this country has become.

I hope to hell that people wake the fuck up before the next election.