AlterNet: Will Wall Street's Meltdown Turn America Into a Police State?

[marmar]

Will Wall Street's Meltdown Turn America Into a Police State?

By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted September 30, 2008.

Failing banks? Endless war? Call Homeland Security.



"Raw capitalism is dead." -- Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary

"Can't we just all go out and say things are OK?" -- President Bush, to congressional leaders during bailout negotiations


I'm not much of an Army Times reader, but after reading that a brigade was shipping from Iraq in October to serve as "an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks" in the homeland right before the election, my antennae perked up. Same as they did when I read that an electoral college doomsday scenario exists in which Dick Cheney casts the deciding vote that gives McCain-Palin the White House.

That is, if Cheney and Bush don't take it for themselves. That may sound like fantasy, but don't kill the messenger. They are all strands of the Gordian knot the Bush administration has tied around the neck of the American people for the last two presidential terms, best represented today by the failed bailout of banks, brokers and other complicit parties that have since jacked the American people out of trillions. And while the Army Times revelation or election doomsday may turn out to be paranoia rather than prescience, the evidence just isn't there.

Like I said: antennae.

They've come in handy as bullshit detectors since Bush stole the election from a flat-footed Al Gore and set about engineering the greatest transfer of public wealth into private hands in American history. If you factor in Monday's failed takeover, as well as the $5 trillion the American people now owe thanks to the "bailout" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, not to mention the continuing hyper-expensive occupation of Iraq and so on, our citizenry is now so far in the hole that it's pointless griping about numbers. If you want one, use the figure put forth by Dennis Kucinich: half a quadrillion dollars. We have evolved past the point of economic or geopolitical reality and entered a phase of pure concept.

And all vectors of that phase point toward the conclusion that the proverbial shit has totally hit the fan -- head on, and all over again. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/100689/will_wall_street%27s_meltdown_turn_america_into_a_police_state/

[whistle]

1. Bush's Amerika was already a police state

[tom_paine]

2. Oh, but things can get much MUCH worse.

I mean, consider the individual lives of people living under Classically Totalitarian regimes as opposed to the newfangled Bushie Totalitarianism, where we can post to DU and even protest in our designated protest cages.

They can't do that in China. They couldn't do that in Pinochet's Chile or Nazi Germany, either.

The real question here is will the economi calamity allow or incite the Bushies to "turn the key in the ignition" as it were on the Classical Totalitarian Structure they have put into place a millimtere below the Smiley Faced Friendly Facsism/Inverted Totalitarian Mask?

Will life for us on a daily basis then come MUCH closer to resembling the lives of a Chinese person under Bushie-style-Commie Tyranny today in China? I don't know.

But I think that is what the OP is asking. Plus I do agree with you, with the caveat about Bushie-Inverted vs. Nazi-Classical methodologies as they apply to everyday life, that Bush-Occupied Imperial Amerika is a Police State, albeit a newfangled kinder and gentler version for the moment, right this second.