Padme, Padme

Madame:

It keeps cropping up, but we are like the child who closes his eyes thinking that if he can’t see it, it not only can’t affect him, but that it’s literally not there.

The decay of civil liberties; of equal justice before the “law”; of constitutional rights; of belief in the fairness of the judicial system; of protections to citizens; all undergo both unremitting assault and gradual weakening and decay (the “death by a thousand cuts”).

And in a society of disconnected disposability, of corporate infotainment rather than news, of no real publicly funded independent news, of constant diversion—all of which Postman and even Huxley warned us about—we are the classic frog being boiled to death because the temperature is being slowly increased (an apt analogy for our environmental disconnection as well).

The evidence is so avalanche-like for anyone not white privileged (but increasingly, even for them unless they are wealthy) it barely needs detailing, but here’s just a few examples:

Prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s LIFETIME gag order against the Ferguson grand jurors.

The CIA spying on the very body (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence) we the people entrust to be the classified-cleared overseers of…the CIA.  And NOTHING done about it.

The Director of National Intelligence BLATANTLY lying to Congress that the United States government does not spy on its own citizens, and certainly not in a mass way.  And when that was shown incontrovertibly to be absolutely false, NOTHING was done about it.

A report released on sanctioned US torture, torture that blew back on us with great force, was aflutter for a week and then forgotten.

Far from being rewarded, the whistleblowers of intelligence/”security” community gross criminality and malfeasance have not only not been protected by Congress or anyone else, but instead prosecuted, jailed, and broken with a vengeance.

And now when a British newspaper breaks the story that there is a black site—an unconstitutional detention and even torture facility—right in the United States, right in Chicago, our corporate media was virtually nowhere to be found.  Even Chicago newspapers (how’s that for evidence of “elite” capture) effectively did not report it.  Held for days, weeks, months without charges?  What’s the big deal?  Not permitted contact with friends or relatives or even anyone in the outside world?  Why the fuss?  Not permitted any legal representation?  Who would need that?  Beset by torturous methods that would be shared enthusiastically with the staff at Abu Ghraib? Where’s the harm in that?  Operating this site for, effectively, 40 years?  Who can argue with tradition?

Padme was not quite correct.  Democracy does not just die to thunderous applause, it also dies when we can’t be bothered to save it—or even to find it worthy of note to hear its choking sound.

And now Madame, our readers (and me especially!) are anxiously awaiting your sunnier disposition to arrive on the scene and point out all the good things that are happening in our society and the world to put the curmudgeon in his place! :)