Behold the New World Order!

The 8 years of Bush in office has already done untold damage to the United States.  The economy has tanked, the constitution has been set aside and the world has started turning its back on the americans.  From oil-producing nations moving to the Euro as their currency of choice to travellers deciding that there is nothing to see in the US that is worth the unpleasantness of travelling there.

There is a level of paranoia in the US the likes of which has not been seen since the height of the cold war.  A population living in fear -- gladly trading in all their freedoms for the promise of security.

And fear of what, exactly?  Terrorists?  The end of the American Way?

What is the American Way?  Is it freedom?  If so, the American Way died the day the US Patriot Act was signed into law.  It died the day government was allowed to detain, imprison and hold without charge or trial its own citizens in secret prisons.  It died the day the government became so afraid of its own citizens that everyone is now treated as a suspected terrorist.  It died the day that those enabling the government to commit crimes against its people were given immunity from prosecution.  It died the day government unabashedly started to use propaganda of fear to have us view everyone around us with suspicion and fear.

While one may argue that the political system in the US has nothing in common with communism, it is undeniable that everyday life has taken on a flavor that we traditionally associated with the sort of hard-line communist regimes we were raised to fear during the cold war.  The Soviet was evil because it spied on its citizens.  The Soviet was evil because undesirables would disappear in the night -- to be shipped off to secret gulags.  The Soviet was evil because delivering talking points to the mass media would keep the population ignorant and ill informed.  The Soviet was evil because it fought wars in places like Afghanistan.  The Soviet was evil because it wanted to park weapons of mass destructions right outside the American borders.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

The US is isolating itself behind an iron curtain.  It is becoming the big bully the world saw in the Soviet Union decades ago.