Excellent followup. Unfortunately with so much debt and distraction (HD TV, flashy TV ads, credit card bills, things to complain about or things to buy) I don’t think many people will care until those attractions are taken away from them.

So as long as we have our Starbucks, HD TV, episodes of Lost and new cars that we can’t afford, it seems like 70% of us are completely happy just sitting back and doing nothing.

Playing devil’s advocate for a second, to fight that hand and foot, what are we fighting for in the grander scope? Less Starbuck’s? That probably won’t happen, the free market will make sure of that.

It’s when I took a step back and made a list of both sides, the “We are a democracy and should be able to vote and this is all bullshit” side and then the “Ok but I’m just a dude with a mortgage, how does my life actually change?”, and I came up with a pretty shitty list honestly.

I know the Orwellian future that lies at the end of the path of the govt-run-facist-state is very dark and clearly has it’s draw backs, but in the interest of keeping us spending… all-the-time, every-time, I don’t know that future would ever come to be… people would openly oppose it and consumption/progress would grind to a halt.

I think it’s in the rich’s best interest to create the illusion of a utopia to keep us overly happy so we spend and distract ourselves with every new gadget out there.

Given that, is the future so bleak? I honestly don’t know… I’m still trying to get my head around what this all means *really* as far as what is going to happen next. I’m fully aware of the argument that this *should not* happen and isn’t how democracy works, I totally agree with Naomi’s assessment of what has transpired recently, in other times in histories, happening in other countries, have been given very scary names, but what just happened in the US was given a very friendly and non-scary name of “Saving the economy”.

Thoughts guys? Personal suggestions? I’m interested in any discourse on this subject.

That’s plenty of money for them to do just about anything they want – right now. Congressional oversight is a joke.

I think Editor is on to something when he says that this looks like a stepping stone towards the North American Union. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.

I also understand why you say that we might just be delaying the inevitable, but I don’t think this has to be true. The amount of power that has been collected, especially with the financial power given the Bush administration through the “bailout”, is immense. But our quiet acceptance is the only way to guarantee that the United States is destroyed and turned into the NAU.

And isn’t the quiet acceptance of the destruction of the United States the opposite of loving your country?

Anyway, we only get this one planet to live on, so there is a point where a small group of people can rule the entire world. I think that is the ultimate goal of the people in power.

We used to be a collection of 50 states. Now state borders don’t matter as much as they used to because so much power rests with the Federal government. Europe used to be a collection of relatively small but fiercely independent countries. Now, when you travel among them, the differences are fading away. Power consolidation on a global scale has been underway for a long time now.

Yet when a hurricane, or earthquake, or flood, or tornado hits, your survival depends on a neighbor or friend who makes sure to find you. When you run out of milk, your dinner depends on the local grocery store or next door neighbor having a little extra.

We live our lives locally yet we are quietly accepting less and less control over our own lives and communities.

We don’t have to. We do have a choice whether to fight for our country, the country that was founded on the idea of personal freedom, or to let it die.

The question we need to ask ourselves is how much do we really care about the United States?

I think the problem is that the bailout, in reality, wasn’t intended to stimulate the economy. From the looks of what it *really* takes to run our economy and how much money has been created every year for the last few years just to keep it up, $700 billion really doesn’t seem like it can do much.