US Democracy slipping away

I'm not the kind of leftist who routinely throws around words like fascism or tyranny. I've criticized those who do, and I cringed a bit at Hugo Chavez calling Bush 'the devil' thinking it was unhelpful and demagogic.

But the fact remains that tyranny doesn't usually happen overnight with tanks on the streets and a sudden transition from the rule of law to the 2 AM banging on the door. It happens gradually, bit by bit under the guise of national pride, law and order and protecting us from appalling foes.

The United States is now a nation of torturers and abettors of torture. Rick Margolis correctly identified the trend as the Sovietization of the US. As Digby points out, all those years of railing against The Soviet Union it turns out the Republicans were only really upset with Soviet economics not the totalitarianism they now so eagerly embrace.

Waterboarding, which Americans once prosecuted Japanese war criminals for, is now an acceptable tactic. From this point on the Republican Party is the Torture Party and the Democrats are the Accessories to Torture Party.

Democracy has been so subverted and warped in America that its citizens barely blink at transparently flawed and corrupt voting machines, seemingly designed to miscount votes. Most Americans don't know that, almost alone among democratic nations, they have no constitutionally guaranteed right to vote, a fact used by Republican lawmakers to disenfranchise poor and minority vorters at every opportunity. Republicans now openly brag about disenfranchising black voters. When The US imposes a constitution on conquered nations like Japan or Iraq they always insist on a right they themselves don't have.

And as the Maher case showed, America's descent into tyranny is followed in lockstep by our Conservative government here in Canada.

The desire to avoid irresponsible rhetoric is a positive one, but it's time to call a spade a spade and a fascist a fascist.

While we still can.