Stating the bleeding obvious: It's increasingly clear that, today, the US is not a democracy or a republic (of the people), but a corporate oligarchy, in which the preservation of profit is sufficient justification for anything from draconian restrictions on speech (such as the DeCSS decision) to atrocities overseas (think of all the repressive regimes propped up by the US to get cheap oil/labour/resources, from Guatemala and Chile to Saudi Arabia). Sure, there may be "democracy" (read: a system with two superficially different major parties, rigged in such a way that voting for anyone else, whilst not illegal, is a waste of a vote), but with the power corporate interests hold (from providing the sensory apparatus of most Americans through the media to all but buying favourable laws), US democracy is something more akin to pro wrestling on cable TV than to any meaningful participatory system.
As for the US being a republic, it is such if one defines a "person" as a
corporation, specifically excluding private individuals.
</RANT>
William Gates III : First against the wall when the linux revolution starts. True in 1994, true today.
As I said to my brother this evening shooting is too good for him - torture him first! But the Linux war is being won. By us! It's the war being lost - our freedom - that makes me depressed. Anyone wanting a road map for the next 50 years should read The Gulag Archipelago by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, while copies remain unburned.
Yes, and where the US goes, Australia will follow... I'm going to have to stop following current events. It interferes with my joie de vivre, distracts from the things I "should" be doing, and in general makes me hopping mad. Powerlessness is Hell. Wake me when the revolution begins.