Are We Trapped?

Republicans support the wealthy, the CEO's, the corporations; the worker is chopped liver. But Democrats are afraid: of the wealthy, the CEO's and the corporations--and enough are bought off, too.

Our two party system has been described as a duopoly, and when you look at the Obama/McConnell/Reid/Boehner compromise over "the fiscal cliff," you see that it is.

Remaining on the right, are the angry Tea Partiers, who distrust government in all its forms, though they're not unwilling to rip it off. Remaining on the left are forlorn progressives, who yearn for a government they can trust: they see one that's only protecting the "One Percent."

Both fringes attempt to push government more to their liking, but the duopoly has other plans: it's owned by the corporations: the banks, oil companies, media and more.

The anger among Tea Partiers is genuine, but the billionaire lobby, from astro-turf roots to media campaigns, to think tank creations, contrives its targets.

Anger on the left is at least as real, but its targets are scattered. Their anger focuses on exploitation, of, by and for the corporations, but also on government and military-style repression: they have little money behind them.

We don't have a Fourth Amendment any longer: unlawful search and seizure has been pushed aside by Terrorism and Drugs. All a local prosecutor, or enforcement officer, need do is to record everyone within electronic reach. Soon, I predict, all they'll have to do is apply to the NSA, or whatever Federal entity has become the repository, to access phone, email and Internet files on anyone "of interest." That's why everyone's online (and cloud) records are being recorded in the massive surveillance program initiated by the NSA. The justification: to intercept any terrorists before they act.

Stalin gained power by controlling information about everyone; people need to wrest that power back. And this is an issue where both fringes could/should collaborate. Tea Partiers hate the idea of government surveillance as much as lefties.

Unless "the fringes" can come together in resistance, there is no escape. Republicans and Democrats are equally implicated in the Surveillance State. Democratic Senator Feinstein and President Obama are as much a part of it as Bush II, Cheney and Senator McCain. The renewal--and strengthening--of the NDAA in December demonstrates this.

In the Fifth Century Empire, Roman Senators and German generals collaborated in controlling and repressing the humiliores.

With powers of surveillance and manipulation of information greater than Stalin ever dreamed of, the modern American state soon will leave no room for real dissent. That could be its downfall, just like the Stalinist state before it.

Like the USSR's failed New Lands wheat projects, the US plunges into fracking, oil sands and nuclear, while the rest of the world pushes ahead with solar, wind and bio-fuel alternatives.

We'll decline, driven by government-corporate induced blindness. Others will rise--if there is any livable environment left.