Re: Lets state it simply.
I am not totally happy with the government we have. I would, however, take this one over any other one in existance today
Is this a conclusion you have arrived at after sedulous study of all other extant governments and analysis of their failings and virtues vis-a-vis our own, or do you just, like, kinda know that Ours Is Best, just like they've been telling you since you got your milkteeth? --And speaking of that, since the notion that they've got the Bestest and Most Wunnerful Society in the Whole World is one you'll find in many another land, and since, because there can be only one B&MWS in the WW, the rest are obviously lying or deluded--why, isn't it splendid that you live in the One True B&MWSitWW, God's favorite nation-state hands down, the only place where trusting schoolchildren can be told Ours is Best with a straight face?
Hey, I live here, and it's a pretty comfortable gig--I know the language and enough of the customs to get by (actually, now I think of it, I feel a far sharper sense of regional loyalty--to the Pacific Coast, specifically--than I do to the larger geographical and institutional entity of the One True B&MWSitWW)--but just because the country's fitful progress toward authoritarian dystopia throughout my life has been on the desultory side for much of that period doesn't mean I don't wake up and smell the Zyklon-B when a regime that took power by thuggery and fraud starts looking to put that progress on a systematic basis. You keep returning to your rather touching faith in the supposed homeostasis of the system: "The massive violation of civil liberties post Dec 7 were eliminated. Why would we have any reason to believe this any different a moment in our history?" Wrong question, really--most of us wonder what possesses you to imagine that the two moments are significantly similar beyond the single element of a surprise attack on two very different societies.
Actually, I'd be well content if, remembering this exchange in a decade's time, I concluded that I'd been mistaken in my concerns. But at this moment in our history I am persuaded that the institutions and traditions in which you place so much faith are far less robust than you suppose, and that the United States of America could very easily be transformed in the blink of an eye, historically speaking (one more rearrangement of a major metropolitan skyline would do the trick, I'd judge, and just because this lot doesn't fire its own Reichstags doesn't mean they wouldn't run with the opportunity), as radically as its old nemesis the USSR--which, as you may remember, looked for most of the postwar period to be a permanent part of the landscape. People have been reaching back to the Nazis by way of comparison not because they believe the Bush junta will slavishly follow the Feuhrer's playbook, but because they serve as one recent example of how a democracy is infected, subverted and overwhelmed by a cabal. That the trappings of the putsch may not be Bavarian, that the spinmeistering is infinitely more sophisticated, is cold comfort to a clear eye.
cordially,
[edit:typo]
