requiem for the american dream

Saw something on Bruce Sterling's blog that has turbo charged a sense of unease I've had since the Bush re-election.

Noted Bio-Artist Steve Kurtz Still Outside Bounds of Guantanamo

In a sinister neo-McCarthyite turn of the cards the prosecution of the renowned artist Steve Kurtz, a core member of the US-based art collective Critical Art Ensemble and Professor of Art at the University of Buffalo, still continues after more than 8 months.

On May 11th 2004 Steven Kurtz awoke to find his wife of 27 years dead. After emergency workers arrived, they called in the FBI after finding what they considered to be suspicious items. These items were scientific samples and equipment, including harmless bacteria.

(...)

The continuation of legal proceedings against Steven Kurtz and Robert Ferrell, now suggest a political motivation to the case.

Instances of this growing culture of fascism are dropping down from above like snowflakes. And sticking, aided by a winter chill in the air. Check out this over at the Daily Kos, and ponder the things that are happening around us. Perpetual war - making it easy to suppress dissent. A political monoculture in Washington D.C., complete with manufactured crises like Social Security flailed loudly to distract you from the price of chocolate.

On Bill O'Reilly the other night, Newt Gingrich (spotted wearing a t-shirt made from Dan Rather's skin) made this comment about the Ward Churchill flap:

The former Speaker also commented on the Ward Churchill-Hamilton College controversy. "Someone who describes the innocent victims of 9/11 as little Adolf Eichmanns is so despicable and hateful that the taxpayers of Colorado should not be paying his salary. Taxpayers don't have to pay for lunatic professors to teach their children."

His Newtness, who may run for president in 2008, strongly stated, did not imply, that people who attack "The Government" should not recieve public funds, ie, Ward, the rogue leftist tenured professor, should be fired. Our Government, of the people, of which Ward is one, with FREE SPEECH as a core credo? When God tried a similar semantic trick in the "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", he disappeared in a poof of logic; sadly the same did not happen to Newt, on the brighter side proving he is not God.

This is fascism, from the ruling party of our nation.

And the dance has only just begun, for the American economy is rickety and dependant on the kindness of strangers picking up our debt to the tune of 2 billion or so a day; we are about to swing into serious commodity issues in a few short years; (I'm talking fuel and food, not toaster ovens and beamers) and there is no end in sight to the gerrymandered, co-branded, Republican-Corporate machine.

Red states, as far as the eye can see, a mobius strip of self perpetuating power.