{"id":35929,"date":"2012-06-11T00:07:03","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T07:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=35929"},"modified":"2014-12-30T16:25:20","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T23:25:20","slug":"strange-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/06\/strange-times.html","title":{"rendered":"Strange times"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

When I was a kid, I was taught that the greatness of America lay in the fact that the government couldn\u2019t just declare you an enemy of the state and order your death. That was what wicked totalitarian regimes like Russia and China did. We lived in a free country ruled by elected officials who were bound by the law. They were not potentates who declared \u201cI am the State\u201d and did anything they like, including murder, without check. To be proud of that fact was to be a good American. To be hostile to unilateral dictators was a natural corrollary of that.<\/p>\n

Now, however, we live in this reality:<\/p>\n

<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Note the source of the video: Democracy Now. And for a certain percentage of readers, that will somehow render the information ritually unclean. So too will Greenwald\u2019s mention of the (perfectly true) fact that, for all their hostility to Obama on many other issues (primarily having to do with the perceived threat he poses to the rich), the so-called \u201cconservatives\u201d in our Ruling Class have typically heaped praise on Obama\u2019s expansion of dictatorial, unaccountable, life and death powers for the executive and look forward to retaking the White House so as to enjoy these tyrannical powers themselves\u2013for the Greater Good, of course. Indeed, between passive silence on the left and enthusiastic cheerleading for Obama\u2019s draconian abuse of power on the Right, our political class has done of a fine job of cementing this dangerous slide toward tyranny as a permanent metastasizing feature of our political life.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not right vs. left anymore. It\u2019s our Ruling Class vs. the rest of us.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was a kid, I was taught that the greatness of America lay in the fact that the government couldn\u2019t just declare you an enemy of the state and order your death. That was what wicked totalitarian regimes like Russia and China did. We lived in a free country ruled by elected officials who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[65,60],"class_list":["post-35929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-the-god-king","tag-the-growing-police-state"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>Strange times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When I was a kid, I was taught that the greatness of America lay in the fact that the government couldn't just declare you an enemy of the state and order\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/06\/strange-times.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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