Last night I received an email from Scott seeking my input since he’d received a fair amount of flack regarding a post he’d written, asking if I thought he sounded like a tinfoil-hat-wearing lunatic.

After reading the post, I have to say I don’t think his fictional scenario is out of the realm of possibility one bit, especially if this country slips any further toward endless war in the Middle East under the fascist, totalitarian dictatorship the neocons are leaving wet spots in their panties for. People are being naïve if they think that just because this is THE UNITED STATES that it can’t happen here.

Despite the circumstances under which he came to power, when Bush first assumed the presidency I was willing to at least give him the benefit of the doubt because it seemed that on some level the chimp did have the best interests of the country at heart. Yes, he was a bumbling fool, but it appeared he was trying to rise to the occasion and deal with the situation history had dealt him. Everyone I knew hated his guts, but he was so ineffectual I figured the most that could happen would be that he passed through his four years in office playing golf and clearing brush, only to be promptly forgotten by history.

Of course, all that changed after September 11th. My alarm bells started going off and I heard the echoes of goose steps with the formation of the ominously christened Department of Homeland Security and the overnight passage of the Patriot Act.

With the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I knew we were in trouble. Even if most of the rest of the country was blinded by patriotic jingoism fanned by a complicit media, it was obvious to me that this was nothing more than payback for his daddy’s decision not to remove Saddam from power (which now seems incredibly sane and sensible) and a blatant, transparent grab for Middle East oil. I knew he was going to open Pandora’s box, and nothing was ever going to be the same afterward.

I tried to comfort myself before 2004 by saying, “Things will get so bad the country will wake up and send ‘em all packing.”

As we know, that didn’t happen, and for some unfathomable reason, these lying, hypocritical criminals still remain in power.

Perhaps that’s because Bush is merely a figurehead—a puppet—for the real people in power, and they are not going to go quietly into the night. He is still a bumbling, coke-addled idiot who by his increasing inability to complete a single coherent sentence is showing signs of drug and alcohol-induced brain damage. He’s a privileged, rich white boy who has never worked a day in his life or accepted personal responsibility for anything, who came from a family that had all the proper connections and could pull all the right strings; that is why he is in the White House today, not because he was duly elected or even that he was worthy of the office. While I do not believe he is the spiritual Antichrist foretold in Revelations (because I don’t believe in any of that crap), and while he certainly displays many of the traits of that particular literary character, let’s face it: George Bush is just plain STUPID, something a real Antichrist most certainly would not be.

Watching how things have played out over the last six years, I believe beyond all doubt that from the very beginning it was the intent of those pulling the strings of this presidency to dismantle and nullify the Constitution and Rule of Law in this country. Habeas Corpus, civil liberties and privacy are such “quaint” concepts to these power hungry war-mongers behind the scenes, and they have no place in their quest for absolute world domination.

Of course, there was no way they could just come in and start ripping away at the laws of the country. They needed an excuse. And while I do not consider myself a conspiracy theorist, the timing and the events surrounding 9/11 are just a little too convenient to be summarily dismissed out of hand. (I still find it amazing that the several thousand-page Patriot Act was written and enacted within days of the attacks, almost like—oh, I don’t know—it had been sitting around for months, just waiting to be pulled out.) Regardless of whether or not 9/11 was an inside job, it nonetheless allowed those in power to lay the framework upon which all their Project for a New American Century delusions could be built.

The analogy has been used many times about the frog and the pot of boiling water, but I can’t deny it rings true. If they had attempted to strip away all our rights and freedoms immediately after 9/11—even with horrific events still fresh in the minds of the American people—they would’ve been summarily smacked down. But over the last six years, with the constant stream of fear spewing over the airwaves, they’ve found us an easy mark for slowly, methodically, dismantling anything that “we the people” can use against them when the day comes—and they know it will—that the populace wakes from this nightmare, rises up with pitchforks in hand and screams “ENOUGH!”

And manufacturing a scenario as Scott described would be child’s play for these sociopaths, especially to quiet dissent and instill even more fear in the population.

The American people have been played for the fools they are. While the media has been obsessed with Britney’s exposed snatch and the mess that calls itself Paris Hilton, the power behind the power has been slowly chipping away at the foundation of this country, aided and abetted by lazy politicians, unwilling to do the jobs they were elected to do (like read the legislation that’s passed in the dark of night).

At this point I have very little hope that we will be able to turn around the downward spiral that this country is on, and have no doubt that in 50 years—for better or worse—the United States will bear little resemblance to even what it does today. The only hope I do have is in knowing that if our [tin foil] worst nightmares do manifest and the United States turns into a overt fascist dictatorship under the control of Bush and his puppeteers, no dictatorship ever lasts. They all either collapse under the weight of their bureaucracy or are violently overthrown. Do I think a second American civil war is in the offing in this case? Absolutely. It may not happen in our lifetimes, but if it comes down to it, I fear it will be the only way to return power to the people. The freedoms and ideals upon which this country were founded are not going to go down without a fight.