You may be of the same mind as I am regarding tonight’s State of the Union speech. It has a dead-skunk-in-the-road factor. It’s going to be ugly to look at, but so, so hard to look away from.
As of January 31st in the Year of our Lord 2006, the mask has come off of the Bush presidency. No more pretence about compassionate conservatism. No more hokum about uniting-not-dividing. This administration is about absolute power, Machiavellian power that exists for its own purpose and an end for which all means are justified.
The true state of our Union is a sad one. America has become a theocratic military empire.
As of this morning, with the confirmation of Sam Alito to the Supreme Court, we are a one party political system, and that party exists for the sole purpose of supporting the emperor. If the legislature accidentally passes a law the emperor doesn’t like, the emperor can simply interpret it in a way that suits him, and the Supreme Court will affirm the emperor’s constitutional right to do that as a wartime commander in chief.
The emperor will always be a wartime commander in chief because we are in a war against terrorism, and there will always be terrorism, so we will always be at war against it.
War is the core tenet of all American foreign and domestic policy. Like nineteenth century Prussia, we have become a country that exists to support its military force. We spend as much on the Department of Defense as the military spending of the rest of the world combined. That doesn’t even include what we spend on homeland security. Our economy is dependent on a half trillion dollar a year dump into the military industrial complex. Our civilian service secretaries, who control weapon systems acquisitions, are former senior executives of the country’s largest defense contractors and will ensure that we never kick our fiscal addiction to the machinery of war. Our diplomacy, such as it is, merely exists to deliver official threats of military action.
All federal social and health services are being outsourced to government sanctioned religious organizations. It won’t be long before the faith based mob runs all secular charities out of business, and the day is coming when you’ll have to go through an ordained minister to get so much as a freaking flu shot.
We’ll maintain some vestiges of representative government. You’ll still get to vote, for example. But if you don’t vote for whomever your minister tells you to vote for, you’ll burn in hell. And your minister is going to tell you to vote for the folks who are pouring federal tax dollars into his collection plate, and those folks will all be personal friends of the emperor.
Scoff all you like, but don’t say I didn’t tell you.
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his daily commentaries at Pen and Sword.