But when we had our "It's gonna happen" meeting on Monday we were told that the orders had come down from the top to make the shutdown as painful as possible. We are run by Obama appointees - THEY are the top, not the House of Representatives.
And I hope everybody took note of the shutdown of the Claude Moore Farm this week. Armed police were sent to remove all staff from the property. Although the farm sits on federal property, it runs completely on private funding and volunteers.
How long before the orders are more onerous? How long until it's escalated? How long will they just keep doing their jobs, just keep following orders?
How much longer are people going to ignore the history of countries like Germany, lost in the belief that "It can't happen here. We're different."
And the question is what do we do about it? It's obvious that our checks and balances have failed - we are already living in a soft tyranny. How do we remove the cancer that is destroying this country?
I suspect there will be no wide-spread response from the citizenry in general until the police try to confiscate firearms.
ReplyDeleteTHAT failure will be spectacular, and very VERY ugly.
1776 is one answer.
ReplyDeleteIf it's a mass confiscation, yes, it could get ugly. But onesie and twoesies, with explanation that the person was determined to be mentally ill, had a felony conviction, etc., I think most people will just let it slide till the police come to take them away from them, then they'll be upset - and alone.
ReplyDeleteThe average German citizen in 1944-45 felt the same way....sure, there were camps that the rabble were sent to, but their .gov couldn't have done THAT in those camps, right? Hitler didn't go full nutzo from the start, he used the frog-in-boiling-water routine: gradually turn up the heat, and the frog won't notice. I get the sickening feeling that the same thing is happening here.
ReplyDelete"just following orders" Three scary words.
ReplyDeleteDamn, just damn...
ReplyDeleteJon,
ReplyDelete"But onesie and twoesies, with explanation that the person was determined to be mentally ill, had a felony conviction, etc."
Every time I hear that theory, I want to yell "DO THE MATH!"
Unless they cease all new gun purchases, they could take the guns away from a hundred Americans a day and still lose ground.
Even if they did cease all new purchases and confiscated the guns of 100 gun owners a day, the last guy would have 2,192 years to wait before they finally got to him, so it's not like he wouldn't have plenty of warning.
No, they'll need to be a lot more overt if they want Mr. and Mrs. America to "turn them all in" like Ms. Feinstein fantasizes about.
@Rick, Rev, Jon, NFO, Tam -
ReplyDeleteYesterday we find that priests are being threatened with arrest if they celebrate Mass during the shutdown. There are plenty of people out there who have been fine with things like forcing religious people to go against their consciences. It's not THEIR religion, and they don't like that religion anyway. So it's OK. Or, if not completely OK, they push down the little nigglings of unease so that they can still fit in with their crowd.
Tyranny never begins with the face of a madman. It begins with good speeches and high flying words, a drive to make the country better because the people are so good that nothing can go wrong. Our country is now full of people that happily make excuses because this all is going to make things better, and the divisive ones will now be silenced or hobbled. As long as it's THAT guy, not me, everything is fine. So they remain silent. Or they smirk and feel that it's deserved.
We are SO following that pattern. We still have maybe a decade to go until fruition, but if something doesn't change our children will live in a different world.
They will keep following orders until they are massacred in an ambush and realize their jobs are less important than their lives.
ReplyDelete