To the editor:
In today's political discourse, there is no more hostile epithet being bandied about than "Nazi."
Lost in the spell of that word is any objective comparison to the lessons from that time and possible parallels with the Bush and Obama administrations. There are, however, similarities with the power structure that has held sway in this country over the last decade.
We have monopolistic corporations supporting charismatic leaders. The leaders solidify the corporations' sway over the economy while creating an aura of fear. Then greater social control is obtained in response to the propagated fears.
In the last year the Treasury secretaries of both administrations have allowed the private Federal Reserve Bank to double its balance sheet at the risk of the American taxpayer. This does not include any of the $23 trillion in contingent liabilities the Treasury Department assumes if the toxic debt created by Wall Street is pledged to the Fed.
When Congress balked at funding this banker bailout, Sen. Inhofe of Oklahoma was threatened that its failure could provoke martial law.
The majority of the automobile industry and soon the entire healthcare industry will have been taken from the private economy and placed in the hands of an unaccountable elite. "Cap and Trade," the proposed tax on the air used to create energy, could further restrict private enterprise. There has even been talk of federal bailouts for newspaper corporations! What would that spell for editorials such as this?
In the social arena, fear is propagated on multiple fronts to create the impetus for government to further exert its control. War on Terror, swine flu, climate change, Amber Alerts — heck, even loose weather balloons — now qualify as mass traumatizing events that require Big Brother's steady intervention. Obama is on record as calling for a Civilian Security Force "just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded" as our military.
We then witnessed the U.S. Northern Command begun under Bush receive authorization to expand from 24,000 to ultimately 489,000 troops within our own borders. A great many of these are foreign soldiers, enticed with citizenship, and recruited from overseas. In years past they would have been called mercenaries.
The state of Massachusetts just passed Senate Bill 2028, which allows the governor to declare martial law, suspend private property rights without due process and forcibly quarantine and inoculate citizens. Failure to comply carries a $1,000 fine and 30 days in jail on each count. This simply mirrors the executive orders on the federal level initiated by Bush and now extended by Obama.
We live in a very real climate where given the proper trigger, the people may willingly accept a declaration of martial law. This would effectively suspend the Constitution. We ignore these facts at our own peril.
When the Allies freed the concentration camps in Germany, they forced the German citizens to walk through and bear witness. Most were shocked and dismayed that such horrors could occur in their own land. The ability to turn a blind eye to such affairs is not to be underestimated.
It is time, now, to open our eyes to the changes we are witnessing. We must ask ourselves, do we not have the very kind of government our Founding Fathers sought to protect us from?
We are mortgaging our grandchildren under a mountain of debt to banking cartels and foreign dictatorships. We live in a country of "free speech zones" and "hate crimes," with regulations dictating the very minutiae of our everyday lives. We meekly suffer onerous taxes, abuses of power, contorted laws that limit our Bill of Rights, and abandon our rights to privacy and private property.
It is not too late to right this ship of state. But we must first awaken ourselves to the gravity of our plight.
Anthony Mirabito
Danvers
