"Nurse Ratshit now does housecalls"

Here's a beautiful, darkfunny rant that admixes clarity, poetry, righteous anger and political sophistication. I can't imagine a more succinct, more accurate summary for where Murka is right now.

Following this article (excerpt):

What is the lesson for us from this and from other closing societies, some of them democracies? You can have a working Congress or Parliament; newspapers; human rights groups; even elections; but when ordinary people start to be hurt by the state for speaking out, dissent closes quickly and the shock chills opposition very, very fast. Once that happens, democracy has been so weakened that major tactical and strategic incursions — greater violations of democratic process — are far more likely. If there is dissent about the vote in Florida in this next presidential election — and the police are tasering voters rights groups — we will still have an election.

What we will not have is liberty.

We have to understand what time it is. When the state starts to hurt people for asking questions, we can no longer operate on the leisurely time of a strong democracy...

is this brilliant comment by Pancho September 20th, 2007 4:35 am:

Concerning the young dissident "citizen Meyer", he certainly had the wind knocked out of his barely unfurled sails as he brandished a dangerous weapon (Mr Palast's rather inocuous Armed Madhouse) certainly not the threat to the ship of state or ship of fools depending on how one views modern amerika that the brandishing of Mao's Little Red Book or Das Kapital back in the heyday of disgruntled youth, flower power and Nam by damn would have entailed!

Faced with the two-party or better siamese twins party, mickey mouse donald duck pepsi coke burger pig mousocracy under which amerikans are forced to eek out their futures Mr. Meyer's excitement is all too understandable. If some of the old fogies here consider the young Meyer's passion to be disgruntlement, outrage and sedition then by Jesus let's stoke up the camp furnaces already and get on with the next stage of the rapture rupture Zionist masterplan and get these kids to goosestep into the chambers of redemption in the fascist Homeland camps sprouting around amerika for those with the eyes still to see and the frontal lobe still to discern.

Ken Keasy can be happy as he grooves in his grave that Nurse Ratshit now does housecalls and campus calls when the disadvantaged Afro-amerikan police goons of state are called in to haul away our academic MacMurphys who insist on exhibiting their psychosis in public. "One bad apple, Billy Bibbit and the whole barrel goes rotten!" You can hear Mistress of Electro shock and dominatrix of frontal lobotomy exclaim to the started patients standing meekly by as the "thug" is wrestled to the floor and "medicated".

Ah amerika, you never let me down. When I expect it can't get any worse, bombing and exterminating on 3 continents in how many sub-wars of your great terror war then you up the ante and shoot yourself in the dick once again. Let's do it right and open a damn chain of Abu Ghraibs nationwide goddamn it!

If amerikans are to learn anything from this latest in-your-face brownshirt stormtrooping overkill, let it be that the "democrats" should be beyond your contempt. You are on your own and there is no Mr. Gorbachev anywhere in sight. As Ketchup Kerry (Reagan's vegetable) stood there babbling and blathering as Mr. Winston Smith, the square peg was pushed through the round hole for all to see, the last illusion of your precious democratic freedoms and choice must surely have taken a kick between the legs.

Ketchup Kerry jumped the Swift Boat once again, plain as the tattoo on your darlin's ass and proved to the rest of the world whatever about the sheeple in the land of the blah blah blah and the home of the blah blah blah, that that particular shill and wanna be "commander in chief" of your corporate warring militia mercenaries harvesting the people of Iraq will protect the interests of your elite and abuse your "rights" as long as he is paid to do it so help me Gawd.

So take your prozac, your crack and coke and shut your damn mouth hole because your opinions mean diddley squat in sewer pipe media 'merka! That's what Ketchup was blathering about and if you don't buy it then play The Cuckoo sequence backwards one more time and listen to the meaningless droning of the man skulking in the background you once were naive enough to think might save your sorry asses!

Of course the real tragedy in all of this is not that there are those scum in the student body that supported the violation of Meyer's once "inalienable" rights but that the rest of them, the ones with the brains just didn't have the balls to fight for those long lost rights as the "Jew" in their midst was hauled away to face his unenviable destiny.

Perhaps it's time for a refresher about where Murka seems to be heading...

[Here is a good, more straightforward analysis of the event and its ramification.] (excerpt):

This event says a great deal about the state of American democracy. It speaks to the immense nervousness and fear within the entire political establishment over the growth of popular opposition, especially among young people, to its policies of militarism and social reaction.
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
If what transpired Monday night is the response to some questions raised by one person at a public forum, what is being prepared in the event of mass protests and social and political struggles? The obvious answer is mass repression and state violence.
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Is there a connection between this outrageous attack on free speech and the vast network of data bases being assembled by government authorities, compiled by means of illegal spying and other police state measure instituted in the name of the “war on terror?”