A Leash that Slowly Tightens

[enough]

A diary by Maccabee on Daily Kos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/20/174152/072

Describes a conversation with a cab driver from Romania. Long and well worth reading the whole thing.

snip>

Florin was born and raised in Communist Romania and fought his corrupt government tooth and nail just to be free. They imprisoned him, took him outside the purview of any lawyers, any embassies, any churches or otherwise any place he could find representation.

Then they tortured him.

Some nun brought his case to some university students in Hungary and next thing you know, he became a minor cause celebre for Amnesty International.

snip>

"What brought you to America?"

"I hated the Communists and the mess they made of everything. I wanted to live in a country that was free."

A long pause followed.

Then I told him, "I have soured on America frankly."

Another long pause, then he sighed and said "Yes, me too. Me too."

"Well you've lived in tyranny sir, what do you think of Bush?"

He spoke in a very thick Romanian accent, "He is as bad as any Communist leader I ever fought against. He is a bad bad man and he has bad plans for this country."

"Now how do you know all that?" I asked him.

"I have seen all this before."

"OK, give me your prediction."

Another long silence.

"I think the same thing will happen as in Romania when I grew up there. It starts with fixed elections. First the 2000 election was fixed and then the 2004 election was fixed. It happened in Communist elections just like it happened here. The people who count the votes are all in the government that's in power. And even when it seems like people have had enough, the tyrant will always somehow come out winning just enough to make your conspiracy theories seem ridiculous. Just like in Romania and Bulgaria of the sixties and seventies, the press may even report problems with elections, but Bush knows that Americans are lazy. I am sorry my friend. Maybe not you. But Americans are lazy and they will not seek their freedoms. Because it is always frightening to fight the government. But you are mistaken if you think you will avoid trouble by going along with the government. One day you will write a letter to the editor and sign your name, and then the next time you are at a train station, they will tell you `you cannot ride'. Or at the airport they will say you cannot get on a plane. Or they will stop you are the border, and just like Romania and the other Communist countries, America will become your prison. When the 2000 elections happened, my 89 year grandmother-in-law asked if we could go back to Bucharest. You see, this smells just like the communists in Europe to her. Corrupt. Incompetent. Totally controlling the media, the elections. Once they have that, and a lazy press, that's it. I mean that's it. They will continue to install an overbearing government where idiots who wear white gloves and badges, low-level-small-paycheck bureaucrats get to stop you at airports and demand to know where you are from and where you are going and what your business is. They will ask if you support the Party, or "who did you vote for?' It will come down to the day when you will see the police jump on someone for no reason and you will turn your heads and act like you have seen nothing. Your neighbor's wife will knock on your door desperately at 3 in the morning and tell you her husband was arrested out of his sleep last night. And she will cry and ask where he is. And you will make her coffee and call the local police and they local gendarme or sheriff or whatever will come by and pat her on the shoulder and will say he was taken by the Feds and they have no idea where he is going."

snip> MUCH MORE

[izzie]

1. The sad part is the people who put these people in go once

it is all in place the rule becomes more narrow as the leaders must hold control even more. Lenin could not have Trotsky around any more. They may be using the far right religious groups but they will be one of the first to go. It always seem to work like this.

[enough]

2. I fear you are correct.

[izzie]

6. I do not see why this is true but seems to work out so.

May be Machiavelli book the Prince is the thing to read. I never have. I find it an interesting subject. Ever on personal levels you see this type of actions by the person who wants to control. And I am talking about one to one control.PHY 101 is as far as I ever went in such things. I was much more in to how societies work and find that part interesting.

[NotGivingUp]

3. We are seeing the end days of our democracy.

And it looks like we're just not gonna do enough to stop it. Too many are afraid, lazy, non-caring, etc. Writing to our representatives doesn't seem to be doing a damn thing. It's gonna take more.

[meldroc]

4. Just like boiling frogs.

To quote Claire Wolfe, "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."

Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo's prisoners are canaries in a coal mine. What is happening to them will eventually happen to us, unless we act now. I fear it is now very, very close to time to start shooting the bastards.

[meldroc]

5. The thing that really disturbs me...

This isn't the first account I've read from someone who had formerly lived in a totalitarian regime that is seeing the U.S. becoming like those regimes. Former Eastern Bloc residents, Jews who lived under Nazi rule, maybe even sent to camps, etc.

It's getting worse. Far worse. Quite frankly, given the choice between totalitarianism and civil war, I choose war. I'll fight.