It's Time for Americans to Admit That We've Had a Coup d’etat

Hard to disagree.

It's Time for Americans to Admit That We've Had a Coup d’etat

I had to check the date on the article. At least they namechecked the Cheney/Rove Administration.

Even if one ignores the writer's questionable use of the term coup d’etat, and further ignores the writer's significant role in the creation of "trickle-down" economics, and pays no attention to his use of dramatic hyperbole such as "the Obama tyranny," one must still see that he has missed the point completely, even while overstating his case.

Yes, the current and recent American administrations commit questionable and often blatantly illegal acts. But are we experiencing the takeover of the government by a tyrannical executive branch? No, of course, not. The takeover of the government began many, many years ago when the business community realized that it is cheaper to buy politicians that it is to compete with one another for customers. It is more profitable to buy politicians than it is to conduct business in a moral and socially-beneficial manner.

It is certainly true that the removal of democracy from the system began long ago and has progressed over an extended period. But it is also true that Shrub and Obama have accelerated the process (a lot) to the point that there is now no fig leaf left. Probably coup is the wrong term, but I don't know what the right term would be.

Jimmy Carter: US “has no functioning democracy”

Quote :

“America does not at the moment have a functioning democracy,” he said at an event in Atlanta on Tuesday sponsored by the Atlantik Bruecke, a private nonprofit association working to further the German-U.S. relationship. The association’s name is German for “Atlantic bridge.” Carter’s remarks didn’t appear in the American mainstream press but were reported from Atlanta by the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, whose Washington correspondent Gregor Peter Schmitz said on Twitter he was present at the event. The story doesn’t appear in the English-language section of the Spiegel website and is only available in German.

I'm not sure there is a specific term for what has been transpiring; perhaps "Purchase."

While the scale of the spying on Americans has greatly increased of late, that may be due in large part to the fact that only recently has the technology to allow such wide-spread snooping been available.

Sixty years ago, J. Edgar ran a lot of domestic spying programs, but they were necessarily limited by prevailing methodology.

Yeah, good old Jimmy Carter. The man speaks the truth and anyone who doesn't like it can kiss his cracker ass. You'd never catch him apologizing to Rush Limbaugh.