In other words, we didn’t get here by accident. And “zero tolerance” in public schools for not saying the Pledge of Allegiance (not to mention actual, bona-fide torture of prisoners by our military) is just the tip
of the gradual, relentless return to a system of serfs and overlords.

Enlightening but depressing reads are Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, Raj Patel’s “The Value of Nothing”, and of course good ol’ Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the U.S.”

The sorrow, when looking back historically, is that the U.S. has been set up since its support in the 1960s and ’70s of wholly undemocratic fascism in Central and South America as well as the Middle East (Iran, anyone?), combined with the election of Reagan and the juggernaut of “free market” economic policies over human welfare (Poland, South Africa) which has come to glorious fruition in the US, supporting egregious corporate malfeasance with “too big to fail” government bailouts while cutting spending on education and basic human services. People don’t object to being taxed if they can see it improves their lives. Shifting the burden of taxation to the poor and middle class while simultaneously closing parks, reducing government services, gutting public school spending, and accepting that not only is it right and appropriate for the cost of health care in the US to be the highest in the world, but that the profits of corporate CEOs and shareholders are far more important than actual health care availability is simply the culmination of fifty years of deliberate undermining and unraveling of American Democracy.