From whence comes democracy, the government or the people?

A fine, passionate diarist elsewhere lamented:

I am angry.  I despair.  I am outraged.  I am exhausted.  I teach about a government that perhaps no longer exists

Which made me wonder:  maybe too the existence of democracy itself in the US is more mythical than not…  Remember women only got the right to vote in 1920, Native Americans and Chinese (among others) in 1924.  Up until the 1960’s women in many states, if married, automatically ceded their property to their husband.  In the 1960’s a woman could be fired for pregnancy, needed a male signator on her credit card even if she was a Rockefeller, and pregnant girls were kicked out of high school.

Native American children were punished for speaking their native languages until very recently on their own reservations.

I know this is probably going to be deleted, and if it is to be spared, my intention is not to bash another certain website but to raise the question as to why people are laughing at the question of nascent fascism.  Someone clue me in. 

A certain diary claims of a prominent website:

In the interest of preserving civil discourse and honesty in diaries on [censored], the following filters are going to be added to comments and diaries posted on the site.

If the filter detects that you are using genocidal terms to describe something that is not, in fact, genocide, the software will automatically tone down your rhetoric to a more appropriate level. For instance, if you write a diary comparing the roving gangs troll rating your comments down to the Ton Ton Macoute, Scoop will automatically rewrite your statement to reflect reality; namely, you’re getting pissy because you’re posting crap comments and people are calling you on it.

Any use of the word “fascist” or “fascism”, when not used to describe actual fascists, will be changed to “Whigist” and “Whigism”. It’s just about as appropriate. Note: for the purposes of this filter, Franco, Salazar, the German-American Bund, and Oswald Mosely are acceptable as fascists, as are groups like the American Nazi Party and other NSDAP inspired groups. Republicans, both neo- and paleo-conservative, the State of Israel, and that cop who confiscated your beer when you were 16 are not.
Any use of the term “Orwellian” when not used to discuss the works of George Orwell will be replaced with “I am a fucking idiot who’s too lazy to do his own thinking about past, present, and future political situations.”
I hope these changes will be a service to you all.

Aunt Helen 3/29/03

jaw clenched tight
so tight I thought maybe
your dentures were out
no rascally laugh from you
although the party
was in your honor
your reign has become solemn
something too piercing about your gaze
to say you are resigned
although you know…

you are in transit
the veil evaporates about  you
Heaven naked over your head
visible only to you
the cake did not amuse you either
this sugary message
that you are not expected
to live another two months
or survive your usual annual birthday party
something like the silent scream
of a great lion up a tree
surrounded by the hounds

how do you feel about going
down that road
what went from you to me
you read me and I
heard it ring like
a bell
even out of earshot
your pronouncement
about me
your golden gavel

they’re too calm
about your passing
you and I shared this
in silence
from across a
cake with no candles
“ageless, you become”
say your children
the birthday of
no number –
“into the river of our tribe with you already”

[Hat tip to Cronesense, who inspired me like some loving juggernaut.  Thank you.]

[first diary originally published on DKos 11/19/05.  The following are excerpts.]

now cross-posted at DailyKos

This diary is about war, and what it does to people. Although I write about WWII, which is said to be over, it is just a scream back from the other end of a time warp through that tunnel to hell known as warfare. It is an echo of the present war in Iraq, and the last terrified glint in my dying mother’s eyes.

Mine is the information soldiers would tell the U.S. if only they would be allowed to return. For the victors can suffer worse fates, in the end, than the vanquished. I know this because Dad brought World War II home with him.

This is also the story of one of the first internet bloggers (not too successful with the technology in his 80`s) whose nickname happened to be “Webb.” As he lay on his deathbed, I gave my word to Dad that I would write about him – having more capability to honor him than his poor, confused mind would allow at the end of his life. And now I had better get to writing while we still have the freedom to use the internet. For the “military-industrial-complex” government Dad feared and foresaw all his adult life has at last come to power.

Now we are learning what really immobilizes Congress – what deafens them to their electorate.  Because finally a recommended diary by a credible source tells the truth:  the US is owned by her creditors.  This is the gory backside of globalization.

Sometime sooner (or probably later) it will also be announced:  there is heavy foreign “investment” in the US wars/occupations by numerous foreign governments.

No kidding – what is at the heart of the credit industry meltdown is so bizarre that Kurt Vonnegut might have channeled the story:  literally a game of computerized craps.

While the US homeowner is being impugned and scapegoated for the credit meltdown in the MSM, the comely mask was torn off a monster, exposing insider trading at the heart of the fiasco.  While the MSM pillories the US mortgage holders, finance media blogsphere erupts into a field day satirizing “Frankenstein Finance” and computers gone berserk

Time to shred the costumery and parlance adorning hedge funds.  This is too easy to understand.  This credit crash evokes 2001: A Space Odyssey and the treacly voice of Hal, one seemingly omniscient computer. 

Hal, you there?  Hal, can you help us make sense of this mess?