The only cure I can see is to neuter the beast: take away its strength. And the way to do that is to shrink it, so it's no longer the 800-lb gorilla that can push everyone around.
-CWuestefeld
Sounds good - but like putting the proverbial bell on the cat - exactly
how do you accomplish that?
You have a government that has gradually centralized all real power in the Executive Branch. And this Executive Branch has become increasingly uncontrollable due to it's assumption of unprecedented privileges and its deliberate defiance of any attempts to enforce a workable system of checks and balances over it.
You also have a "representative" Legislative Branch that no longer even feels the need to do more than pay lip service to the notion of acting on behalf of its electorate, let alone represent it.
You have a feckless and divided federal judiciary, burdened by age and a love of definition that borders on the pathological, that freely admits (often with a note of pride) how very little it understands about the many of the crucial things (education reform, software, patents, the Internet, modern communications, women, children, families, etc.) it so glibly rules on. And so often with such disastrous consequences.
Then you have an ever increasingly powerful, arrogant and secretive government bureaucracy - consisting of many obscurely named agencies - which also have their own enforcers in the form of duly sworn "agents" (or independent security "consultants" and "contractors") who do what they're paid to do - with no questions asked. And this bureaucracy (which is not accountable to the electorate and is now becoming increasingly difficult to rein in because of it) has more and more come to believe that IT rather than the PEOPLE is what constitutes
The United States of America.
So maybe I sound cynical, but what exactly can you do to shrink a monster that is incapable of internal reform - and is actively hostile towards any outside attempts reform it? Especially when it has access to guns, drones, wiretaps, secure communications, is willing to defy the elected branches of government when push comes to shove, and has a documented history of lying whenever asked an inconvenient question?
Walt Kelly absolutely
nailed it back in 1971:
"It's a big problem." as my 5-year old niece likes to say.
So...anybody have any good workable ideas about how to fix this mess that wouldn't be interpreted as "seditious speech" under The Patriot Act?
Recent Posts
Awesome!
And I don't even smoke any more! 
)