Monday, June 4, 2012

Any intelligent life here?

I seem to remember, back in my youth, a news item on TV that had Russian Prime Minister Kruschev yelling that the USSR would bury the USA. I recall, that I thought they didn’t have a chance in hell of getting us. Perhaps not by attacking our soil, or outmaneuvering our military. Yet, here we are fifty some years later, a half a century later, and we have a department of homeland security. Not to mention a list of czars hand picked by our duly elected president. Back before the Berlin Wall came down, we citizens of the USA heard news reports of Russia’s Homeland, and their Homeland Security. History is replete with references to Ceaser, Kaiser, Tsar, Tzar, Czar. And now, we have them in our government. Seems I remember every government associated with the names, was a totalitarian government. A centralized government, if you will. Places where the citizenry had no say in what happened with the country, nation, city or state. Places where citizens would snitch on their neighbors and countrymen, perhaps for reward money, or to keep the authorities away from them. One of my favorite books in the 70s was titled The Persecutor, by Sergei Kourdakov. It told the story of a family in Russia, where the father had been arrested by the state, and the mother and son were left to eke out an existence on their own. Except, women were usually not hired, and especially women whose husbands had been arrested by the state. It told of a young boy, who could not go to school, could not get a job, and subsisted by eating whatever garbage he might find, and occasionally stealing something from a merchant. Exacerbating the whole situation, was the fact that if neighbors (perhaps the ones that had informed on the father) attempted to give nurture or food to the family, they stood the chance of being arrested as accomplices. Who’da ever thunk, that in 2012, here in the United States of America, a president would implement a web site on the internet, where citizens could go straight to the administration to report their neighbors comments, or activities!?! Well, it has been sed, you never know/appreciate what you have until it is gone. Once the home of the brave, and the land of the free is gone, it will never be returned.