Living in Fear: Welcome to Fascist America

Roger Simon makes the point that life in the US is starting to resemble the old Soviet Union.
Living in Fear: Welcome to Fascist America

Back in the ’80s when, on a couple of occasions, I visited the Soviet Union, I always wondered what was it really like to live in that godforsaken place. But it didn’t much matter. For all the creepy spying that was going on, I realized I’d be out of there in a week or two.

Now I know what it was like. It’s come home.

I live in fear.

I don’t want to admit it, but it’s true. Every phone call I make, every email I send, every text I message, every article I write including this one, I imagine being bugged or recorded.

1984 is here and it’s not pretty.

It infects everything we do.

For example, I want to criticize the IRS with every breath I take, but in the back of my head I worry — what if they come after me? What if I’m audited and have to spend the next few years and untold dollars on accountants and attorneys? Is this fair to my family? Is this how I want to spend my life?

Life goes on even in the middle of the most horrible events. And that’s what allows the press to turn their backs and pretend that tyranny is not taking over; that people are not watching what they say because, like residents of the Soviet Union, they could get the attention of the government agents that can make your life a living hell.

I know. I have heard my family tell about life in occupied Holland during World War 2. There was hunger, even starvation, danger from bombers; searches for contraband like bicycle tires, deportations to labor in Germany. And that’s for those who were not Jews; we know what happened to them.  Yet people lived their lives, had kids, and made do.  It has not gotten to that stage here. The tyranny of the ObamaState is of a softer kind: one or more of the alphabet agencies will descend on you to ruin your life. Or perhaps they can get a cooperative woman to claim you raped her.

Who is to say if I have the IRS audit me it’s because I wrote things that are critical of the regime? Would the press care? Hell, they don’t like what I write and would get a kick out of watching me get audited, investigated or even accused of crime. Regimes always have the support of the press. That part of the press that may oppose it usually gets intimidated or has its own problems with the powers that be.

 

The ones who are the easiest to intimidate are the ones with the most to lose, firmly middle class or modestly upper class like Simon. I recall Solzhenitsyn saying that he felt most free once he was in the Gulag, because there he had nothing more to lose; there was nothing more they could take away from him.

If you think these are paranoid ramblings, watch the Congressional hearings. Congress is supposed to be the watchdog to keep the administrative state in check. Note that the Administration’s minions are thumbing their noses are congressional deadlines. They are blatantly, openly lying to congressional committees with no fear that they will be prosecuted.  And why should they worry?  The police powers are firmly in the hands of the regime.

To paraphrase Stalin: “how many divisions has Darrell Issa?”