What I don't understand, Little Hawk, is how you and Rig & other dilettantes can 'see' this growing threat so clearly while trained professional observers (some of whom are actually not cowed or employed or deceived by Big Money or clever lobbyists or lulled by cushy jobs) are unaware of the menace!
Many of us in the US are keenly aware of the changes wrought since Reagan began dismantling some of the institutions that kept a measure of sanity in our structure & policies...and that a few years of Clinton didn't repair enough, though fiscal sanity was temporarily restored.
   The increase in registration and involvement of Democrats this year indicated that Bush and the Republicans pushed their luck WAY too far with lies, scandals and disregard for the plight of the average man.
Barack Obama, if he is elected, will have a HUGE task to steer this country back to a sane path...but he is saying many of the right things so far...(and NOT saying some of the things that would get him reviled by many special interest groups).

   We Americans who see all these things are not stupid and KNOW that all is not well...but neither are we going to bite on wild theories like we "are living inside a once democratic society that has been quietly mutating into a fascist militaristic state for decades.."!!!
Can you imagine a political candidate running on THAT scare tactic? He'd be laughed off the stage. And YOU should re-examine what specific indications you 'think' you see to give you such a distorted, generalized view of what is merely a swing to conservatism fueled by world events and a batch of lucky, but ultimately incompetent, idiots.

I hope I live for ANOTHER 10 years of Mudcat debates so I can point and say "see?"!