It's The Enemy Within. . .

That Old Truism Is Coming True Once Again, This Time For America
by The Old Hippie Because It's Not Outside Forces - It's The "Us Destroying Us" That Is Reality

Recorded history is filled with many "great" nations and empires falling apart, and some even disappearing, from the rot of corruption from within, rather than from the attacks of enemies from without.  In every single case, the citizens of those "great" nations and empires "thought" it could never happen to them.  Just as a majority of the current citizens of my own nation, America, now believe.  Even some of my reality-based cohorts think America's Constitutional Democracy's structures will save the government "of, by, and for the people," rather than the reality exposed by Bill Moyers, in his book "Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times," "...the soul of democracy is dying in America, replaced increasingly by government of, by, and for a corporate ruling class."

Is It Possible?  Like So Many Nations Before It - America Destroyed From Within?
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I am a realist, not a denialist.  I know it is possible that America can be, and most likely will be, if it happens, destroyed from within, not from without.  In my short 58 years on this mortal coil I've watched my nation go from respected to hated, from a sane guiding light to the world to the feared bully, from battling tyranny to being a tyranny - From what used to be a functioning Constitutional Democracy to the brink of an enhanced opportunistic and corrupt Corporatist Theocratic and Ideological state, with totalitarian safeguards, with a six-corporation controlled media. And I have witnessed the successful erosion of the Separation of the Church and the State, to the point that religious [nut-job Evangelical Christian] mythology is being allowed to be purposely and opportunistically confused with the reality of science.

I really don't think most Americans truly realize just how close we are to losing "America."  Throughout the whole history of this unique experiment of the American Constitutional Democracy, the American Revolution, the internal turmoil of the Civil War, the Great Depression, the two World Wars, the Cultural Revolution during the 60s/70s and the Vietnam War," never has our nation been so close to losing all of its protections from the "Separation of Powers."   Never.

Our once powerful protection of the Separation of Powers has now been consolidated into one corrupted party of the corporations, which is still in power, still doing all it can to take as much "power" away from the people and the other branches, and put it into the single branch of the Executive - the hands of the few - away from the "Republic" and into the corporate controllers of the "Empire."  And "they" are continuing to do so even in the face of all of the recent exposures of corrupt cronyism.

These are not "interesting times" we live in, they are very dangerous times, for the Constitutional Democracy, for the hope of real freedoms and liberties for all peoples, and not to mention for the reality of our environment. I can't deny that I find the fact that 39% of my fellow Americans still live inside the denial of this reality.

I'll end this with a not-so-off-the-subject thought. . .
"Art Without Science - and/or - Science Without Art - Is Neither."

There is a very purposeful and real reason that almost all institutes of higher learning's core school is called "Arts and Sciences."  Many knowledgeable people have said the best scientists are artists, and the best artists are scientists.  Think about it.  [and of course, as any true scientist or artist would say - there are always exceptions to every rule.]