By Stacey Warde
YellowTimes.org Guest Columnist (United States) 

(YellowTimes.org) – Sometimes it's difficult to tell dreams from reality. Everything is so surreal in America these days. 

You hear conversations about conspiracies in the White House and beyond; fears are openly expressed regarding the establishment of a police state; there is a further diminishment of our civil liberties; there is war and famine; there is the desertification of our entire food supply.

What makes the coffee shop and public-square conversations so frightening and surreal is that we thought we were smart enough that this would never happen here. We are highly educated in our understanding of totalitarian regimes and their civil "engineering" of offices and institutions, their mining of the lives of human beings, and the environment for the continuance of the state and corporate economies. We've seen and heard it all before through fiction, fantasy and actual experience. The 20th century was full of horrors, real and imagined. 

What we know and remember of that era with its carnage and holocausts always seemed like a dream to us, a really bad dream far removed from our experience of the "good life" in the U.S. Barely two years into the new millennium, we're seeing all this stuff again. But this time, it's here. It's at home, in the land of the free. The similarities between recent events in the U.S. and those we witnessed more than 60 years ago in Nazi Germany are too close to ignore. 

Observations about creeping fascism in American politics and governance are entering the public discourse more frequently, in coffee shops and, finally, in respectable news journals across the country. Yet it remains hard for us to imagine that one day we may be overrun by fanaticism for the Homeland with its requisite military apparatus, martial law and disregard for civil liberties. Could this happen in the U.S., where we suppose that our "elected" representatives will protect our rights as American citizens? It not only could, it is. 

That's the surrealism of our time. The threat of collapse seems to be all about. We see and hear it everywhere we go. The government is corrupt and corporate America has goosed the last remaining bit of life out of our economy. 

Are we dreaming or something? 

Not according to some members of the National Press Club, who have organized a citizens' investigative committee into the events surrounding 9/11. Since Congress doesn't seem interested in finding out who's really responsible for the massive failure to protect American citizens from last September's terrorist attacks, a group of citizens has taken it upon themselves to find out. Check out UnansweredQuestions.org, the website formed by these citizen activists, because the implications of some of the questions they raise are huge. For example, how could the Pentagon have had such a huge hole in its armor? Is there no protected airspace surrounding America's cherished war room? 

Many of us still feel unsure about foul play in high places. Maybe things aren't so bad, we say. Sure, we can hardly pay the rent, and we have to work three jobs now to pay for corporate crime and protect our families from terrorism. And so what if we have to give up the right to a trial by a jury of peers, or the right to protect our homes and other personal effects against unlawful police searches. So what if due process has been eliminated from our long list of protections? What's the big deal about sacrificing a few civil liberties for the good of the Homeland? It worked for Hitler. 

Most of us shrug it off, retreat to our homes, watch the news with fear and trepidation, build islands of safety from the encroaching disaster of totalitarianism, the further rape and pillage of the environment, the ongoing corporate terrorist assault on our economy and civil liberties. 

But we are not safe. The little bubbles of safety we've manufactured for ourselves will soon burst. 

If citizens don't act now to clean up the government, call to account those responsible for the massive failure to prevent the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and demand the protections afforded through the U.S. Constitution, we will have seen the last of the great American experiment with democracy and freedom. The reality that we thought was a dream will turn into our worst nightmare unless we take up the cause of liberty, and see that the real threat to our national security is our own wayward leadership. 

[Stacey Warde washes windows for a living to support his freelance writing habit. In his spare time, he studies worms, soils and organic plants. Warde supports innovators who grow their own food, generate their own power and reduce their dependencies on idiot politicians, rogue CEOs, and non-renewable resources. He lives in the United States.] 

Stacey Warde encourages your comments: upanatom@thegrid.net 

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