CIVIL WAR

I have always naively believed that America would always be a great democracy, the land of the free.  I know that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, but even eternal vigilance no longer works.  American democracy is being destroyed and the nation is in the process of being taken over by billionaires and corporations.  They, of course, feel that they know what is best for the rest of us peons.  They have the gall to declare that they are concerned about voter fraud and proceed to try to remove legitimate voters from the rolls if they appear to be supporting the opposing party.  They have been trying in every way to suppress voting among Democrats.  I am appalled by the practices of the Republican Party.  I feel that I am fully qualified to see their corruption because I was "born and raised" a Republican.  My parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents on both sides of the family were all Republicans.  I have become totally opposed to the Republican Party and everything that it has come to stand for.  The first environmentalists were Republicans.  The Republican Party was the party of Lincoln.  Now it is the party of the Oligarchs.

In many ways we are still fighting the Civil War.  For one hundred years after the war ended, it continued to be fought through civil and uncivil methods, such of voting restrictions, housing restrictions, segregation, etc.  Then the Civil Rights movement began and the war started all over again.  Now we are apparently living through a back-lash to the Civil Rights movement.  The Civil War was probably a mistake in the first place.  Lincoln should have let the South secede from the Union.  I have read that slavery was becoming financially unsustainable anyway.  If it had been allowed to die a natural death maybe there would not have resulted in such hatred.  The war engendered tremendous hatred of Northerners and blacks.  That hatred is back with a vengeance now.  People are beside themselves over the fact that we have a black president.  They insist that it is not because he is black.  "He is not an American citizen; he was not born in America.  He is a Muslim.  He is a socialist."  The fact is he is an American citizen, he was born in the United States, and he is a Christian.  To these people everything is socialism.  How can anyone have a right to life without health care. Half the American population has been brainwashed by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck.  It is amazing that they have been able to accomplish this takeover.  It is also truly unsettling.  I never dreamed that I would live to see the destruction of America and the end of democracy in the United States.