Some have mentioned: Why bring up NSA Spying now and not back in 2006?

[Cerridwen]

94. Remember them? Hell, I are one 'o them.

I was too young to be a hippy but I was plenty old enough to see the world wasn't what I was being told it was. My elders said one thing yet did another. I heard them complain about politicians over and over and over again then do nothing about them. My family is mostly apolitical. Except for various union memberships and union positions over the years. When it came to electoral politics they complained but were absent.

I was just about 5 when JFK was assassinated. My mother explained it as 2 children, mine and my brother's age, had just lost their father. I remember we went straight to her parent's house when she heard. I didn't quite get the words but the emotions were obvious. She needed to be with her parents. She was about 25. It was horrible.

Most of what followed was kept from me as I was "too sensitive" to the emotions around the unmatching words.

Back then, school reform was teaching to the child; unions provided the best jobs, pay, and benefits; poverty was to be addressed rather than those in poverty to be jailed; addictions to various substances was just hitting the criminalize or treat as medical conditions controversy; there was debate about incarcerating to punish or to rehabilitate (a re-tread debate from the late 19th century, I think); conservationism was a conservative concept; and that old Eisenhower had just warned people my parents and grandparents age about the MIC.

Then came...well, you know the history. The establishment Dems started more noticeably taking over the party. 1968 DNC. Some non-conformists started to conform because it was easier to go along to get along. Other non-conformists just faded away and stayed away from the party machinery and the electoral process. So much changed; so fast.

It reverted to the power-mongering status quo of the newly branded robber barons and the idle rich were described as hard workers.

The anita bryant promoted "moral majority" that was neither, morphed into the pat robertson "christian right" and was spewed all over the 700 club and it was neither Christian nor right though it was most definitely right-wing. The vast right-wing conspiracy was launched with full force and with talking points faxed each day or phoned in each evening. They started small; on the school boards and planning commissions and the gablers destroyed the textbooks. But, of course they never, ever, and don't you say they did, enter the Democratic Party as "Democrats" to undermine any and all progress the people had made in the arena of people's rights.

And history was gradually re-written to hide the multi-party system of the US; the early corruption and racism of the old Democratic Party was momentarily replaced by a Party for the People to shut-up the complaints; and on, and on.

1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Nately died a wealthy man, Yossarian. He had over sixty shares in the syndicate.
Yossarian: What difference does that make? He's dead.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Then his family will get it.
Yossarian: He didn't have time to have a family.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Then his parents will get it.
Yossarian: They don't need it, they're rich.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Then they'll understand.

By the way, I think we're at the corner of Parallel Hell Hole and Underthebus Rabbit Hole at Bus Stop No. 9.

Next stop...The Twilight Zone.