How geography is taught in America

[TheQuirk]

And as a Texan, I'd like to point out a lot of those death penalties were approved by the previous governor, and were merely scheduled to be acted upon after Bush's election.

[ November 18, 2003: Message edited by: TheQuirk ]

[slave]

Yeah, but Quirk, "Dictator" has such negative connotations that people just blindly assume that any bad political figure is somehow a "dictator."  It is nonsense of course.

W. doesn't need to be a dictator to do the things he does.  All he has to do is lie to everyone about his reasons, and his fanatical supporters will do the rest of the work, singling out skeptics as unpatriotic, possibly traitors.  Where I live it is especially rough - saying anything bad about Bush here in public can make your life miserable.  It is akin to criticizing Jesus.

[slave]

quote:Originally posted by Siplus:
America is FAR from a dictatorship...

I'd like to think of America as more of a Corporatocracy.  Doing certain things isn't necessary illegal, but the threat of lawsuits has made it to where any corporation can cause you to "cease and desist" your actions if they so choose.  And since you can't hope to win against them (the party with the most money in a lawsuit almost always wins) then you have no choice but to bend to their will.  Combine that with the fact that politics in the US is really a game played by corporations, and we're really in a fix.  Sadly, it will probably only get worse as the future goes on.  Eventually there may not even be a "free market" (well free in my definition of the word) but a conglomerate of 7 or 8 megacorporations that control everything that goes on in this country - including the corrupt government that supports them.