Disturbing? You Betcha

I happened to visit some non-political blogs over the weekend and - without any attempt to guess the political ideation of the authors - I noticed that several, who normally keep politics out of the discussion, were saying things like, "Are we in the last moments of a democracy? That's what it feels like."

Several quoted that line from the new Star Wars ("Revenge of the Sith") film that I put up the other day: "This is how democracy ends - to thunderous applause." (Paraphrase)

Some of us have been noticing the big swings away from what we considered a given in this country: relatively fair elections, freedom of speech, a system that didn't assume people were guilty. Now, perfect it never was. We usually just patted ourselves on the head for having this system in place, blithely ignoring the inequities we heard about. But a lot of us have been watching, protesting against, and fighting against these attempts to usurp the last vestiges of democracy that Mr. Bush has allowed to remain in place - while others just smiled and said all was fine and good.

But seeing apolitical voices say things like this makes me wonder what these folks are seeing/hearing/experiencing that has turned the light bulb on for them. I also wonder how widespread this phenomenon is. There's a tension around everywhere right now that seems disproportionately high considering how little the public upposedly "gets" the issue of the Bush atrocities, the new battles about the Patriot Act, the Senate "filibuster" battle, and more.