We have reason to be fearful

A Material Witness

Recently, before the Boston bombing, I realized that I am becoming more cautious about going out at night -- even just to go to the supermarket in our clean and tidy suburb. There have been shootings in our neighborhood, too. Suddenly, things are not quite the same. The feel of it is different.

On facebook, I just aw a report about a shooting in Seattle. Not a surprise.

My response: We're falling into a pattern here that resembles -- more than a little -- a third world country. Poverty at the bottom is where people have nothing to lose. The stress and the anger are a very bad combination. Rich people, GOP, and all the hangers-on who want to identify with the rich -- need to be paying attention. It's time to turn the truck around and stop hiding heads in the sand. Does it have overtones -- dare we say -- of a civil war? The number of people we have in prison -- by percentage I'm not sure how the numbers compare -- but that's a common feature of governments that are NOT democracies. If the rich are ruling here -- as we can see from voting patterns in Congress -- how can we continue to claim that the people have the power? We should be frightened into participating in our government -- of taking advantage of our access to the voting booth while we still can do it.

If this isn't a wake up call, nothing is.