Are you a Coppertop?

As I read the various blogs and websites and such, I am intrigued at how much more informed Americans over the last year than they have been in thirty or forty years before.

Now, more than ever, Americans are not only becoming involved, but they are becoming informed.  Many got their start reading various periodicals and then engaging friends or associates in debate.  When they found themselves suddenly caught in a mistake, they began to question the facts that had been given; in the debate, those whose facts did not survive the battering learned, increasingly, to not trust the "facts" presented by the media.  They began to spend more time looking for ways to avoid looking foolish, or to thwart the media's attempts at disinformation.

Some chose to continue accepting the media's line, believing that there was no way that so much disinformation could ever get past the censors and fact-checkers.

More and more, though, are opening the other eye and affording themselves the opportunity to see the news on TV and the in the papers and magazines from a different angle.  And they are not happy.  In fact, the more satisfied they were with the way things were going all along, the more incensed they become when they realize how they have been hoodwinked.

This is the most involved Americans have been since the sixties and seventies.  Before that, there was the general assumption that the government was there to do its job and you did yours.  For its part, government was still fairly clear on how much of America was knew how they had served their country; there would be hell to pay if the government tried pulling an end-run around the American people on the magnitude that we are seeing now.  The sixties and seventies saw a depth of distrust for government that made skulduggery nearly impossible: too many people were ready to point an angry finger and cry out on them.

Then came the end of the seventies, with a weak president and a world that caught the whiff of weakness that he rubbed on all corners of the nation.  Too many people were involved in drawing out the last hours of irresponsibility left over from the Woodstock/Free Love era, giving birth to the "Me Generation".  A whole new and specialized failure in national and personal ethics was under way: the 80s, with glitz, drugs, and image ruling everything that happened.  Viewed as a ship at sea, we would have appeared to be a rolling barque with a drunk and reeling crew - and one man at the helm, mightily striving to keep the lot out of the water until the booze wore off.  Ronald Reagan may have appeared to be an inflexible and humorless ogre, but so does one's father when he grounds you for breaking the rules.  So it was that Reagan held to a course that kept us from foundering until the hangovers could start.  However, even he had his limits; like Moses, he acted from pride and was found out.  Iran-gate would be a hard pill to swallow, for him and his administration.

It was sad to watch the decline of the GOP after Reagan, but it was inevitable.  Any son who inherits the estate of his father is less likely to respect that estate than did his father, and so it was with Bush and Bush II.  They never seemed to appreciate what hard work had been done to get this country out of the outhouse it had been in because of Jimmy Carter.  First, Bush I made promises that he could not keep ("Read My Lips: NO.  NEW.  TAXES!!"). After that, Bush II made one bad decision after another - engrossing us in two wars, trying to fight these wars without any experience doing so while refusing the experience of his own generals, and - worst of all - failing to listen to the fourth branch of the government: the Popular Branch.

It was this last that had so many people as desperate for change as they were.  When the time came, they were so interested in something new and different that they voted for a man who had no business in public office.  They turned from an American veteran and a dark-horse governor running on an ethics reform ticket - two things that America needed greatly - and instead chose the novelty president.  Having no real education in what kind of damage a bad president can do - most having been born after 1980 - they only knew what a weak president could do.

To make matters worse, they have had the worst possible education in government; most of them could not even tell you what the differences between a democratic government and a republican government are.  Instead, they have been fed a steady diet of misinformation themselves - the only truth they know is lies and half-truths.

And so we arrive at the last two years - corrupt politicians, in place for decades longer than many voters have been alive; rules of conduct so entrenched that many junior congressmen do not even know that they are wrong; and a voting population so thoroughly and blissfully distracted by the media that they are almost completely unconcerned with the goings on in government - regardless of how that affects their bottom line or their future.

With the behavior of the government this last year, though, many young people - and many not so young - are learning that there is reason to be concerned.  The older are concerned for their lives, the younger for their futures.  They are waking from the stupor cast over the masses through the entertainment media, the trans-ocular crack that radiates from the television and paralyzes the brain as it passes through the eyes.  Some seek to return to that Matrix-like cocoon - unconcerned that they are being used for purposes that serve them not at all, to be cast aside at the end of their useful lives and replaced with others.   Some, though, are horrified by the prospect of feeding a machine with the useful years of their lives - and receiving nothing for all for their service.

The question at this point is - which are you?

Deus Patria Sic!