"If you don't like America, then leave!" Okay. Maybe I will.

I’ve somehow managed to ignore politics for most of my life - because most of the time it’s just a bunch of boring bullshit.  It’s a giant group of crooked, slightly overweight, old, irrelevant and out-of-touch white guys sitting around proposing bills, ratifying amendments, ironing out deficits, having sex with little boys, soliciting male prostitutes…yadda yadda yadda.

But let me tell you, all of a sudden, I’m starting to pay real close attention.  I don’t know whether it’s because I’m getting older and maturing (yeah right) and paying attention to this kind of garbage happens naturally, or because shit’s about to hit the fan in a big bad way.  But over the course of the past year or so, it seems that the U.S. government has been waging an all-out war on the freedoms of the American people.  From the violent opposition to the peaceful ‘Occupy’ protests, to SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), and to most recently the National Defense Authorization Act, this year has been an all-out assault on the rights and freedoms of the American people.  As my hero, the late great George Carlin once said: “That’s all we’ve ever had in this country: a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news, even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter and shorter.”  It seems that statement has never rung more true than it does now.

This National Defense Authorization Act is a very scary thing because it seems to obliterate our rights completely.  It’s tricky, because there are two parts of this bill that seem to contradict each other.  It’s very cleverly worded at first making you think that it doesn’t apply to U.S. citizens, because in the first part of the bill it says that people who are declared to be “enemy combatants” can be arrested, detained, interrogated, held without access to an attorney or trial, tortured, and even killed.  But end of the bill essentially says it can apply to American citizens “if we want it to.”

WHAT!?  My government, the same government that has drilled this idea that I’m a free citizen into my head my entire life, now has legal precedent to arrest, detain, interrogate, torture, and kill me simply by suspecting that I’m a terrorist!?  And with SOPA, I can possibly go to jail on felony charges for streaming so-called copyrighted content?  And the Department of Justice can shut down my website and stop vendors from doing business with me even on SUSPICIONS that the site in question is streaming copyrighted content and expose me AND the hosting site to unlimited liability?

This isn’t even North Korea or China that we’re talking about here.  This is the UNITED STATES!!!  How pathetic and oppressive have we become?  The future isn’t very bright for this country, folks.  And it’s getting darker every single day.  You often hear patriotic nutjobs respond to people who criticize this “great” nation with awe-inspiring ignorant phrases like “Well, if you don’t like *blank* about the U.S., then you can leave!”  Well, let me tell you, for the first time I’m seriously considering it.  Time to bring Canada into my job search.