Fascism.

Editor,

I used to think the president made good speeches.

Now I cannot listen to a word he says.

It's all so transparent and phony, all so grounded in the alternate reality created by mainstream news media: terrorist bogeymen, and the utter ignorance of the vast mass of the American public -- deliberate ignorance -- of what the U.S. does overseas and has been doing overseas since long before any of us was born.

Stock phrases, platitudes, and words to the effect he is on the average citizen's side belie that his policies are not. Oh, yes, Republican crazies are the reason Mr. Obama can't really do what he really wants to do. Newsflash: Mr. Obama is doing exactly what he wants to do.

Any military-aged man killed by U.S. drone strikes in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan is tallied as a "suspected terrorist." So you tell me how a war that creates crazed enemies of the USA out of brothers, fathers, cousins, and friends of "suspected terrorists" who are killed in JSOC's version of stop-and-frisk is ever going to be won, let alone end. And this does not even mention the women, children -- children! -- and old people the U.S. admits begrudgingly it has killed by mistake.

No amount of spying on the American public will ever erase the blood on the hands of the U.S. military and the banks and corporations they are working for. A new direction is necessary. Neoconservatism is fascism, plain and simple. The USA has got to learn how to live in peace in a multi-polar world!

Re: "A Weak Agenda on Spying Reform" (8/10/2013)