"Mommy, What Does 'Vote' Mean?"

What if there are no more elections?

I'm just sayin'.  There's lots of excitement in the media about the angry crowds at Town Hall meetings as people from the House of Reprehensibles meet with their constituents to discuss recent votes, particularly the Healthcare /Tax Cut travesty.  "Boy," we say, rubbing our hands together, "aren't those bastards gonna be sorry when elections roll around in 2018 and they have to face these angry voters at actual polling places?  Boy, won't that show 'em?"

Well, what's the simplest way to get around that, around consequences that so displease the rabble?  Take away the rabble's voice.  What could be simpler--find some pretext that says that voting would threaten The National Interest or some other sacrosanct-sounding mumbo-jumbo, and cancel or, better yet, postpone them until the non-existent crisis passed, AND IT NEVER WOULD!  How beautiful is that?  I just read that Merriam-Webster is adding "sheeple" to its pages, which describes too many Americans too well.

What, you don't think that Trump and his henchmen could pull such a thing off?  If Jim Comey can get fired on such a blatantly Trumped-up charge--treating Hillary wrongly as the last election (and was it?) neared--as if the "Lock Her Uppers" suddenly saw the error of their ways, they can sell anything to the American sheeple.  Do you really think that Sessions, Cruz, Kennedy of Louisiana, et al couldn't do that?  Did you see their questioning of Sally Yates and Jim Clapper?  They weren't interested in anything to do with Russia or Russian connections: they wanted to know about leaks, about who let the dirty little secrets out, so they might prevent them in the future and thus draw closer the cloaks of secrecy guarding what they're really doing.  Just 'cause they've been stumbling all over themselves in the first few months doesn't mean that they don't have long-term plans that they'll eventually get right.  Hitler had his brown shirts, Trump has his white.  A fascist by any other color....

Read Sinclair Lewis: it can happen here and in fact may already be underway.  Someone once said "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty (oh, look it up yourself)."  Now's not the time to let our guards down when our unduly elected government is just getting theirs up.  Are these just the 4 AM rantings of some long-haired hill-dwelling hippie?  'S possible, I guess.  'S possible otherwise, too: even paranoids have real enemies.  Watch what happens in the coming days, weeks and months.  Eternal vigilance is our only hope.