Dystopia, Ltd.

Hello all, this is just a test post to see how this thing works. I'm increasingly filled with sadness and despair over how the world, and especially our country, is going. The torture debate is what's put me over the edge - how can we even be HAVING this debate? How can the so-called Christians fall in line behind the Great Decider and throw away all their principles? I seem to remember a certain J. Christ who was put in a "stress position" way back in the day. What would He make of His followers marching in step with the new Caesar? The tears we shed every Easter over that atrocity dry up when the victim is a suspicious Middle Easterner who may have said "that Osama's a snappy dresser" one time.

I don't know what to do - take to the streets? Become a radical? Or just take the cushy way out & start a blog of rants and raves? Yeah, that last one will do nicely, until I can find something more proactive. But don't worry, this won't be all gloom and doom. I'll post any good news and various unrelated ramblings as well.

A lot of what I post will be links, I guess. I'll start with this one: the namesake of my blog. A little background. Reason Magazine is one of the best publications in America, clear-eyed, suspicious of both the right and left, committed to liberty and sanity and endowed with a fine sense of humor. The link refers to a Reason.com post in which the late Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner, with his many medals, ribbons and braids, was described in dressing like a character from Gilbert & Sullivan. The post was titled "Dystopia, Ltd.," a clever play on G&S's next-to-last operetta, "Utopia, Ltd." Now, everybody who knows me knows that I am a major G&S fan, and the phrase stuck in my head. So, I'm using it for the title of my blog, with a nod of the hat to Reasonoid Jesse Walker.

The connotations are thus: our beloved American democracy, founded on reason and faith, is becoming a dystopia of irrationality and restriction, not a dystopia yet, but getting there. A large part of this problem is the stranglehold industry has on our government - hence, the "Ltd." Another connotation of "Limited" is that I do not feel like the situation is hopeless. We the people can turn the course of our nation around. And I sincerely believe that we are not a bad country or a bad people - only that we've gone down a dangerous path. In that way, the dystopia is limited - I believe that the heart of America is still one that is good. It is my ferverent hope, wish and prayer, therefore, that the dystopianism itself will prove "Limited" and the great American virtues of reason, tolerance, fairness and magnanimity will prevail.

So welcome to my blog!