Okay, when I said that I was thinking about leaving the country I was joking… like who can afford to leave the country with the dollar so weak. Some people however have decided that it is better to leave for either financial or personal reasons. This article gives some of the reasons why so many people are seriously working toward leaving the country. I agree with the people who Dean Schabner interviewed, the U.S. doesn’t feel like home. It seems that we have become more polarized, less tolerant, and fanatically religious. What happened to the USA that cherished the individual, respected rights, and looked after the neighbors. We are becoming more and more a police state that overlooks the individual and caters to the radical minority, erodes the fundamental rights of all people in the name of national security, and persecutes the neighbors for them being “unpatriotic”. People we are in a really bad mess. The rest of the world looks at us as if we were criminal warmongers. We look like the very people that committing the acts of terrorism.

This is exactly what Osama bin Laden wanted to happen when 9/11 happened.

And things are not going to get better.

This is what I see happening…

• The return of the draft. Troops are going to have to come from somewhere and I don’t trust Bush not to re-instate it.
• Worsening economy at the price of the consumer.
• An attack on Iran. How else do you explain Bush’s reluctance to talk with Iran about nuclear proliferation.
• An all out ban on gay marriages and civil unions.
• Still in Afghanistan and Iraq at the end of Bush’s 2008 term.
• An attempt to further restrict the right of women to control their bodies.
• A continuing erosion of personal freedoms.
• More corporate-centric legislation and activities.
• Possible sanctions against us by the EU or UN and retribution by the US.
• The continuing increase in the number of workers giving up on finding a job.
• More people joining the ranks of the uninsured and the under-insured.
• Astronomically higher deficit.
• Impending collapse of Social Security and Medicaid.
• Even deeper division between political parties and people.

I hope and pray that none of this comes to be.

Of course you could just say I’m a doom-sayer and overly liberal person. Well, the Political Compass seems to verify the overly liberal part. I took this test that Eden mentioned in her blog and I received a bit of a shock with my results. Here is what it told me…

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -6.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.00

And here is some of the results of world leaders…

I am further from center than Gandhi!

I’ll have to get back with you on the doom-sayer thing.

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