History repeats itself until it's blue in the face

So I've been watching the unfolding wiretapping story with horrified interest, what my high school English teacher would call a "fascination with the abomination", and mentally shaking my head with disgust. I wouldn't say disbelief, because I've long since come to expect the worst that I can imagine -- or rather, expect that it will be worse than I can imagine -- but certainly disgust. At this Administration, at the media, at the infuriating American public, who are seemingly somewhat disturbed by the news that their government is keeping records on every phone call they make and receive, but not, you know, fucking rioting in the streets, demanding the heads of the people in power on the proverbial platter. Apparently, the news that we're officially not a functioning democracy, that we are now officially no different than any tinpot totalitarian regime anywhere in the world, simply isn't enough to get people's ire up these days. I wonder why I still bother, and then I remember that I am genetically constructed to care, I simply cannot not care, and well, you can see my dilemna. Bah.

Anyway, here I am, wondering how much worse it's going to get, and I see today that as the Fourth falls, so goes the First, and thinking how I've seen this before, in a movie about another Presidency that ended around the time I was born, and I find that Digby, my hero and idol, has already said anything I might wish to say on that subject.

Well, except perhaps for the inimitable TBogg, who said the day after the 2004 election:

I look at the big map and all of the red in flyover country and I feel like I've been locked in a room with the slow learners. We have become the country that pulls a dry cleaning bag over its head to play astronaut.