Kremlin America

By Jack Engelhard

The news is never good, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, and I’m losing track of what’s going on so far as health care and a thousand other items that are spinning out of the control. Don’t know much about the economy either, except that this too is in the tank – reaching 10 percent unemployment.

So please don’t come asking me for details. That’s why we have experts who, by the way, are the ones who got us into this fine mess – but never mind.

What I do know is that we – Mr. and Mrs. America – well, we all got together and installed a government that speaks in one voice, along with a news media that whistles the same tune. What have we done? We have installed a system of government that has no checks and balances. Repeat, no checks and balances.

One party runs the whole shebang – the White House and the Congress, with, as I said, the news media tagging along.

Our Founding Fathers were hot on the Separation of Powers, which is why we have three branches of power, the Legislative, the Executive, the Judicial, and then a Fourth Power, the news media, sometimes known as the Fourth Estate. Dissent is expected and even encouraged to keep us safe from tyranny.

America was invented to keep us apart from Big Brother.

Mel Brooks jokes that “it is good to be the king.” Our Founding Fathers were not joking about this. They wanted no part of kings and that’s why they gave us a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution so that, in the words of Micah the prophet, “Each shall rest under his vine and fig tree, and none shall make him afraid.”

Through our votes, we have created a government that operates like the Kremlin. We all remember the Kremlin. This is where one party decides everything. In the Kremlin there is no place for dissent. There is no tolerance for another point of view. There are only orders from headquarters. In the Kremlin, the government decides what is good for you, and if it turns out to be bad for you – too bad. Too damn bad.

In the Kremlin it is all about control. The men at the top set rules and regulations and then there is something like a Parliament whose only task is to rubber stamp those rules and regulations – because it is all one single Party. This is what we have wrought for ourselves freely at the ballot, while in Russia, this system was forced upon the people. They had no say. We did, and this is what we chose.

This may sound like a knock on the Democrat Party but it is not that at all. This is a knock on ANY single Party endowed with absolute power to run our lives. The One Party system is what they’ve got in Iran, North Korea among a hundred other countries and it never works out well except for the people in power. They’ve still got it in Russia. The little people, the ordinary people, don’t have it so good in those other places. That’s why they come here, where we have checks and balances.

Or rather, once upon a time we did. Do we still have Republicans? I have not seen any. I sure have not heard any. Do we still have Independents? Where are they? Suppose the government does something that we don’t like? Tough. There is no place to go when one Party rules everything, every aspect of our lives. There is the Party and only the Party.

In the Kremlin the news media is free to ask questions of the leader – as long as those questions adhere to the Party line. Others are not welcome. The news media functions as part of the Kremlin apparatus. They are cheerleaders. In Russia, this is mandatory, still. In this country, the news media cheerleading was done by consent and popular acclamation.

We – we the people – did not vote for the press but we did vote for a one Party government. We got what we asked for.

Perhaps it’s time to ask – what have we done!

Jack Engelhard’s latest thriller, “The Bathsheba Deadline,” which centers on media deceit against America and Israel, is available in paperback at Amazon. Engelhard wrote the international bestselling novel “Indecent Proposal” that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Engelhard can be reached, and his Works can be viewed, at www.jackengelhard.com