I don't think I specifically addressed you in my response, but you do seem to be buying this pantload. What I find amusing is that all the antennae and flags go up in people like you when you smell some faint right-wing tendency towards totalitarianism, but when I point out totalitarian tendencies in liberal and left-wing programs I get this blank, child-like stare and, "whatever can you be talking about? What do you mean? Are you some kind of paranoid weirdo?"

It's an odd kind of blindness or schizophrenia which also allows one to view the government as both a massive glob of foul corporate corruption and evil, and at exactly the same time as a benevolent, trustworthy, omniscient entity which can be entrusted with our health, our retirements, our education, our environment, and pretty much every single aspect of our lives. If this attitude wasn't so dangerous to the rest of us, it would be funny.

I actually once asked a college type passing Nader pamphlets around what her opinion was of our government, and she went off on a long-winded tirade about the entire system being corrupt, criminal, entirely in the hands of the corporations, and almost beyond redemption. Pretty much the whole Ralph Nader routine. When she wound down, I "changed the subject," and asked her what she thought we should do right now about health care in our country. "Why, single-payer health care, of course," she replied, rather smug that I had to ask such an obvious question. She never understood why I was grinning.

It's like shooting fish in a glass bowl with a chain gun.