One would think that if condemned to lose sanity it would be preferable not to be aware of what was happening. On the contrary, as in lucid dreaming, there is something empowering and even comforting in lucid derangement, particularly national as opposed to personal derangement.

We may be in the advanced stages of going loony as a society and a polity, and yet expanding one's awareness of how this process is proceeding is a form of enlightenment, even if the enlightenment is offered with some defeatist shading.

"The United States of Fear" is a collection of Tom Engelhardt's writings from his TomDispatch blog. It turns our world inside out any number of times, allowing us to glimpse with startling clarity the horrifying world outside our cave without ever quite persuading us that the real world can be real if it isn't on television, and not infrequently building into the presentation the understanding that there is no cure for what ails us.

Here's an example. According to Engelhardt we dwell in a "Postlegal America":

One of the four Democrats vying for the new U.S. House seat created by Republican redistricting, Kilroy last week joined a gathering of about 70 people as they marked in protest the second anniversary of the US Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling. As she spoke, several activists with Occupy Columbus used the ‘People’s Mic’ to question her populist bonafides.

Cruz Bonlarron read from a crumpled piece of paper and several others with him repeated what he said, one phrase after the other. This was the total message of their repeat-backs; some parts of it were hard to discern even for someone standing nearby, so later Banlarron read it again for me :

Editors:
The Dispatch recently highlighted, in its main front page article, the heartbreaking growth of eligibility for Ohio’s school lunch program. Due to the loss of jobs, continued economic pressure on Ohio’s working and poor families, the Dispatch article points out, a majority of Ohio’s public school students are now receiving government aid just to be able to have a decent, healthy lunch while going to school.

I would certainly think that this information would spur our legislators to immediately go into crisis mode, and begin to do everything possible to reverse this growing misery, despair and poverty. I guess that would be the case if the present legislature had, as its goal, to actually perform their jobs in a way that would help our citizens. However, that hardly appears to be so.

A federal judge has told the people of Vermont that a solemn contract between them and the reactor owner Entergy need not be honored.

The fight will almost certainly now go to the US Supreme Court. At stake is not only the future of atomic power, but the legitimacy of all deals signed between corporations and the public. Chief Justice John Roberts' conservative court will soon decide whether a private corporation can sign what should be an enforceable contract with a public entity and then flat-out ignore it.

In 2003 Entergy made a deal with the state of Vermont. The Louisiana-based nuke speculator said that if it could buy and operate the decrepit Vermont Yankee reactor under certain terms and conditions, the company would then agree to shut it down if the state denied it a permit to continue. The drop dead date: March 21, 2012.

In the interim, VY has been found leaking radioactive tritium and much more into the ground and the nearby Connecticut River. Under oath, in public testimony, the company had denied that the pipes that leaked even existed.

One of Yankee's cooling towers has also collapsed...just plain crumbled.

I recently recommened a comprehensive Constitutional amendment addressing the corruption of our elections.
The largest piece of it, largely inspired by an amendment drafted by Russell Simmons, had not been introduced in Congress . . . until now.
Congressman Dennis Kucinich has just introduced HJRes100 which proposes this Constitutional Amendment:

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Section 1. All campaigns for President and Members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate shall be financed entirely with public funds. No contributions shall be permitted to any candidate for Federal office from any other source, including the candidate.
Section 2. No expenditures shall be permitted in support of any candidate for Federal office, or in opposition to any candidate for Federal office, from any other source, including the candidate. Nothing in this Section shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.
Section 3. The Congress shall, by statute, provide limitations on the amounts and timing of the expenditures of such public funds.