Perhaps you’ve heard of the school lab experiment of putting a frog in a pan of cool water, putting the pan over a burner, and slowly raising the water to boiling, killing the frog. The frog doesn’t notice the temperature changing and, rather than jumping out of the pan, falls asleep as the water warms up.

Here are the analogies: the frog is the American public, the pan is the country, the burner is the Bush Administration, and the water analogy includes: a regressive tax system; corporate tax evasion; loss of First and Fourth Amendment rights (e.g. the Patriot Act; women’s reproductive rights; gay rights; rights “peaceably to assemble”); fraudulent elections and voter intimidation; a hoodwinked mainstream news media; government-produced “news” videos (propaganda); media monopolies with conservative bias; under-funding public education; “starve-the-beast” approach to social “safety net” programs and infrastructure maintenance; “pay-to-play” corporation control of Washington with lobbyists; elimination of environmental protections; unaffordable health care; growth of poverty; pandering to the extreme right wing (e.g. Supreme Court nominations; loss of church-state separation); a Justice Department with a right-wing agenda; ineffective homeland security measures; incompetent or corporation-biased appointees to critical government agencies (cronyism); federal budget deficit (“pork”) spending; chronic trade deficits; unfair (to most Americans) trade agreements; oppressive bankruptcy law “reforms”; Congressional corruption; excessive executive branch secrecy (e.g. “unlisted” CIA prison camps; gutting the Freedom of Information Act); attacks on Social Security; loss of living-wage jobs; CEO/white-collar crime; short-sighted energy policy; an unjustified and poorly conceived war against Iraq costing thousands of lives, billions of dollars, and loss of international respect; etc. etc. etc.

WAKE UP, AMERICA! Turn off the “burner” before it is too late.