People lined Hawthorne Boulevard, starting just a couple blocks east of Chavez, and held up signs. Some chanted. Some beat drums. Cars, unobstructed, would honk their support.
The ICE raids and police militarization have persuaded a lot of people that we no longer live in our beloved United States. Some alien authoritarian ideology has seized the levers of power and has turned against the citizenry.
Money gets pumped into the war machine, charity for the bunker billionaires, but not into social services. The generic IQ of the political discourse seems to be dropping by the day, with lots of excuses for funding homicidal policies around the world.
This has all been going on for a long time however. Starting around Iran-Contra, people noticed that Congress was not really in charge. The Contras were being funded illegally, with drug money.
That kind of "dirty war" was considered patriotic by the knuckle-dragger soldier of fortune types, eager to turn their military training into something remunerative in the private sector. When you train your youth in mostly military skills, what do you expect will be the outcome?
By now, the Pentagon itself has been privatized by defense contractors and their think tank cults, the Beltway Mafia, who dominate in DC and depend on military socialism for their welfare. They want you to believe it's our destiny, nay our fate, to "fight China" as dystopian thinking is their bread and butter.
Their lobby money, derived from profits, has flooded into politics thanks to Citizens United and similar initiatives, whereby astroturf and PACs have completely distorted the system, making it a Frankenstein monster obedient mainly to oligarchs and warmonger churches (these go together, many churches being cults around money grubbers).
The USSA is an ugly and scary nation. The USA is widely missed. Many would-be tourist have stopped coming for similar reasons, and who can blame them?
