Shape without form, shade without color

Apologies, my mind as all ajumble. All is happening so fast.
Can you feel your country changing?  I do.  Can you feel the differences in the modern world?
Call me paranoid and dramatic, call me Hunter S. Thompson on a bad trip, but the days Eisenhower and Orwell warned us about are here. ["In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."  -President Eisenhower, 1961]



The Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Morell, has resigned.
Coincidence?  I think not.
Also interesting, considering Patreaus resigned in November.

His replacement is the Legal Adviser to the National Security Counsel and Deputy Counsel to the President, Avril Haines, the first woman to hold this position. And she sounds like a saucy one--she used to read erotica aloud at a bookstore in Baltimore.
Is that what we need? A sexy literary nerd turned spy?  A sassy-pants lady in charge?

I wonder what's going on behind the curtain? 

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself."
John Adams

"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
Samuel Adams

"Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."
Benjamin Franklin

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
Abraham Lincoln

What kind of power do we hold as individuals?  As citizens?
 Are we evolving for good, devolving negatively?  What can one person do?
What have we become when we can go to the moon but won't walk across the street to visit our neighbor?
When we have the Constitution and Bill of Rights to protect us and our privacy from the government, but it is exempt from these laws?

Are you afraid yet?

From T.S. Eliot:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

...

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.