democracy & despotism: Redneck Mother unearths a gem

Redneck Mother: But they have so many letters in common!

Watch the whole thing, and tremble. We are on the slippery slope to despotism, and if anyone showed this in a public school today they'd get stomped by the godbags. If anyone showed it on TV, they'd get hassled by the godbags and righties. If, bog forbid, PBS showed it, it'd be more fuel for the "PBS is commie" fire.

Except for the free exchange of information on the internet, the US is on the downside of each of the scales that help assess where a country is on the democracy-despotism spectrum. The categories: power, respect, wealth, and freedom of information. It's a blunt instrument, to be sure, but still pertinent today.

We don't seem to have made a lot of progress towards democracy in the last 60 years, looking at it this way. I have to qualify that, though, because women and people of color and children do have more power & respect than they did sixty years ago, at least legislatively speaking, but then again, in 1946, they were starting at zero on those scales.