The way changes are crammed down our throats in this country is done by repetition and by the refusal to hear any other alternatives. President Bush showed this today in his answers to questions from the press many times. Just one example is enough (and won't harm you as much as reading through the whole thing). This is about the coming destruction of Social Security and the role of Bill Thomas in it. Thomas has been musing on cutting the benefits on solely the basis of sex or race, but I'm not sure if Bush was talking about that when he praised Thomas:
The threshold question is, will Congress -- is Congress willing to say we have a problem. We do have a problem. The math shows we have a problem. And now is the time to act on the problem. And once people realize there's a problem, then I believe there's an obligation for all sides to bring forth ideas. And that's what you're seeing with Chairman Thomas. And I appreciate that. I'm looking forward to my visit with him this afternoon.
(Bolds mine.)
Never mind that the math shows nothing of the sort of problem that would make it necessary to do something along the lines the president advocates. Never mind what other people say, what experts might say. If the president says we have a problem then we have one. Right?
The wingnuts do have a problem, of course, and it is the fact that they don't want to have a Social Security system to begin with. If they had been around in the 1930's they would have voted against the program. Republicans did, in those days, too. The fact is that the abolition of the Social Security has been on the conservative long-term agenda for decades, and now seems to be the time to act on that. First, lets privatize some accounts (oops! should be "let's personalize some accounts"), next, lets get rid of guaranteed benefits, and voila!, the next step will be the death of any insurance aspect in the Social Security system and the return to the times when the poorhouses were full of the elderly.
I'm exaggerating for the benefit of style, but not by much. The wingnuts really do want to erase most of governmental functions. This will bring in anarchy, which is interesting as I have never heard the wingnuts called anarchists before.