Screw the orchids, this is serious

I was about to post Friday's orchid when I just looked at an email someone sent me. It's from a Web site that claims it's keeping a public list of companies that hire illegal aliens - illegal alien employers, they're called - apparently so we can all boycott those companies.

That, along with Bush's ramblings tonight about wanting to send US troops to the Mexican border, gave me a really horrible realization.

We're now taking the hysteria over the war on terror and turning it into a rather disturbing and familiar war against another race. George Bush and the Republican party have so terrorized the American people, made them so full of fear and hate, that the American people are starting to take it out on the "others" in our society, with the very happy collusion of our government.

Our government is thinking of using the military to deal with this "problem" in our midst. Vigilante citizens groups are patrolling the country to find these others among us. Web sites are being set up to expose the companies among us who harbor these un-Americans. The #1 news channel for Republicans is calling on white people to have more babies to stop Hispanic from taking over "our" country.

Does nobody understand who and what our country is turning into?

We are talking about Mexican-Americans, central Americans, and their families and friends here people. We're not taking Al Qaeda, we're not talking Martians. We're talking rather normal people who all of us know. And George Bush and the Republican party have whipped this country into such a frenzy about these people that we've got vigilante justice taking place and talk of involving the military to - what? - shoot them?

What the hell is going on in our country? How can the majority of Americans not see what we're becoming, and what we've already become? Are we so proud of ourselves, and so blindly confident of the permanence of our freedoms, that no one can even fathom the slightest possibility that those freedoms could ever be in jeopardy? Let alone fathom what those freedoms are even supposed to mean?

What in God's name have George Bush and the Republican party done to our country?