Surely it’s coming any day now, our official name change from the United States of America to United Soviet-style States of America?

A few days ago, I wrote:

The U.S. government’s makeover to a Soviet style of functioning thereby reaches Stage Two. First, we started to act like them. (Stage directions here: swish the world “gulag” around in your mouth, then spit. On a Bush administration official if one is handy. But only if you have no family, friends and pressing engagements for the next few years.) Now, we’re starting to talk like them. What’s next? Large scale purges and pogroms?

We may not be at the “large scale” stage yet, but little drops do an ocean make, etc. Read the following story from Left I on the News. If you find any meaningful difference between how The System treats Carol Fisher and your worst imaginings about cold war era Soviet Russia, be sure to let me know.

Judge Timothy McGinty forcibly incarcerated Carol Fisher in the psych unit of the Cuyahoga County Jail in downtown Cleveland, where she now sits for an indefinite period of time.

In a hastily called hearing yesterday, Judge McGinty made a highly unusual and outrageous decision to force Carol to undergo a state psychological exam as part of her pre-sentencing investigation. From the very start of Carol’s case, the judge has openly said that she must have mental problems for resisting an unlawful and brutal encounter with Cleveland Heights police. He went even further in yesterday’s hearing, saying that her opposition to the Bush regime makes her “delusional.”

The small courtroom on the 21st floor of the Justice Center was ringed with 5 armed court bailiffs. McGinty started off the hearing by making Carol stand up and had one of her attorneys read her t-shirt, which said: “Wanted for Illegally Crossing Borders: The Bush Regime”

“If you are going to insist that crossing borders illegally is a crime which cannot be tolerated, how about George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice (and yes, Colin Powell) and the rest of that gang, with their highly illegal, and violent, ‘crossing of the border’-into Iraq, among other places?!”

McGinty then said this was proof of her delusion! He also kept saying Carol “wants” to go to jail, and that she has a “martyr complex.” When Carol tried to explain why she wouldn’t take this test, the judge’s only response was, “I do not negotiate with felons.”

On the phone this morning, Carol Fisher stated that, in addition to sending her to the psych unit, McGinty has also put her on “suicide watch”! They have taken away her eyeglasses. And if she refuses the psych exam, she will be forcibly sent to North Coast Mental Institute for a 20 day evaluation.

Silly me! I totally forgot to mention Fisher’s crime, didn’t I?

(She) was arrested for the egregious crime of posting a “Bush Step Down” sign on a utility pole, thereby violating a Cleveland Heights city ordinance, and then convicted of resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. The “criminal” is a 53-year old woman, but according to the police, they could hardly constrain her: “Downey said Fisher gave him and his partner all that they could handle even though the officers weigh over 200 pounds, lift weights and are 20 years younger than Fisher.”

In the land of the Sissy Hawk Brigade, what else should we expect but Sissy Cops? In and of themselves, they may be ludicrous. But, backed by the power of the State, even seasoned criminals like Fisher come to rue the day they tangled with them.

Seems to me that Fisher is getting off pretty lightly, all told, given that her crime is Dissent against the State. She’s damn lucky she hasn’t been exiled to a work farm in Alaska.

(Aside, to everyone of my generation: and for this, we ducked under school desks more often than I want to remember?)