Utopian fantasies have long transfixed the human race. Yet today a much rarer fantasy has become popular in the United States. Millions of Americans, the richest people in history, have a death wish. They are the new “Armageddonites,” fundamentalist evangelicals who have moved from forecasting Armageddon to actually trying to bring it about.

A government staging a show trial — by definition a fraudulent government — has already determined the guilt of the people being tried. Parading them before a court gives the government a shmear of legitimacy while making an example of the people on trial. The goal is to instill fear, not render justice, so the staging is more important than the outcome. Stalin’s Soviet Union in the 1930s was the grand master of show trials. George Bush’s America is this decade’s champion.

Israel: the new Nazi Germany.

There is actually only one party in America -- with a Republican head and a Democratic head -- controlled by the political/economic elite that really runs things.

The national elections are meaningless. It doesn't matter which party is in the White House or which controls Congress, this argument goes, since the outcomes will be more or less the same, arranged by the same power forces that control the political and economic realities.