Leave the United States if You Can
Make plans right now while opportunities still exist to secure your wealth outside of the authorities' rapacious reach because that door of opportunity may be slammed in your face in the near future. It is not merely that government at all levels is starving for the cash that's dried up from property taxes and, so, will steal and confiscate like a drunken highwayman. Many factors point to rise of the Total State, which will grind up your freedom, your future and the lives of those who resist.
I read about 12 news sources a day, from far-left to the Religious Right; month by month, there is a dramatic increase in reports of police brutality, government surveillance, crack-downs, the control of daily life down to the minutia of which oils you may cook french fries... And there seems to be precious little opposition to the arrival of totalitarianism. Perhaps the flood of oppression is too overwhelming and has caused a general paralysis; at times, that is my reaction. But, mostly, I think people are either focused on financial survival or they actually applaud the Total State. Even those who believe they believe in freedom are among the applauders because they buy the justifications being offered for the annihilation of civil liberties. For example, consider just one of the incredible and successful assaults on the due process and liberties of us all; in the name of defending women and children, the campaign against sex offenders has created a class of"untouchables" in class-free America -- people whom the government tells where to live, how to make a living, which sites they can e-visit, etc., etc. In the name of noble goals, the government has erased the idea of serving out a time in jail (which used to be called"paying your debt to society") and, instead, established the idea of indefinite sentences and 'forever' punishments.But the establishment of this caste system is just one aspect of the wild plunge into tyranny.
What should worry you the most is that everything has occurred before the economic collapse of the United States, which I believe will happen in the near future. (The timing depends somewhat on when"too many" foreign-held dollars are dumped back into America.) I expect a severe depression to unfold over the next few years. And nothing, nothing, nothing encourages the growth of State as much as people who are frightened and hungry/homeless. An entire population can turn to a leader much as children turn toward a parent...and for the same reason: to feel safe.
If an economic depression is added to the convergence of the police state with a total surveillance society, then I honestly don't know what will happen. But I do know that you don't want to be there to find out. Don't be fooled by those who say"but America has too strong a tradition of freedom for this to happen." Pre-Nazi Germans thought their culture was too sophisticated and fine to allow the triumph of barbarism. Leave.
Cross posted at WendyMcElroy.com