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The Geek With A .45 lays it out:

Entire Societies Can and Have Gone Stark Raving Batshit Fucking Insane.
…
We know the stakes: it is nothing less than the soul of the Republic itself.

Right now, the Gods of the Copybook Headings are inking up the rubber stamp that says “Epic Fail”, and at some point on Wednesday morning, that stamp will come down on either Barack Obama’s head, or on We The People as a whole.

If our inner thirst for the false promises of a Philosopher King has finally weighed heavier than our memory of freedom, we will well and truly get what we deserve.

[Emphasis and link mine.]
Yeah, yeah, read the whole thing.

We have been warned.

When I was younger and even more foolish than I am now, I professed myself terrified by Presidential Candidate “Ronald Raygunz”, as I called him in hip disdain.

When he was elected, I thought about leaving the country to escape the inevitable police state, but it was too much trouble.

Amazingly, the result was that a real police state, East Germany, fell, along with The Wall. I was too hipply ignorant at the time to realize how profoundly ironic that was.

This time, though, I think I really am…deeply, deeply troubled. The difference is that in Reagan’s case, I was only afraid of a man about whom I knew almost nothing. This time, I’m afraid not only of Obama himself (and I know much more about him, and about politics and history generally), but I am also terrified by his parents, his teachers, his friends, his wife, his preacher, and his political backers. Most of all, though, I’m afraid of the news media that has relentlessly hounded his enemies while jealously protecting him. And I’m afraid of his worshipers, the likes of which I have never seen in any political movement in my entire life. Faint shadows of it in Bobby Kennedy, perhaps, but…faint. No one else even comes remotely close.

This time, even if Obama loses, I will still be afraid, because the fact that he is even on the ticket shows how profoundly the American people have abandoned their dream.

No matter what happens today, folks, it’s going to be a long four years.

I have one hope: I hope that if Obama ascends to the Oval Office, he finds the Levers of Power to be so unwieldy, so jammed, so filthy and crusted, that he can do little or nothing with them. Many of the most impressive will turn out to be for show only, unconnected to anything. Many of the most important will be insignificant, hidden, mislabeled.

I think his own inexperience will work against him here; he really does not know how to run an operation the size of a state, much less a country.

Most of all, I do not think the press will shield the Man in the White House, not even the One they have anointed. The Press Room is a shark pit, they will not be satisfied with scraps. They’ll want, and need, live meat. And Obama has never suffered any scrutiny at all, nothing more than fawning adulation. I seriously doubt he will be able to handle real teeth, real fire.