Choose your Poison, Communism or Other Dictatorship?

By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh —— Bio and Archives July 16, 2012

Comments | Print This | Subscribe | Email Us

I live under the dreaded Home Owner Association rules. The person in charge of checking yard compliance is the worst offender – his back yard looks like it was overtaken by the nearby forest weeds five years ago and he has given up. Since he lives next door to me, I wish I could rent a goat and let it loose on his property until she eats all the knee-high weeds.

He takes his job very seriously - he walks around the neighborhood early in the evening with a tablet in hand, diligently writing down minor offenses that will then appear in threatening letters to the respective homeowners. He reminds me of the neighborhood informant under communism who, for a small fee, a few extra crumbs of food, and access to the communist hospitals, would keep a daily log of everybody’s comings and goings and record information on their own relatives and then report it to the security police. I do not know who snitched on my neighbors across the small pond. They had a beautiful vegetable garden within the perimeter of their well-tended yard. A painted fence surrounds the property in order to keep the deer and other forest critters at bay. They toiled in this garden every morning and every evening and it was a beauty: green and bell peppers, okra, tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, and squash. The garden was not visible from the street and it certainly did not violate the 300-page HOA rulebook that each homeowner was handed upon signing the agreement to move into the neighborhood.

Two days ago, two men with smirks of satisfaction on their faces were busy pulling out every plant by the roots in this beautiful garden and throwing it over the fence, while the lady of the house was crying, wringing her hands helplessly nearby and wiping away silent tears. It was heart breaking to see such injustice. Do we still live in free America? I have seen this woman work so hard tending to her plants since early March. It was a labor of love to provide her family with fresh vegetables, especially since everything is so expensive in grocery stores thanks to our disastrously run economy. We import a lot of fruit and vegetables from Mexico and Chile. Congresswomen Boxer, Feinstein, and Pelosi from California and this administration made sure that as much as possible of our fruit and vegetable production in the San Joaquin valley in California would be destroyed by denying farmers water – God forbid the Delta smelt, a tiny fish, might be hurt. I moved away 8,000 miles to escape communism and now, this communist organization, the HOA, composed of die-hard Obama fans, was telling me that I could not move into the house my husband and I have built from our hard work until we signed such a contract. We paid the fee every month for the “privilege” of having our trash picked up twice a week, a swimming pool that we never used, and snow removal that seldom happened. I thought we had choices in a free country but I was wrong. We moved as far away from the metro area as possible to escape HOA. We could have bought a parcel of land in the woods somewhere, but I am sure, EPA regulations would have made it impossible since everything is close to marshland. In Maryland, you can no longer build in an area without an established sewer system. Governor O’Malley, through executive order, has forbidden septic tanks. Houses can only be built along an approved corridor, thanks to UN Agenda 21’s Smart Growth, which requires that a very large portion of our lands be given back to the wilderness. We must move into high rises, five minutes’ walk or bike from work, school, and play We no longer live in a free country; we just have an illusion of freedom. When I first came to the United States, I recoiled in fear every time I saw a cop. My heart rate would go up tremendously, to the point of tachycardia. I had been conditioned, after 20 years of communism, that the security police, the economic police, the secret police, the military police, were there to harass citizens, arrest them, beat them, torture them, rape them, steal their possessions, their wealth, and confiscate any property. Their job was not to protect and defend us. It took me a good three years to get over the fear of police, the sheriff, and the highway patrol. I was not alone in this. When my mom came to visit, she jumped every time there was a knock on the door. She experienced the same feelings because we had been conditioned to be submissive and to fear police, whether we did something wrong or not. They could always find something wrong if they wanted to in order to throw us in jail. I see America moving in that direction. The emergence of TSA with their intrusive pat-downs and molestations at airports, random checks at metros, at train and bus stations, did not see many citizens protesting, they are being submissive, and they are giving up their rights, their freedom of speech, of being free Americans. We are transforming into a police state. The most recent viral YouTube video shows a man, stopped three times at roadblocks in California within a 90 minutes ride, asked to prove that he is American. He protested, had a camera ready, and refused to show his papers since he did nothing wrong, The police was surprised that he said no, everybody else was compliant collectively, like sheep going over a cliff, “Is this not America anymore, is it Nazi Germany,” he asked. The rest of the drivers submitted, gave up their Constitutional rights, and yielded to the intrusion by police. Whatever happened to the requirements of probable cause and a search warrant? We are just a few steps from ratifying the UN Small Arms Treaty. Once ratified, we must surrender our personal guns for protection and hunting. We will be defenseless against home intruders, thieves, and drug gangs. Criminals can always procure guns in spite of bans. Fear is growing inside my heart. I see police everywhere, most are in unmarked cars, different types of vehicle, and hard to detect. If they are here to serve us and receive taxpayer dollars, if I do not know who they are, how will I be able to ask for help in case of an emergency? They are here to harass, catch and ticket speeders, control us, stop us, and cameras are everywhere. It is so scary, I do not like the America as it is transforming, and I fear for the future of everybody’s children and grandchildren. We are turning into a banana republic dictatorship with many similarities to fascistic elements and to communist China. The question remains, which poison will we be forced to take, will we be like communist China, or some other type of dictatorship? We do have the 257 Chinese FTZ (Free Trade Zones) all over the United States, which seems bizarre, but, in context with all the money we owe them, it makes sense. We are in a period of economic abundance and welfare dependency; Americans have not suffered economically since the end of World War II. Under this administration, food stamp recipients are at an all time high, yet the government is advertising the giving of more food stamps, renamed to take away the stigma of being a perennial bum, waiting on handouts. Economic abundance had lead to complacency, laziness, apathy, and dependence on government as a nanny state. Who needs a family, mommy and daddy, when we have the government? Such dependency is going to lead to cowardice and a morass of spiritual, moral, and physical bondage.