The US is past that and well on the way to dictatorship.

"Concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few and restricting the free-flow of information are the two main factors to look for when deciding whether a community is sliding towards despotism..."

Thank God that isn't happening anywhere any of us happen to live. Right? Right? Hey, why'd everyone go silent all of a sudden?

I heard a comment on NPR yesterday that we have a larger concentration of wealth today than we did in 1929 right before the stock market crash and depression. The commenter also said that a high concentration of wealth is an indicator of a pending depression.

Comparing the conditions discussed in this video to the current US situation is preposterous hyperbole. Bush is not, nor could, suspend the next presidential election. Yes, we have an imbalance of wealth, but even the poorest people in the US are still fabulously wealthy by standards in most other countries. Nor are the economic or security conditions nearly bad enough to entice people to give up basic freedoms like speech, assembly or freedom of association. Let's keep the discussion reasonable.

I have a couple of people I know who, granted a little off, are screaming that there's going to be a crash in the next 6 months like the Depression only worse. We'll see by year's end, I suppose.