I had a dream last night. No, let me be honest it was a nightmare. Maybe it had something to do with my recent reading of a Kafka short story, The Penal Colony, or maybe it was the news report of the Ohio State University Commencement that people were forced to leave and threatened with arrest for turning their back on the president, not for shouting or being otherwise disruptive but simply turning around. Or perhaps the genesis was the passing of the USA Patriot Act. In the dream time passed it was later more of our civil rights had vanished all in the name of fighting terrorism. The government was turning its back on our freedoms. Americans had been afraid, and their fear had driven them to accept anything in the name of security. I remember those days, many were saying you have nothing to fear if you've done nothing wrong. But suspicion and fear is a powerful potion, people were being detained indefinitely. The wars never seemed to end. First it was only suspected foreign terrorists and then one morning the military moved into northern Idaho and rounded up hundreds of suspected domestic terrorists. The reasons were the same. Well you know how it is when you dream it is surreal. We still had occasional terrorists attacks just like we did before the new security went into effect, but we were told it would have been much worse if the new security was not in place. The cry of war was everywhere and things had changed. We were now told that the laws applied to drug dealers because we are fighting a war against drugs, and drugs kill even more people than terrorists. Then the war against crime was included. Just as our fears had magnified so had the tools used to spy on us, and here it really gets strange. I kept seeing a man hovering over our city he must have been in a helicopter but all I could see was the man. The man had what looked like a giant magnifying glass peering through it at the people below. I thought boy they really are keeping a close eye on us. There were bright flashes of light piercing the sky and little puffs of black smoke on the ground. I couldn't make sense of it. I didn't understand. The smoked cleared, I could see the man clearly now it was the president. He was smiling. The horror of what was happening also became clear the flash from the magnifying glass brought back childhood memories of a boy with a magnifying glass looking at ants on the ground, and then as he focused the light of the sun a puff of black smoke as the ant disintegrated. I woke screaming, the light of the early morning sun streaming through my bedroom window shinning in my eye. I broke out in a cold sweat. A tear fell from my eye. Was it just the sudden light of the morning sun or a premonition of things to come?