Do the math: in a seriously flawed, arguably corrupt, electoral process in which the majority of the population was too apathetic to even feign democratic pretenses, only 21% ended up granting Bush his newfound sweeping and absolute powers.

Call me old-fashioned, but that's just not my idea of democracy. It's a farce and a travesty. And it's guaranteed to get much worse.

With a lame-duck Congress, and Republicans controlling both the House and the Senate (plus the Supreme Court), it's clear military spending will skyrocket as domestic social services are slashed and the environment is pillaged. Any previous attempts to rein in corporate scandal and excess will be attacked as un-American (kiss the corporate-fraud targeting Sarbanes-Oxley Act goodbye, for one). The proposed $37 billion Department of Homeland Security bureaucracy will be approved, along with its attending decimation of civil protection rights and collective bargaining power. And with the Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2 (nicknamed GARDEN PLOT) finally enforced, the military will be able to suppress domestic "assemblages or rebellion against the authority of the United States" whenever the President sees fit. In other words, it's going to get a lot more dangerous to protest or express dissent.

And that's the relatively good news.