I was at a 7-11 convenience store earlier tonight, picking up a microwaveable burrito and a (chilled) bottle of merlot for later, because it is Sunday night and all of the fancy food/wine/whiskey bars within my vicinity closed for the evening.

"This is not exactly how I thought my life would turn out. HA! Joke's on me," I thought to myself as I swiped my card.

There have been a lot of setbacks, a lot of repeats, a lot of times where I've finally figured things out -- only to have the rug pulled out from underneath me like an unwitting participant in some David Blaine magic trick.

I think many Americans feel the same way.

Let's face it: our "economic recovery" has mostly been a stage show put on by the fine folks at MSNBC, and within the Obama administration's social media team.

They want us to believe that America is experiencing some kind of economic renaissance, when a quick glance down any Main Street proves otherwise: the desperate, the insane, the heartbroken ambling around randomly with little hope of a financial second chance.

To add insult to injury, the only companies being bought for billions (like Instagram) are those which have no discernible earnings, and which will likely be distant memories in six months or a year from now. Meanwhile, hardworking folks struggle with foreclosure, and dwindling 401k portfolios, and flock to Occupy leaders who rail against "the bankers" -- when, in reality, absolutely disastrous government policy and expensive warmongering is mostly to blame.

Oh, and we owe $15 trillion (or more) at this point. And our government is quietly imposing policies -- NDAA's "imprisonment without trial" and CISPA's "Internet wiretapping without warrant" -- that are, for lack of a better description, actual honest-to-God fascism. Actual descents into non-constitutional tyranny, from which there may be no return for us.

The media, rather than mock federal judge Katherine Forrest who shot down the NDAA's indefinite detention provisions as "unconstitutional," has chosen to completely ignore the issue. That's when you know things are serious.

Someday, Ms. Forrest will undoubtedly go down in the books as an American hero -- or, at the very least, an ethical judge who understands the laws of the land.

She may be receiving some serious pushback, but, at the end of the day: the government can't harm her because she is NOT doing anything wrong. Imprisonment without trial is a patently ridiculous, sinister idea. All of us should oppose it, really.

If our media was still ruled by legitimate journalists like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, rather than by Entertainment Tonight and TMZ reporters and approval-hungry freelancers, NDAA would be a dinner table discussion topic right now.

And all of this will be a distant memory someday; as distant as segregated water fountains and schools.

We Americans are mostly a hardworking, honest, innovative people who want to be left alone at the end of the day -- let us sleep with who we want, let us believe what we want, let us earn a decent living wage and save for the future.

In 80 years, we'll likely have bases on Mars and beyond (seriously; look at how insanely fast we went from Wright Brothers' ghetto hang gliders to men on the Moon), thanks to early investors such as Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and SpaceX's Elon Musk taking the leap into deep space enterprise.

We'll be fine. In the interim, it's about time we spoke up and demanded a return to constitutional rule. Things like warrantless wiretapping and imprisonment without trial don't even make intuitive sense, setting aside their profound unconstitutionality and illegality.

America's innovation and creative energy are unstoppable forces. But there is a small, non-zero chance we could descend into a new Dark Ages of over-regulation and government police state tyranny, which is precisely why speaking out against NDAA and CISPA -- right now -- is necessary.

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