I just came across this artical by the Anchoress whose been talking about it since 2005 - an excellent read on how it grew to reach this point:
http://www.firstthings.com/theanchoress/2006/09/24/the-art-of-the-painless-coup-repost/
Noonan expressed her belief that, subconsciously, Americans are wandering through their days with a sense of things being, “Off the tracks and hurtling forward, toward an unknown destination.”
Everything…A sense of unreality in our courts so deep that they think they can seize grandma’s house to build a strip mall; our media institutions imploding–the spectacle of a great American newspaper, the New York Times, hurtling off its own tracks, as did CBS…
A sense of unreality…yes…and illusions, too.
Some might argue that what is coming “off the tracks” are the easy illusions of 20th century America: The perhaps naive notions that our elected leaders actually seek office to serve the public good. That the press is interested only in presenting the truth, no matter what. That our courts are peopled with lofty higher beings and geniuses who know better than the rest of us. That our churches are both safe havens and by-ways to heaven.
There was a time in America when all of those statements would have been accepted at face value. In our nation’s babyhood we believed and we trusted all the parent figures - the governments, the courts, the press, the churches.
http://www.firstthings.com/theanchoress/2006/09/24/the-art-of-the-painless-coup-repost/
Extremely insightful