Three Signs That Your Superpower Is Becoming a Cheap Rip-Off of the Soviet Union:
1. Members of the party in power pledge allegiance to their party's own symbol. At a GOP dinner in San Diego, the fine Republican attendees stood like good meerkats and began to say the Pledge of Allegiance until some observant Pavlovian diner noticed that there was no, you know, American flag to pledge to. "Pledge to the elephant," shouted one quick-thinking GOPer, and all the pledgers, including weepy Rep. Darrell Issa, turned to say the pledge to a starred and striped elephant banner.

2. Children sing songs in praise of the government, no matter how incompetent and dangerous they've been to those children. At the gay-infused White House Easter egg hunt, a group of "Katrina Kids" sang a song about how major great President Bush, Congress, and FEMA have been in helping them. It's a little like a National Guard member thanking Bush for sending him to Iraq 'cause it gets him out of the house. Except creepier. The song was sung to the tune of that song of blind optimism by Cy Coleman, "Hey, Look Me Over," which has the prescient line, "I figure whenever you’re down and out, the only way is up." Truer words, motherfuckers, truer words.

3. The government creates guidelines telling adults what they can and can't do with their bodies. The Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families has defined "abstinence" for abstinence-only programs seeking federal grants. That definition says abstinence ain't just a bullshit lie that conservatives tell teenagers. Nope, see, now the only time you can fuck is in a man-woman marriage. Otherwise, no fucking, of any sort: no single sex, no gay sex, no Scalia-approved orgies, no under the desk blow jobs, no on top of the desk anal, no muff-diving, no rim jobs, no hand jobs, no backward daisy chain monkey in the middles with a butterfly twist. No sexual stimulation between two people unless one's a guy, one's a gal, and they're miserably united in connubial bliss.

Hey, all we need is morning bread lines, absurd government secrecy, spying on citizens, a foreign policy of militarily imposing our ideology on others, and soaring fuel prices...oh, shit. Scratch that. All we need is morning bread lines, and then welcome to the Politburo's America.