Steve,
How interesting - spent last Saturday at the U.S. Holocaust Museum here in Washington, D.C. and ended up spending almost 5 and a half hours there. I came away with many of the insights that your interviewees had - how a lot of what is going on now seems to echo what happened back then. It is really sad how no one seems to learn from history, if they are even taught it in the first place . . .
I had exactly the same reaction to Roberts this morning. Listening to here spiel, I had my first true "ARE YOU EFFIN' KIDDING ME?" moment in quite a few months.
The success of our Conservative Friends is greater than you describe. They didn't just divide the country, they managed to convince a large segment of the population that even if a Democrat(or an insufficiently fascist Republican) won an election, it was somehow illegitimate for the winning candidate to hold the office. Since the DC pundit class behaves exactly like a bunch of high schoolers judging a popularity contest, they accepted this narrative too: no one likes to root for the weak skinny kid with acne and glasses, even if he is smarter - and he doesn't deserve to win, even when he does.
Still struck by my father's observation that the rhetoric and legal views behind Guantanamo are the same as those of the concentration camps.
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
-- Herman Goering, Nazi Reichsmarshall and Luftwaffe-Chief, at the Nuremberg trials
"Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level.
a. Propaganda must reinforce anxiety concerning the consequences of defeat
b. Propaganda must diminish anxiety (other than concerning the consequences of defeat) which is too high and which cannot be reduced by people themselves."
Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propoganda, Nazi Germany
The Goering quote is not from the Nuremberg trials. It was from an interview at the time of the trials. He must have sobered up by then.
oh, Cokie, you silly old cow. I listened to that piece too. It is getting harder and harder to stomach NPR anymore.
I'm not forgiving anything. They were absolved of their crimes during Iran/Contra, and that constitutional crisis, unconfronted, metastasized into our current nightmare, itself having grown out of the steaming pile that was the Nixon administration.
If a movement doesn't grow to bring the right to justice, they will only rest a little then come back with even greater crimes, though the mind quails at the thought of what those crimes might be. You can already see elements of the right positioning themselves to offer the "real" alternative to the Bush administration, while the Democrats parse words and run screaming from anything that might be recognized as principled stand.
What is being described here certainly has every appearance of a cancer in the body politic, no less fatal than fascism, bearing all the hallmarks of that mindset, born out of ignorance, mothered by deception, fathered by lies, raised on half-truths, nurtured by myths, and gorged on belief.
In 1964 was the last event that bore any resemblance to public debate heard in the country between LBJ and Goldwater over the use of nuclear weapons, and the public spoke decisively on the issue. Less than a quarter of todays voters were witness if they recall at all.
Since, the public is entertained by a circus of soundbite by Republicans, drownding out any attempt to engage in debate by their opponents, non-issue supplanting issue, illusion displacing experience, beliefs dislodging fact, religion trampling knowledge. The stain of this mindset is now so deeply rooted in the fabric of the nation, its removal is at best problematical.
About the only sure act that can be taken now is for Congress to clearly declair that any person or group that is involved in a nuclear attack upon any country that has not declaired war upon the US will be held by Congress to have committed treason to the Constitution and to the people of the US, and any country which uses its assets in such a manner, will have committed an act of war upon the interests of the US.
This may buy some time to investigate and impeach and bring under control the rogue executive and remove from its grasp, the power to further harm to the interests of the US.
Commenting by HaloScan
