"The American and European news stations don't show the dying Iraqis" they don't show the women and children bandaged and bleeding- the mother looking for some sign of her son in the middle of a puddle of blood and dismembered arms and legs" they don't show you the hospitals overflowing with the dead and dying because they don't want to hurt American feelings" but people *should* see it. You should see the price of your war and occupation- it's unfair that the Americans are fighting a war thousands of kilometers from home. They get their dead in neat, tidy caskets draped with a flag and we have to gather and scrape our dead off of the floors and hope the American shrapnel and bullets left enough to make a definite identification--
Yes, indeed, war is glorious - to those, like Bush and his administration - who have never experienced it.
"Before he takes us into Iran," Syria, and God knows where else bankrupting our nation and paralyzing its future in the process. Killing and maiming more of our children while enriching the children of his wealthy campaign contributors in the military-industrial complex, few of whom are much more likely to serve in combat than he or the chicken hawks who rule with him did. Before people who write pieces like this one, critical of the government and our leaders are locked up. Before sites on which articles critical of the government and its leaders are posted or printed are shut down for reasons of "national security." We already know CNN, for example, has become more timid because of the popularity of Fox News . CBS backed down on the Bush AWOL story. The documents - never actually proven to be forgeries -- and not their content - which Killian's secretary and those "in the know" believe to be true -- became the issue.
We already know the media is so hopeless at getting the truth out that way too many people believe Iraq had WMD's and/or ties to Al Qaeda. Many still believe Iraq was behind the 9/11 attack. The media cannot be induced to spend as much time correcting those misconceptions as it did in making sure we knew every detail of Clinton's fling with Monica. To this day they still barely mention any war profiteering by the president's family, and they take Cheney at his word that he is not and will not profit from Halliburton's windfall of riches due to the Bush/Cheney policy of constant war and thus constant, continuing government contracts for Halliburton. How shameful!!
They will not stop pretending lies are truth, and Congress judged by its reaction to the illegal surveillance issues is likely to try to make lies true retroactively. They had no difficulty being adversarial with Clinton/Gore, but they, too, are intimidated by Bush/Cheney/Gonzales. Additionally, they are afraid of losing access, and like most of the rest of the country, they do not want to believe Fascism truly can happen here.
In his http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=britt_23_2>"original article" "Fascism Anyone?", Laurence Britt compared the regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet and identified fourteen characteristics common to those fascist regimes.
"Project for the Old American Century" collected news articles dating from the start of the Bush presidency and divided thim into topics relating to each of the
"Fourteen Points of Fascism"
According to Britt, the fourteen points of Fascism are as follows:
1.) Powerful and Continuing Nationalism 2.) Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights 3.) Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause 4.) Supremacy of the Military 5.) Rampant Sexism 6.) Controlled Mass Media 7.) Obsession with National Security 8.) Religion and Government are Intertwined 9.) Corporate Power is Protected 10.) Labor Power is Suppressed 11.) Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts 12.) Obsession with Crime and Punishment 13.) Rampant Cronyism and Corruption 14.) Fraudulent Elections
As the insightful scholar in Germanic studies I quoted in part five writes:
"Sinclair Lewis famously stated that "when fa[s]cism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
"What he failed to point out is that when fa[s]cism rears its ugly head here, its mode of operation will not be to deploy the threat of physical terror. The terror will be fiscal: the fear forcing citizens to swallow their dissent will not come from the barrel of a gun, a jackboot in the face or the sharp end of a bayonet. No. It will come in the form of a "pink slip." The sanctions will be economic. And, in a country which is unique in the Western industrialized world in the way unemployment can very quickly translate into bankruptcy and homelessness--being forced to live on the street in what amounts to concentration camp conditions-- a "pink slip" is as much a death threat as Herr Himmler and Co. knocking at your door. In fact, homelessness in America might be seen as a fate worse than death because here, more than anywhere else in the industrialized world, you will be ON YOUR OWN!"
This statement rings true in my own predominantly Republican city, because every time I write a letter to the editor about some administration outrage, I receive phone calls from people thanking me for speaking out. They would like to, they say, but they don't dare because they work for "a Republican."
On the other hand, some of the people who write me who are the most outraged about this administration are Republicans. One man waited outside of my bank to shake my hand:
"I have been a conservative Republican all my life, and retired from the Navy, but I agree with almost everything that is on your "truck."
The truest patriotism is not blind obedience to party, or to the dictates of the official policy of those in power for a short time. The truest patriotism is what another war hero painted as a wimp because he sought peace, George McGovern called "a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher standard." It is protecting our true values from the machinations of a corrupt government. It is protecting our rights, while we still have them.
I pray that I am as paranoid and delusional as the right wing Bush supporters believe I am. If I am not, and the people, like the people in my town remain too frightened or too intimidated to stand up and speak out, may God help us all!!
Yes, indeed, war is glorious - to those, like Bush and his administration - who have never experienced it.
"Before he takes us into Iran," Syria, and God knows where else bankrupting our nation and paralyzing its future in the process. Killing and maiming more of our children while enriching the children of his wealthy campaign contributors in the military-industrial complex, few of whom are much more likely to serve in combat than he or the chicken hawks who rule with him did. Before people who write pieces like this one, critical of the government and our leaders are locked up. Before sites on which articles critical of the government and its leaders are posted or printed are shut down for reasons of "national security." We already know CNN, for example, has become more timid because of the popularity of Fox News . CBS backed down on the Bush AWOL story. The documents - never actually proven to be forgeries -- and not their content - which Killian's secretary and those "in the know" believe to be true -- became the issue.
We already know the media is so hopeless at getting the truth out that way too many people believe Iraq had WMD's and/or ties to Al Qaeda. Many still believe Iraq was behind the 9/11 attack. The media cannot be induced to spend as much time correcting those misconceptions as it did in making sure we knew every detail of Clinton's fling with Monica. To this day they still barely mention any war profiteering by the president's family, and they take Cheney at his word that he is not and will not profit from Halliburton's windfall of riches due to the Bush/Cheney policy of constant war and thus constant, continuing government contracts for Halliburton. How shameful!!
They will not stop pretending lies are truth, and Congress judged by its reaction to the illegal surveillance issues is likely to try to make lies true retroactively. They had no difficulty being adversarial with Clinton/Gore, but they, too, are intimidated by Bush/Cheney/Gonzales. Additionally, they are afraid of losing access, and like most of the rest of the country, they do not want to believe Fascism truly can happen here.
"Project for the Old American Century" collected news articles dating from the start of the Bush presidency and divided thim into topics relating to each of the
"Fourteen Points of Fascism"
According to Britt, the fourteen points of Fascism are as follows:
1.) Powerful and Continuing Nationalism 2.) Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights 3.) Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause 4.) Supremacy of the Military 5.) Rampant Sexism 6.) Controlled Mass Media 7.) Obsession with National Security 8.) Religion and Government are Intertwined 9.) Corporate Power is Protected 10.) Labor Power is Suppressed 11.) Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts 12.) Obsession with Crime and Punishment 13.) Rampant Cronyism and Corruption 14.) Fraudulent Elections
As the insightful scholar in Germanic studies I quoted in part five writes:
"Sinclair Lewis famously stated that "when fa[s]cism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
"What he failed to point out is that when fa[s]cism rears its ugly head here, its mode of operation will not be to deploy the threat of physical terror. The terror will be fiscal: the fear forcing citizens to swallow their dissent will not come from the barrel of a gun, a jackboot in the face or the sharp end of a bayonet. No. It will come in the form of a "pink slip." The sanctions will be economic. And, in a country which is unique in the Western industrialized world in the way unemployment can very quickly translate into bankruptcy and homelessness--being forced to live on the street in what amounts to concentration camp conditions-- a "pink slip" is as much a death threat as Herr Himmler and Co. knocking at your door. In fact, homelessness in America might be seen as a fate worse than death because here, more than anywhere else in the industrialized world, you will be ON YOUR OWN!"
This statement rings true in my own predominantly Republican city, because every time I write a letter to the editor about some administration outrage, I receive phone calls from people thanking me for speaking out. They would like to, they say, but they don't dare because they work for "a Republican."
On the other hand, some of the people who write me who are the most outraged about this administration are Republicans. One man waited outside of my bank to shake my hand:
"I have been a conservative Republican all my life, and retired from the Navy, but I agree with almost everything that is on your "truck."
The truest patriotism is not blind obedience to party, or to the dictates of the official policy of those in power for a short time. The truest patriotism is what another war hero painted as a wimp because he sought peace, George McGovern called "a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher standard." It is protecting our true values from the machinations of a corrupt government. It is protecting our rights, while we still have them.
I pray that I am as paranoid and delusional as the right wing Bush supporters believe I am. If I am not, and the people, like the people in my town remain too frightened or too intimidated to stand up and speak out, may God help us all!!
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