I'm baaaack....
I've been missing in action for the past few months. No excuse, other than I was swept up in life and a bit burnt out.
Watching the co-dependent American media dutifully beat the drums of war, facilitating Bush's bloodlust to invade Iran—aping almost to the word the phrases the president used in his run-up to the last Iraq war!—has bummed me out and made me sick. Literally. (Seems I've got asthma.)
Wake up Americans! Can’t you see that your republic is slipping slowly into the waiting grasp of a right-wing Xristian cabal?
The recent assault on bloggers Melissa McEwan and Amanda Marcotte (the latter requires watching a short ad) has inspired me to start blogging again.
And “assault” is precisely what it was. Not only have the two women been subjected to the verbal bile spewing forth from the keyboards of anonymous right-wing thugs (who seem almost universally challenged by proper spelling!) but the threats have gone farther. Melissa reports that at least one stranger has driven up to her home (how the hell did they get her address?!), parked, got out, and tried to pound his way through her front door with his fists.
Fascism when it comes to America will not be dressed in brown shirts, goose-stepping and saluting “Seig heil” --although America has its share of neo-Nazis. No, from where I sit across the pond it looks like the American version will be wearing crosses and carrying bibles while they crash left-wing websites through DoS attacks (a modern form of book-burning?), force creationism into public schools, menace women as they enter abortion clinics, control the public discourse through their celebrity and reality-TV crazed corporate media, whip up fear by screaming "Terrorists!" at every turn, deny global warming til it’s too late, and ignite a nuclear holy war that will engulf the Middle East and beyond.
Their “Jews” will be lesbians, gays and transsexuals. Their gypsies, Arab and Mexican-Americans.
The way it’s going, if they don’t gain outright control of the US military through sheer numbers among recruits, likeminded chaplains, and Xristian operatives inside the Pentagon, they will simply outgrow and outgun the military with corporate militias like Blackwater USA, 3D Global Solutions, Critical Intervention Services, etc.
The Right’s dirty work—defacing campus lgbt centers, burning books, murder, and generally silencing anyone with the guts to criticize or oppose them—they’ll leave to the less mentally-stable among their ranks, whipping them into a frenzy through the loudmouthed ravings of the likes of Bill Donohue, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage,…Ugh! The list is too long and too nauseating to cite.
Starting to blog again, I’m struggling against a debilitating sense that resistance is futile. When the borg collective suspended habeas corpus last October, enacting the Military Comhttp://beta.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifmissions Act of 2006 and the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007), the US may have crossed a line of no-return--especially when you consider the Democratic Party's abject eagerness-to-assume a supine position.
My friends in America seem concerned, but not concerned, as in "We're on the verge of dropping nuclear bombs on a country that poses no military threat to us at all!"
Mostly my friends seem beaten down. As Chris Hedges points out in his brilliant book, American Fascists, the institutions that were strong and coherent the last time the American Right grew this powerful and threatened the foundations of the republic, such as labor unions, liberal churches, public schools, small-town communities, and an independent, diverse and courageous press, have all been weakened or utterly destroyed during the past 25 to 30 years. It’s no wonder my friends are exhausted and disheartened: outnumbered, isolated, and surrounded by an apathetic, ignorant or hostile population they’re resisting well organized, funded, and energized right-wing forces.
I wonder if this is how concerned Germans felt, in the 1920’s and 30’s as they tried in vain to warn their friends and family of the looming threat of Nazism?
