In fact, they say so themselves.
David Ignatius has a terrific quote today, although, being a fully paid up member of the Beltway 500, he doesn't know what he's got:
A prominent conservative complains: "With this White House, there is loyalty not to an idea, but to a person. When Republicans talked about someone in the Reagan administration being 'loyal,' they didn't mean to Ronald Reagan but to the conservative movement."
So, great, the oldtimers are appalled that the President [sic] who they groomed, funded, lied for, stole elections for, and enabled all the way over the cliff turns out to believe in Fuhrerprinzip, along with His thirty-percent of bitter-enders who can't undrink the KoolAid and form his only remaining base of support. My goodness, who could have seen that one coming?
But even better! Check that quote again for the word "loyalty":
Not loyalty to the country.
Not loyalty to the Constitution.
Not even loyalty to a Party, for heaven's sake.
Loyalty to the conservative movement. The "movement"--how I wish I could get the phrase "bowel movement" out of my mind--that was funded back in the 70s by winger billionaires who are working to roll the country back to the '90s--the 1390s, when church and state were the same. The same movement whose crackpot ideologies got us into Iraq. The same movement that's infesting the government with Christianists who want to wreck and destroy it. The same movement that ran the CPA in Iraq with backpacks of cash and managed to "lose" $8.6 billion dollars. The same movement that bought us John "Coathanger" Roberts. The same movement that stole Florida 2000. The same movement that brought us signing statements, and torture, and prison camps, the destruction of the Geneva Convention, massive warrantless surveillance, the theory of the unitary executive, and the destruction of the Constitution. The same movement that... Well, you get the idea.
Every bad idea and vicious, rancid policy for a generation can be traced back to these guys and their so-called "loyalty" to their precious movement.
And that's what they say they're loyal to. That's what they put first before everything else.
These guys came in, and they trashed the country. And it isn't their country.
NOTE Rahm Emmanuel may be a schmuck, but he's our schmuck. An excellent speech here.
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What do you mean it isn't their country?
The MSM keeps telling me it's a Christian nation, and the Bushies say they're Christians. Heck, you've got to be pretty hardcore Christian to run a Crusade in the 21st century.
www.vastleft.com
You see the "10 Steps to Fascism" article?
By Naomi Wolf in the Guardian as best I recall, yesterday or at least that's when I saw it. Lost the link and will have to relocate but should disabuse anybody of the notion that these are "just unrelated incidents, y'know, shit happens." There's a fucking formula for taking a previously (at least reasonably) free country into totalitarian rule, steps that must be taken, types of incidents that must occur (or be made to occur), formulas of speech and propaganda, etc.
I'll look it up after work but it needs to be heard. Relates to this post quite nicely.
Here are Wolf's 10 Steps to Fascism
The Guardian. I remember, back in the day of 2003 or so, looking at other checklists for the "What is fascism" question, and realizing, to my dawning horror, that the administration met all or most of them. The only problem, really, was that the American people aren't trained in being ruled by fascists. But the administration is working hard to give them that training.
With that, here are Wolf's 10 steps:
I added the checkboxes. Does this seem familiar to anyone else? Wolf makes the point that these points are a blueprint. None of it is accidental. Excellent catch, Xan.
UPDATE To amplify, the word "Fascist" got thrown around a lot, back in the day. But to do the due diligence, and find out that history was starting to rhyme.... It's frightening.
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
None of the ten steps is a clickbox, either
Not criticizing your stylistic depiction mind you (btw you gotta show me how to do that, esp. the green checkmarks...) but just saying that each one is a process, not something that goes from "off" to "on" by one swell foop.
Realizing that Naomi was writing an article and not a book, may I say I hope she writes a book. Most people take a particular setting--1920s Germany is of course the best known but she goes through others including very recent events in Thailand--and go through the whole sequence in that society.
I'd like to see one organized by the Ten Points above. "In Germany you had the Reichstag Fire; in country X you had the military coup of 19__, in the US you had the attacks of Sept. 11 2001....." etc.
A timeline would be good too. It took a decade in Germany, two if you count the years right after WWI, three or more if you add the military buildup and the war/prewar years, etc. Add in the wider aspects: economic, religious, actions of neighboring countries, economic good/bad times, existence/non of radical or reactionary political movements, etc. Something between the op-ed length of this Guardian article and the monumental microstudy David does at Orcinus.
Get to work Naomi, I should have time to read this late next week or so. :)
[I am working. I am not here. You did not see me. Shhh. ]
By "check" I meant "it's happening here"
I like the idea of a comparative study, Xan.
Maybe instead of checks, a clock similar to the "x minutes to midnight" that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists used.
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
In 2003 or 2004 I saw same checklist
Lambert, that Wolf artical was devastating to read, And I agree with Xan that a comparative study would be great. I also like your clock idea. I saw a similar checklist a few years ago in Funny Times, In These Times, or some such broadsheet. Heck it may have been 2005. Scared the beejebus out of me. I showed it to like 10 people and not one of us could come up with more than 2 of the 14 or so signs of fascism that hadn't already happened. Skeery stuff indeed.
Quantifying fascism
The Christianists have Rapture Ready, perhaps somebody could use that checklist to develop a list of factors and create a Fascism Index.
Interesting list, BTW, although it seems that a lot of that stuff has been going on since WWII, just not as well coordinated as it is today. I can't decide whether George W. Bush and his minions are evil incarnate, or whether it's just that sixty years of practice have made perfect.
...for the rest of us
...for the rest of us