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Zonie63 -> RE: Just a bit of clarification for some who seem to be confused about the differences. (4/17/2013 4:54:53 AM)
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ORIGINAL: DomKen
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ORIGINAL: Zonie63
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ORIGINAL: DomKen
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ORIGINAL: Zonie63
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ORIGINAL: DomKen
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ORIGINAL: Zonie63
Yes, but in the context of our own government, exactly what will this extreme patriotism or nationalism look like? How will they sell it to the American people?
It will look exactly like the aftermath of 9/11. If you're having trouble with jlf's not so subtle point, Obama is not turning this nation towards fascism but is leading us back from a dngerous flirtation with it.
Still, even in the aftermath of 9/11, I didn't really see it as actually "fascist." I think people are a little to quick to throw extremist labels anyway, whether they're calling people "fascists" or "communists." My sense is that the 1940s and 50s were far more oppressive and jingoistic than now (or even after 9/11), but I don't think we could go back to that.
I think if we really were under such a regime, we would know it. There would be no guesswork or theories - and we probably wouldn't be able to even discuss it as we're doing now.
I wrote that we flirted with fascism not the we actually went fully fascist.
I know, but even still, it didn't even seem like a flirtation with fascism, not compared with what America had experienced in previous decades. If anything, we probably had much closer flirtations with fascism back in the 1940s and 50s.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems the government has become much tamer and more transparent than it was during World War II or the Cold War.
The 50's were a bad time for civil liberties but it was McCarthy and Nixon in Congress going after "unamerican elements." The black list ruined a dozen or so people's careers.
After 9/11 our government rounded up thousands of arabs living here legally (both citizens and legal immigrants) and held them without charges for months. It also instituted CIA run "black prisons" in countries that didn't care what we did to the people held in them (that's where we tortured people). Gitmo was setup to house lower level POW's without actually acknowledging them as POW's and without any way to release the ones that were no threat to us (at this point ost have been in there 10+ years and no charges have been filed and none seem likely to be filed).
Domestically the administration lied to the Congress and the American people to convince us to let them invade Iraq. Dissent was squashed hard (see the treatment of Max Cleland and the Dixie Chicks). The Patriot Act and other laws greatlu expanded the amount of government surveillance of citizens not being actively investigated (warrantless eavesdropping of phone conversations, secret subpoena etc.). The embrace of the Religious Right ("office of faith based initiatives" should never be in the White House) made it clear that the adminstration viewed Christians as the only citizens worth caring about. The right wing media's overt and ongoing scapegoating of muslims was a very scary parallel of the scapegoating of jews in the early 30's in Germany. A US citizen was arrested on suspicion of terrorist ties and held for years in a military brig without acess to a lawyer.
For people like me who take our freedoms seriously it was a very scary time.
Good points. I think you've also pointed out another good reason why it's unlikely that America will ever be fascist, mainly due to the vast number of Americans who do take their freedoms seriously.
I think that the few years after 9/11, the country was traumatized and somewhat gripped by war fever. I think government surveillance has been a fact of life ever since the days of J. Edgar Hoover, so I didn't really see the Patriot Act as any different than anything our government did during World War II (i.e. Japanese internment) or the Cold War (NSA and FBI surveillance, CIA black ops). Perhaps since those earlier precedents and flirtations with fascism may have made it easier for Americans to accept the Patriot Act.
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