Autumn of the Republic?

[babsbunny]

Autumn of the Republic?

http://www.truthout.org/1227091

by: Kirk Nielsen, Miller-McCune

Did America slip into a semiliterate, polarized, pre-fascist state over the past decade or so, allowing greedy oligarchs and corporate elites to run the government? Two books I recently read offer reasonably persuasive evidence and arguments that the country did, and a third suggests that dictatorial mindsets could besiege Americans, with an assist from the Internet, if they don't come to their more deliberative senses. Each of the books offers an informed diagnosis of the dangers that widespread ignorance and ideological polarization pose for America

[whatchamacallit]

1. Yes and yes (n/t)

[xchrom]

2. It happened with Reagan. Nt

[Frances]

5. When I moved to the Boston area in the late 60s

someone told me that the center of power was moving South. At that time the center of power had moved from Boston to New York City. Now the center of power has moved to the Washington DC area.

In the 60s, the population was shifting from New England and the industrialized states to the Sun Belt states.

My native South had given its votes to FDR because he was a Democrat and did not belong to the party of Lincoln, the Republicans. (I remember a man in my home town telling my father that he wouldn't vote for Ike because Ike was the right man, but the wrong party.)

Then Nixon took advantage of the racism in the South as did Ronald Reagan. Karl Rove and George W Bush took advantage of the fundamentalists' beliefs in the South.

I had hoped that the people moving to the South from other parts of the country would liberalize the South. That has not happened. In fact, I've been told that many of the new comers are even MORE conservative than people born in the South.

Unfortunately, this huge block of voters who want to base our country on the Bible rather than the Constitution exerts a lot of power over all of us.

[happy_liberal]

3. interesting

thanks 4 posting

[MisterP]

4. it's not polarization that allowed protofascism, it's because protofascism is the modus operandi of

the national security state since the Air Forces ripped off Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in incinerating Germans, Japanese, and Italians

the CIA has been overthrowing democracies and paying for center-right parties since 1948, and funding torture and murder since the 50s; JFK's counterinsurgency program gave us assasins oozing machismo and covered in human ears, village sweeps, and the conviction that the Enemy was a bunch of terrorists who could not be negotiated with

[lunatica]

6. Yes, and under our noses

Worst case scenario is the Bush Era was just the final consolidation, although having a Democrat elected as President could have still stopped that.

But as every branch of our government has determined, there will be no roll back of the Bush Doctrine nor of the goal of Privatizing everything into a Fascist state where everything belongs to the Corporations who are running the country.

But they're still feeding us the illusion of freedom and Democracy. As people fall off the unemployment lists and cease to be counted everything will look so much better. Once people are homeless it's easy to demonize them and call them welfare queens, bums, lazy and shiftless. Then they will be treated as criminals and marginalized as much as possible. And crime may be the only path left to them.

I just depressed myself

[Hydra]

7. >:)

Let me depress you more.

Think of the world you described- A small group at the top, a continually shrinking working class, and a HUGE group of totally impoverished people at the bottom that gets larger every day.

Sound like 1984 yet?

[lunatica]

8. And the only way out of impoverishment is to join the military

who will be going to wars AND guarding the gated communities and Corporate Headquarters from the rabble.