The Dawn of American Fascism and the Last Honest Man

KING GEORGE A SOCIALIST?

Poor King George. Here he is with a national/global crisis at hand, and he's got no smoking rubble to stand on top of, as he did after 9-11. President Bush would love nothing more than to climb up on top of the ruins of the American economy and tell US everything is going to be okay, and we should all just go shopping. Unfortunately for Bush, an economy is a rather intangible, abstract thing that can't be physically stood upon. Besides, even if W. could stand on top of Economic Failure Mountain and tell US to go shopping, it would do no good. No one has any money, and we certainly don't have any credit anymore.

Free Market Capitalism as we knew it is close to being destroyed. It is happening oddly enough during a Republican administration. You remember the Republicans, don't you? Always blathering on about how if we just deregulate everything, the Free Market will hum along, occasionally correcting itself if need be. No need for any watch dogs, they told us, Wall Street will police itself. That's what the Free Market is all about, right? Of course, freedom without rules, or any desire to follow rules (plus added heaps of greed and stupidity), is just anarchy. In other words, it is what we have now, financial chaos.

Capitalism and the Free Market aren't quite dead yet, though. They're being given a type of life support. Our government has a plan, don't you know. Now euphemistically referred to as the "Recovery Act," it was known previously as a bailout. It will give a Frankenstein-like new lease on life to the American economy, and that economy will never look, or act, the same again.

Big Business will be injected with our tax money so that more loans and mortgages can be doled out in the same fashion as before, even though these loans and mortgages were, and will be, given to people who probably shouldn't be getting them in the first place. Lack of responsibility doesn't just live on Wall Street, it lives on Main Street as well, quite possibly in the mortgaged-to-the-hilt house of one Joe Six Pack.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not all anti-business, nor am I anti-Six Pack. I'm sort of a Joe Six Pack myself, although I've never signed up for an adjustable rate mortgage I knew I couldn't afford down the road, nor have I ever tried to buy a car thinking I'll finance all of it without a down payment.

As for my feelings toward business, I like business. It's fair to call me materialistic. I like stuff. I like stuff from Big Business, such as cars and the fuel that goes in them. I like stuff from small businesses as well, like beer from a local micro-brewery, or art from local artisans. I like business and I like America and America is all about business. I think it was Calvin Coolidge that said, "The business of America is business," and Silent Cal was right. Business is what runs America, and Americans love to run businesses.

The problem now, though, is that business, mostly Big Business if truth be told, is trying to extort money from me. Well, they're not really trying anymore, they've succeeded in getting Congress to go along with a plan that will probably cost tax payers at least a trillion dollars when all is said and done, and the auto makers quietly got themselves a separate deal for $25 billion. Thing is though, I, and all the other Six Packs on Main Street, don't really have a trillion dollars to spare. Nor does the United States government.

Even worse than the government buying up mortgages and printing money for the lending institutions to free up the credit market, our dear old Uncle Sam wants to buy banks, in some cases whether they want to be bought or not, and in some cases, even if they don't need to be bought. Essentially, what's going to happen is that the banking system and the credit system will be federalized. More so than ever before the federal government will have a giant role in the daily financial matters of every American.

That's a scary proposition. It sounds like socialism to a lot of people. I think it sounds like something even more frightening than socialism.

FROM WHITE COLLARS TO BROWN SHIRTS

There was a very interesting article in The Guardian newspaper recently by Naomi Wolf called "Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps." It points out ten ways that governments can insidiously turn what were once thriving democracies into dictatorships. The Bush administration has initiated every one of these steps already, from terrifying the populace by invoking internal and external threats to setting up an internal surveillance system, one that spies on it's own citizens.

The Bush administration has quickly created a situation where the leader of this nation can be a dictator. The Bush White House has done this with the help of not only the Republicans that were in the Congressional majority from 1995 to 2007, but with the acquiescence of the Democrats, who, for the 8 years that Bush has been president, have rolled over in front of King George like puppies yearning for a (yellow) belly rub.

Thankfully for US, at least in this case, the Constitution prevents a president from seeking a third term. But what is to stop the next president from pursuing this agenda further? Once absolute power is grasped by even those with the best of intentions, it is hard to let go of. Worse still, once the wheels are set in motion towards dictatorship, they are hard to reverse.

So that's where we are now, on the eve of Election Day 2008 and turning a blind eye to the rising Dawn of American Fascism.

Who's to blame for all this? Well, the Fickle Finger of Blame can be pointed in every direction the wind blows. George Bush and Dick Cheney. Yeah, those are easy ones. Every member of the Bush administration. Okay. Congress. Yep. The electorate. Yeah. How many people in 2000 voted for Bush because he was the kind of guy they would like to sit down and have a beer with, or as a Chicago radio talk show host put it, toss around a football with. In 2004 I saw on the local news a woman who said she was going to vote for Bush because "he's a man's man." No, really, I'm not kidding. I will never forget that woman nor what she said for as long as I live. Simply put, there's a lot of complicity in the act of forging American fascism.

LET'S PARTY UP

In 2008, as in every election year, our choice is between a Democratic candidate for president, and a Republican candidate. We have a two-party system of government. Been that way for a long time. That needs to change, if we indeed want to affect real change.

We are presented this year with one presidential candidate in particular who likes to speak of change. Barack Obama gives eloquent speeches about bringing change to Washington, about having a new way of doing things. He doesn't get specific about what these changes are or how to implement them. The only obvious change is that he is a Democrat, as opposed to the Republican who has occupied the White House since January of 2001.

The big problem, at least as far as America is concerned, with Barack Obama is that he is a charlatan. He talks of change yet chose a vice-presidential candidate who's been entrenched in the trenches of Washington for 35 years. Obama said he would accept public financing for his presidential race, then opted out when he knew he could raise vast sums privately. He was against the FISA bill, which gives the government the right to spy on Americans without any oversight at all, until he voted for it. Obama does not represent change. Obama consistently votes along party lines, never once taking exception with anything the Democrats do. Barack Obama is simply more of the same, just in a slightly different looking package and with an odd name, odd at least by comparison to previous presidents and candidates.

The other candidate, John McCain, is a feisty old guy. I like feisty old guys. I consider myself a feisty middle-aged guy and, should I live long enough, plan to be a feisty old guy myself. However, feistiness alone does not a president make. McCain seems void of fresh ideas and his campaign appears directionless. It is unfortunate. He might have made a good president, but he doesn't want to be himself anymore. He is trying to be something his handlers think is appropriate to show the American public, and that's too bad. The real McCain was a fighter. This McCain is, so far, a palooka who will be knocked to the mat on November 4.

The presidential candidates offer us no hope, no matter what Obama tells us. Congress offers us no hope either. When the Senate and the House are sworn in next year, we will have many of the same people we have now. There will be more of the same: Greedhogs everywhere, looking to feast at the public trough, the trough you and I are paying for with our taxes.

There will never be effective change as long as our only options are the Democrats and the Republicans. I hate to say George Wallace was right about anything, but he was on the money when he observed that there wasn't a dimes worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats.

Sure, there may be ideological differences between the two parties, but the reality is that neither party has the best interests of America at it's core. At the core of both parties is the cancerous lust for power. It's this lust for power and it's perks that made Congress pass the bailout. There was nothing good about this bailout plan, and there were enough congressmen to vote against it the first time around that it failed to become law. One had hopes that democracy was alive, if only for a moment. But that moment passed once the pork needs of enough representatives were met. A three page bill became a 451 page bill, filled with earmarks. The idealism of those who initially voted against the bill was shown up as phony.

Allegedly, some members of the House and Senate were getting communications from their constituents that was as much as 90% negative towards the bailout bill. Yet the bill passed. Why is this? Because we are no longer a republic where our duly elected representatives respond to the wishes of the electorate. Elected officials are beholden to Business and to no one else. And as long as we have a system where we only have two choices of political parties, this will always be the case.

Adding another viable political party, or even ten more parties may not cure what ails America, at least not right away. But having more viable choices would be a step in the right direction.

We the people need to stop looking at third party candidates as a wasted vote. We need to pay attention to these men and women who run as independents, or as members of the Green Party or the Libertarian Party, or any other party. Unless we do this there will NEVER be real change in Washington. As long as there are only Democrats and Republicans to choose from we will be running headlong towards becoming a fascist state. Don't think that's the case? Then why do the two major parties conspire to keep third party candidates from joining in the presidential debates? The debates used to be run by the League of Women Voters until the process was taken over by the Commission on Presidential Debates. This commission was founded in 1987 by...oh, by the Democratic and Republican parties.

America is in trouble. There is a quietly growing danger to our liberties, an insidious danger that is difficult to notice by the average person on an everyday basis. Already we can have our communications monitored by the government without anyone monitoring the monitors. We can be imprisoned if perceived to be a terrorist threat, rotting away in a cell with no charges ever being brought against us. We can be called traitors for having a differing opinion from those in power. We are told that everything being done by the government, no matter how unlawful or unconstitutional, is being done to protect us from terrorist attack. And now the government will be controlling our financial institutions. Which means that, even more so than ever before, the government controls our access to our own money.

Again, as long as there are only Democrats and Republicans to choose from, the freedoms we hold dear in this country are in grave danger.

That's why on November 4, 2008 I will be casting my vote for Ralph Nader for president of the United States. I think he is an honest man, perhaps the Last Honest Man, at least the last one in politics. I truly believe this is someone who has the best interests of the nation in his heart and on his mind. Nader understands that "the nation" is not an abstract thing, but a living being, made up of individual people who together form a great nation, perhaps the greatest nation ever created in the history of the world.

Nader understands that the corruption that surrounds everything that occurs in Washington causes Americans to suffer. We suffer because of what Wall Street does, we suffer when Congress raises taxes, we suffer when a president sends men and women off to a poorly planned war, we suffer when our elected officials vote away our civil liberties. Ralph Nader may not be able to change any of that. But I believe he is the one man who will at least attempt to bring change to help Americans.

That's why I'm voting for Ralph Nader for president.