In The Same Vein

My Friend Continues....

I wish I could find some cause for optimism but, quite frankly, I cannot. The powers within the Bush administration have quietly and methodically performed a coup d'etat over the last four years and last night the American people sanctioned it. There is no hint at this point of just how far they will go now that they have been granted absolute power. Aside from the obvious packing of the Supreme Court which will result in Roe v. Wade being overturned, probably within a year or two, the possibilities are almost beyond conjecture. I fully expect to see mandatory prayer returned to public schools, as an example. A Congress made up of religious zealots will rubber stamp anything of that sort that Bush proposes. There are no longer any moderate Republicans; John McCain has been rendered totally irrelevant and I'm certain that Bush is smugly delighting in that victory. I fully expect war with Iran within two years and that could well include the use of nuclear weapons. The Republicans now know that the way they can stay in power is to keep the nation continually in a state of war; by doing so they know that the electorate will support them completely.

I really do not see any parallel with any time in American history. There are, however, many similarities to be found with the mindsets of the leaders of national socialism and communism. The USSR kept its population in check from 1945 on by convincing them that they were surrounded by enemies who were out to destroy them and the people meekly accepted it. Hitler did the same and the German people worshipped him. We now find ourselves in a similar situation. Any constitutional checks on the power of the Bush administration can easily be brushed aside in the name of national security.

I was very worried in the spring of 1970 when widespread violence erupted on college campuses in response to the expansion of the war in Vietnam. Yet even then I had a feeling that cooler heads would eventually prevail and that the system would work. I have no such optimism now. The system is broken, perhaps irretrievably, and I see no light at the end of the tunnel. [I] hope that someday, by some miracle, a level of sanity will return to our nation.

I respond:

That's a good point, about the parallels with the Nazis and the Communists. In August, I posted big chunks of Orwell's "1984" on my web log (highlighting the statements Michael Moore quoted in F-911), and that gave me another opportunity to reread portions of that book. With the continuous wars and skirmishes between the the three great empires on the Earth, what Orwell emphasized was that the wars were never significant enough to actually threaten the rulers, but they were sufficiently large to keep the population on an endless war footing, and thereby stave off any challenge to the power of the rulers.

If you think about it, our current terrorist menace is even better than what Orwell imagined, in order to accomplish the purpose of keeping the powerful at ease. There are fewer terrorists than the hordes of East Asians Oceania had to deal with, and thus less real expense for us to keep those few at bay, just the inflated, pork-barrel, phony-baloney expenses of Homeland Security. We have entered the world of "1984", a lot of us willingly. In fact, I remember seeing where Orwell was asked if America could ever succumb to dictatorship, and even though he had little direct experience with Americans, he said something like 'of course, although it would come in a different manner than in Europe, and probably would emphasize something like true-blue Americanism, or some such rot'. And here we are today!

Our first responsibility is to resist, and never give up, ever. Even if, as with Winston Smith in "1984", the Republicans divine your secret fear of rats. Even in "1984", there were traces of the old order of things, of freedoms long lost savored in the shadows. We are in better shape than Winston Smith was. We can still organize, assemble, speak, petition. We have an obligation to do so.

We are still in for a rough four years, and maybe a rough remainder of our lives, however. The new Republican dominance mirrors the Democratic dominance rendered by the elections of 1964, and that eventually spiraled out of control. There are parallels with the 1920's as well. The world is not a machine and new forces arise all the time to challenge the powerful. The Republicans are not smart enough to dodge every bullet.

Still optimistic, even in a dark time.