A Question of Hope

(Letter to Mike Malloy)

Hey Mike,

Last night I asked if you or anyone of your listeners had any hope that our drift into fascism could be averted.

You said you’ve seen, in your life, the country come close to fascism two, maybe three times, and at the last minute … the plunge was averted.

Absolutely true.

From McCarthyism in the 50’s, COINTELPRO in the 60’s and early 70’s, to the Reagan/Bush machinations in the 80’s … we were dangerously close.

In the 30’s we were closer.

In 1933 Maj.-Gen. Smedley Butler was approached by a group of industrialists and bankers (including Prescott Bush, our (p)resident’s grandfather) and asked to command a 500,000 strong rogue army to overthrow Roosevelt. Butler blew the whistle on them and though a congressional investigating committee corroborated his testimony, no action was taken.

Father Coughlin, “the Father of Hate Radio,” openly endorsed the fascist policies of Hitler and Mussolini in his weekly broadcasts to a forty million-plus audience.

And then … we pulled back from Fascism when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Last night you described how the prominent players in The Bush Crime Family, and their PR front men and women, were cowards.

True again. They’re shills. All they have to do is cash their checks. No courage needed for that.

It’s true that in the past we have pulled back in time. But I’m afraid I have to respectfully disagree with your conclusions because we’ve kept going this time … into new country.

Until Bush was made president, I used to tell people that America had flirted with Fascism … dated a few times … but … hadn’t gone “all the way” … yet.

Now there’s something new on our American landscape.

The Republican/Fascist Noise machine isn’t limited to Father Coughlin’s weekly radio broadcasts.

Fox News spews all day, every day. Talk radio, with a few (notable) exceptions, follows suit. It doesn’t make any difference who the mouthpiece is. O’Reilly, Hannity, and Limbaugh read from the same script.

The Right Wing virtually controls the Mass Media Machine. Every single television network was complicit in the run up to the war in Iraq. With the exception of MSNBC’s Phil Donahue. He was fired.

We have never been in this situation before. Because every day they lie. On television and radio they lie to their audience and get away with it because, for the most part, their audience doesn’t know that they are being lied to.

The past did not predict where we are now. Based on past events … we should have turned away by now. We have never been here before.

We didn’t have Blackwater, The World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army before.

The government didn’t openly sanction torture before.

We have had two back-to-back stolen presidential elections and nothing in place to prevent a third.

This is Brand New Territory … for America.

There was no revolution in Germany. The people did not rise up against the Nazis. There weren’t any protests outside Dachau. The Allied forces had to reduce cities to rubble to get them to stop. Too bad for the people under the rubble. Germany had to be conquered.

What will happen to our country, to us, if the government doesn’t stop going where they are definitely headed?

You know what gives me hope?

Evil has a very short half-life. The Third Reich lasted only 12 years. They laid waste to millions of people and it took the lives of millions more to stop them. But they only lasted 12 years. In The Big Scheme of Things … just a blip.

I do have hope for humanity in the long term. It’s the short-term stuff that gives me pause.

A Question of Hope

November 4, 2007