TPM said what?

Fascism... It ain't just for the tin foil clad Bloggers anymore:

I guess 'pull[ing] the rug' is a kinder, gentler Americanized version of 'stab in the back'. But the core message is the same. There are the troops on the one hand and their domestic enemies at home. And who will win? Andrew Sullivan has a good post on this today. Also look at Jon Chait's piece in The New Republic on Bill Kristol and The Weekly Standard.

Militarism and proto-fascist thinking isn't just something to be studied about the 1920s and 1930s. You can see it today as a growing part of our political discourse, even as the support for it in absolute terms diminishes. It is all of a piece. You cannot separate the bogus war for democracy abroad from the war against democracy and the rule of law at home.
--- Josh Marshall

It is more than just a few turns of the word, though that is always a part of it. It is, unfortunately, the actions that speak louder than any words ever could.

It is not that long ago that this nation was shaken to its core by some hard cold truths and the constant barrage of theories concerning the American government's alleged ties to groups and individuals that should never have had the chance to wield such power over the political directions of this nation:

A subtext in Talbot’s argument is that John Kennedy was killed for his opposition to the militarism that led to Vietnam, Granada, Iran-Contra, and finally the Sunni Triangle of Iraq. Obviously the mixed record of JFK’s foreign policy—with its deployment of special forces and covert operations in places like Indochina and the Caribbean—contradicts the thesis that Kennedy was killed only because he believed in pacifism. But it is impossible to read Talbot’s account of the Bay of Pigs or the Cuban missile crisis and believe that JFK would have given the Joint Chiefs a blank check in Vietnam. He quotes a 1954 statement that Kennedy made on intervention: “I am frankly of the belief that no amount of American military assistance in Indochina can conquer an enemy which is everywhere and at the same time nowhere, an ‘enemy of the people’ which has the sympathy and covert support of the people.”

The fact that I am loitering with skepticism near the Grassy Knoll or reviewing the confessions of E. Howard Hunt and James Files does not mean I am ready to blame JFK’s death on the mob, the CIA, Lyndon Johnson, anti-Castro elements, J. Edgar Hoover, Clay Shaw, right-wing extremists, or Lee Oswald. (Sadly, we need all the government documents and yet another investigation, with the most modern forensics. This time the Internet guys can run it.) At the same time, Talbot’s book has let me embrace the empiricism of the conspiracists, who bring to the democracy something absent in the Warren Commission: common sense and inquiring minds.

We will never really be truly certain about much of what happened in those times until all of the "Top Secret" information is finally cleared to released to the general public, and even then there may be gaps left to fill in. The longer we wait , the harder it will be to define what the real truth is.

But we can take what little information about today's politics, the bits and pieces that aren't classified, and make our best judgments based on the facts available to us. Some common sense and inquiring minds...

Take the aims of this new Clergy oriented Federal program:

When the fuck does this get taken seriously by the opposition party?

The video to your right is a shocking KSLA news report which confirms that so-called "Clergy Response Teams" are being trained to by our federal government to "quell dissent" in the event of a declaration of martial law. Pastors and other religious representatives could become secret police enforcers who teach their congregations to "obey the government" and how to participate in property and firearm seizures, mass vaccination programs and forced relocation.

Now I'm not a fan of many clergy. I've known a few who were rat bastards including the minister who fucked his teenage congregants, the boss' minister father who has sooooo saddled her with baggage that she lives her life in incredible fear, the Catholic priest who took in my boyfriend when he had to get out of his parents' house, only to try to convince him that god's will was guiding him to express his love physically for the 18 year old kid.....Pat Robertson, James Dobson, that smiling freak Joel Osteen, Creflo "Show me the money" Dollar, shall I go on?

This is an action that is here and now, and documented. The melding of the government and the church is a strong sign of fascism on the move, and a sign that we dare not ignore, especially when it is having an corrupting threesome of "quelling dissent" under a martial Law power orgy.

Past actions that should raise alarm bells, as well, as we watch them repeat themselves in the current corrupt administration are well documented throughout the internet, but rarely used as references by our corporately owned and obedient media. They would prefer to stick to the corporate scripted versions that paint beautiful hues of Democracy, Freedom and Nation Building, which are little more than codewords for empire and fascism when they are actually put into action by this government.

Check out the long, but informative, video look at some of the "Democracies" the USA has encouraged and thwarted in the past and present:

Since the American revolution, democracy has been said to be the best form of government. The notion of 'democracy' strengthened in the 20th Century as authoritarian regimes were imposed in Russia, Germany, and Italy. So, 'democracy' became a common refrain, not only during the run-up to our current Iraq war, but throughout the exercise of our foreign policy since the end of World War II. The truth is that America does not support democracy. Our foreign policy hasn't changed--it's the same as it's been for decades. Propping up dictators in Latin America didn't end in the 50s or the 70s.

It ain't a pretty picture... But as the first excerpt from TPM - from a Blogger that is only slightly to the left of the average American politician - shows that fascism ain't just a word to be used by the tin foil Bloggers anymore. It has gone mainstream with it's resurgence in today's faux Conservative politics and pretty much defines the GOP's neoconservative movement.

But, then again, so do so many other nasty words that could be used to define what has happened in American politics in the last six and a half years:

Sit back and think real hard about the ramifications of such a policy, effectively taking away all rights of Congress to create the law and putting it in the hands of presidential appointees to rewrite as they see fit.

Colin McEnroe was 100% correct. These are the actions of a tyrant, a dictator, A despot.

July 4th is a good day to start calling it what it is -- "absolute Despotism." When you use "signing statements" to gut the meaning of new laws, you're a tyrant. When you hold people in prisons without even telling them what they're charged with, you're a tyrant. When you appove the use of torture by agents of the government, you're a tyrant. When you use your armies to attack another nation that has not attacked you, you're a despot. When you mislead your people about the reasons for a war, you're a despot. When you ignore a law you find inconvenient, you're a dictator. When you send your henchmen out to destroy your legitimate critics, you're a dictator. When you overturn the work of a rightful judge and jury to protect one of those henchmen, you're a tyrant.

Let's use the right words from now on. George W. Bush is not a knave or a fool or a bully. He is a tyrant, a dictator, a despot. He has ruled as a king on the soil of a democracy. His instincts are those of a cruel and perfidious monarch.

We now have a DiC that refuses to listen to the American people.

And to this day, bush still refuses to act on the will of the American people... And the criminal bush administration constantly redefines the boundaries of how bad the American government can be in the hands of the the most corrupt when allowed to by the easily corruptible. The worst that America has to offer. And all the while, the citizens of America are losing more and more rights, and the government is giving more and more control of the levers of power to the corporations. And in the meantime the corporations are bankrupting our economy and, even more importantly, both the government and corporations are morally bankrupting our nation.

You may as well cue the fucking Taps and burn the flag so you can bury it properly along with the icon of freedom that this nation used to provide if things don't change real soon.

Taps performed at Kennedy's Funeral