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Two of my hobbies are history and criminal psychology. The two rarely come together but very occasionally, the patterns of history start to repeat in ways that everyone can see if they had but eyes to look.
McCarthy is one comparison but there's another, even worse. I don't say this much because Americans have an annoying tendancy to assume it isn't fascism unless there are tanks in the streets but this is starting to look an awful lot like an updated version of Germany, circa about 1936. Everything which should have sent up alarm bells about Germany (but didn't because no-one knew what to look for) are there again: - A national tragedy, exploited to expand the power of the executive. 9/11 in Bush's case, the Reichstag in Hitler's (that is not to say that 9/11 was a work although it's possible, I tend to think LIHOP myself). - A retreat from previous democratic freedoms, the accumulation of ever more power in the hands of law enforcement. See the Patriot Act, Military Tribunals, legalised torture, etc. - The designation of official "enemies", scapegoats who can be blamed for all the countries ills. Witness the ongoing demonisation of anything which can be labelled "liberal". - The merging of state and corporate power. People tend to assume that teh Nazis were socialists because the word was included in teh party name. The fact is that they were socialists in name only. Now, the US has been suffering from this one, to an extent, for the last thirty years or so. The protracted conflict with the USSR created a simplified view that anything other than unrestrained capitalism was communist. The revolving door between corporate and political life has reached new heights in teh Bush junta though. - The crushing and/or demonising of dissent. See "Free Speech Zones", much of teh Patriot Act and the self-appointed Patriotism Police of talk radio. - Pronounced and continuous nationalism. No comment necessary. - The glorification of the military. Again, the US has been prone to this for several decades but teh rest of us in teh rest of teh world worry about the extent to which Americans almost hero-worship their military (and the US's permanent war-time economy). - The abuse of religion. Now, opinion of the Nazis religious views tends to assume that they were all either irreligious or ardent Christians. Again, the facts are rather more complicated but it's certainly true that the Nazis used and abused religion in an attempt to identify the party with the faith. You don't have to look very far to see a concerted effort for Bush to do the same thing. - Media censorship. The Bushistas have been lucky on this one. They don't have to resort to anything as crude as outright censorship or D Notices because the media has become largely concentrated in corporate hands so self-censorship is the order of the day.
It must be pointed out that none of this would have been possible without a largely apathetic and ignorant electorate. I could go on but I think I've made my point. This is not to say that Bush is Hitler. The psychological traits are very different. Hitler was the archetypal megalomaniac. Personally brave, quite bright and a talented public speaker (that is not praise, I'm partly Roma, I have more reason than most to hate the bastard). Bush is a man suffering from dry-drunk syndrome who's lack of emotional development (I guess he has an emotional age of about 10) leads him to be easily dominated by those he looks to for guidance (in this case, Cheney). He also has classic rich-kid narcissism and lack of empathy (his childhood cruelty to animals fits a well-established pattern). None of that is untreatable if caught fairly early in life.
The problem is that he is dominated and manipulated by Cheney and Cheney does fit the classic megalomaniac profile. His lack of concern after he accidently shot his friend was telling, as is the pattern of unethical (and probably illegal) deals he presided over at Halliburton. He is the power in this junta. Bush is simply the easily manipulated front man, sent out to put on a smiling face for the cameras. This is a common pattern. In criminal psychology, crimes committed by two people are psychologically distinct from those committed by a larger group. Two person crimes are referred to as "partner crimes" and, contrary to popular belief, are not usually "folie a deux" (a shared madness) but a case of one partner psychologically (and sometimes physically) dominating the other. The best example would probably be the serial killers Myra Hindley and Ian Brady ("The Moors Murderers").
I contend that this is the real danger. That Bush, while doubtless malicious, would be little danger without the manipulation of the sociopathic Cheney and it is that which should ring alarm bells. We've seen what happens when state power is concentrated in the hands of a sociopath. That's why I think impeachment is imperative, because with this man in charge, I'm honestly not sure the US can survive another year without an excuse (perhaps a terrorist incident, either real or manufactured) to declare martial law and engineer an executive coup.
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