Facing Down Homegrown Fascism - Again
By Allen
J Duffis
Published: April 15, 2010
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Fascism: A system of government characterized by rigid one - party dictatorship, forcible suppression of opposition, with private economic enterprise under centralized government control, belligerent nationalism, racism and militarism, etc. Definition from Webster's New World Dictionary
How Little We Understand American society in general suffers from a severely limited understanding of its own history. And worse yet, they have little actual understanding of the full implications of what went on before the close of the last two centuries. After all, how many think that the Civil War was all about slavery? In point of fact the American Civil War had very little to do with the concept of slavery, other than acting as the final spark to ignite that massive and bloody conflict. However, even more than the last point, only a small minority of my countrymen have ever bothered to read the recorded history of the overall plan for the totally 'new federation' the Confederacy leaders wanted to install - should they have won that war. What they planned was to rewrite the entire Constitution - from the version then in place, which at the formation of the country they felt they had been forced to go along with. And no matter how you look at it, their plan was for a Fascist style government masquerading as a Democracy. It wasn't a good idea then, nor is it a good or desirable outcome now. The Coming Fury No matter how we may try to blindly analyze the events taking place on the American political scene at present, an honest appraisal has to indicate that, in progress, we are at the tip of a possible - Third American Revolution. Without intention or plan our first Black president, Barack H. Obama, has inadvertently opened the door to the coming fury of - national political reinvention. And - We the People - is now traversing through a noisy and sometimes violent transitory phase of - We the Mob. American society in in the process of deciding if they really want to continue in the democratic form of government as envisioned by the Founders of the Constitution or - try something else. Normally, such a mid-course reevaluation of our national goals can be a healthy exercise when undertaken in an orderly manner. Unfortunately, we do not at present find ourselves privileged to be basking in a time of reason: the support for reason is collapsing all around us, which in turn is causing the times, like the weather, to change - radically. We are in a 'new time' of invasive and overpowering communication technology that, for the most part, we the masses do not control and, in many instances, do not fully comprehend: instead the technology has come to control us and, dangerously so - our national destiny. The New 'Self - Chosen' 
By deliberate and reckless manipulation the previous presidential administration employed the 'new media' to induce the nation to engage in a financially and morally destructive - war of choice, crudely disguised as a - war of preemption. And in the futile quest for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction (WMD), we invaded a country that did not attack us on 9-11, nor which possessed any real capability of attacking our mainland. Therefore, we must ask ourselves, how an entire country could allow itself to be so deluded by its leaders? And the answer is - we had help. We know from past history that, when the times are right, a certain element will crawl out from the dark crevasses of what was previously a healthy society, and make their presence known. If their origins are biological they are known as a plagues. If however, their origins are human, they are known as - demagogues. Such a presence in our present time goes by the name of - Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck = Stupid + Hypocrite? by John Cory - Trouthout - March 20, 2010 Glenn Beck said, “I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes.” Really? Glenn Beck is a Mormon. As Dwight said in This Boy’s Life: “I know a thing or two about a thing or two.” Mormons pay tithing – a tenth of their earnings. A portion of that money funds the Mormon Welfare System to aid the poor and the down-and-out. It is the “widow’s mite” that feeds the orphan and the weak. The Mormon Welfare system has been lauded as efficient and humane – it is supported by church run welfare farms that raise wheat and cattle – by canning operations that package and preserve fruits and vegetables for the Bishop’s Store where the needy and un-employed members can take their chit and buy groceries for their family. 
And if you have no money, you work at the welfare farm or the second-hand stores or the canning facility or help deliver clothing and food to shut-ins and the frail. You work for the good of the whole and contribute what you are able so that others can benefit in times of need. Church members volunteer or get volunteered to work these facilities, as a reminder that while you may never need these services – others do and always will. Mormons are among the first charitable groups to land in disaster zones like Haiti or Chile or Africa or flood and hurricane disasters in Florida, Louisiana, Ohio and elsewhere. They bring clothes, food and aid. Much of it bought and paid for by the tithing and other donations of its members. So will Glenn Beck renounce Mormonism and leave the Mormon Church? Church was a bad thing in my childhood – painful and evil and lonely. I rant a lot against churches. As I’ve said before, I don’t do the “church” thing. But that doesn't mean they are entirely bad or evil. Preachers and churches bound together for civil rights and for social justice. Many churches run soup kitchens and homeless shelters and do many good works in their communities. Priests and Pastors battle war and racism and poverty and violence. So is Glenn Beck stupid or just a hypocrite? Beck wants you to think he is the modern day Howard Beale. The heroic Beale who shouted, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. The brilliance of (the filmed version) of Paddy Chayefsky’s Network - 1976 was that Howard Beale, like most of us human beings, was a combination of light and darkness, a fractured wholeness glued together by desperation and hope. Beck has chosen to be the damaged Beale....." Arthur Jensen: “There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today… The world is a business, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business… One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.” Howard Beale: “Why me? Arthur Jensen: “Because you’re on television, dummy…” Arthur Jensen: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.” Roger Ailes, CEO of FOX News recently reminded his staff to - support the FOX family and not air criticisms or doubts about the mighty Beck. Glenn Beck is a Bible-thumping bunko artist, whose only God is: ratings. Paycheck principles and snake-oil spirituality can buy million-dollar houses. Is Glenn Beck a hypocrite or just stupid? I guess you could say – Glenn Beck is wily as a FOX. A rich stupid hypocrite of FOX. In my opinion the editorialist, John Cory, has crafted a perfect editorial snapshot of Glenn Beck. What more is there to say? The New Middle Class Identity So who are these new threats to the ineffective political establishment that the Beck crowd would like to lead? Well it would appear - they are us: or better yet, as once more descriptively defined by the late President Richard M. Nixon - The Silent Majority. Patrick Jonsson of the Christian Science Monitor has crafted An excellent summing up of one of the new political facets of this long ignored American entity (article excerpts as follows): Tea Party” Beginning to Look Like Middle America Amid harsh criticisms, 'tea party' slips into the mainstream. The release of the top [three] 'tea party' issues this week gives a glimpse of a small-government movement growing, maturing, and looking increasingly more like middle America. Their faces sometimes twisted in anger, 'tea party' followers have been called neo-Klansmen and knuckle-dragging hillbillies. To be sure, angry town halls, the N-word thrown at black congressmen, and signs comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler play into the hands of the movement's critics. And demonizing tea party activists tends to energize the Democrats' left-of-center base. 
But political experts say that many such criticisms are near-sighted, if not outright inappropriate – and ultimately may miss the point. Indeed, polls suggest that tea party activists are not only more mainstream than many critics suggest, but that a majority of them are women (primarily mothers), not angry white men. Only someone with a brain the size of a pinhead and intellectual capability of equal dimensions, could possibly have been oblivious to the coming of such events as reported above. But even more important, there were some individuals and organizations who (like Glen Beck), behind the scenes actively try to manipulate the age-old mechanisms of 'Mob Rule' to achieve the resultant political ends. And to their incredulous dismay and astonishment - it ain' t quite happening as yet. In short, the American Silent Majority Middle Class is holding their own - and intelligently resisting takeover by radical elements of both the left and the Right - and the Glenn Beck lunatic following. The Duel Identity of the Middle Class Op-Ed editorialist E.J. Dionne has clearly define the who and what of the Tea Party membership and guess what? They are not all Right Wing, Republicans or radical Neo Conservatives: Will True Conservatives Stand Up? Washington - Every nation needs an intelligent and constructive form of conservatism. The debate over the health care bill, which mercifully came to a close on Sunday night, was not American conservatism's finest hour. In its current incarnation, conservatism has taken on an angry crankiness. It is caught up in a pseudo-populism that true conservatism should mistrust -- what on Earth would Bill Buckley have made of "death panels"? The creed is caught up in a suspicion of all reform that conservatives of the Edmund Burke stripe have always warned against. Authentic conservatism is better than this. Conservatives, of course, are rightly suspicious that when those on the left recommend a "proper" role for the right, they usually want a tame creed that doesn't really challenge any of the progressive fundamentals. First, conservatives are suspicious of innovation and therefore subject all grand plans to merciless interrogation. Their core question goes something like this: Maybe you think this new health (or education or environmental) plan is a great idea, Mr. Liberal, but will it really work? What are its unintended consequences? Can our governmental institutions carry it off? Not all progressive ideas pass the test. In the health care debate, conservatives were at their best when they shelved the demagoguery and asked practical, focused questions. 
Second, conservatives respect old things and old habits. They are not always right in this. Racial segregation and discrimination are good examples of "old ways" that were morally wrong. But an admiration for what the conservative writer Russell Kirk called "custom" and "convention" speaks to something deep in the human heart. 'Tea Party' movement: Who are they and what do they want? Opinion: Tea Party activists: Don't confuse them with independents What's more, the release this week of the top three planks of the "crowd-source" Contract From America project, to some activists, shows a maturation from sign-wielding protesters to a political reform movement grounded in ideas. The top three vote-getters among 360,000 respondents on the Contract From America website: Calling for an enumerated powers act to force lawmakers to check the constitutionality of new laws; requiring a two-thirds majority in Congress for any tax hike; and a legislative backstop to prevent the EPA from "backdoor regulating." "The ideas in the tea party-coined Contract From America] takes our protest movement and really sets forth a real kind of intellectual reform movement," says Ryan Hecker, a Tea Party Patriots activist in Houston, and a founder of the Contract From America website. "It's a response to the idea that the tea party people don't know what they're fighting about, and it shows there's a real intellectual center to this movement and that we really do have ideas." Still, many critics look at a tea party crowd and just see a "fantasy-based" movement of "angry white people," as Monitor Facebook commentator Bill Downey points out. The fact that most tea party activists are white, however, may reflect less racial animus against a black president than the fact that white workers – by far the majority in the US population – have seen their plight worsen at dramatic rates, some political experts say. "[O]position to health-care reform from the tea party is not based on racism but self-interest," writes NPR's Juan Williams, who is black, in the Wall Street Journal. "The older, whiter segment of the American demographic was at the heart of opposition to the president's health-care proposal because they feared cuts in their Medicare benefits or tax hikes eroding their income." Moreover, polls show that the anger at big government exhibited by tea party protesters is shared by many, if not most, Americans. Some tea party critics invoke incidents like Joseph Stack's airplane attack on the IRS office in Austin and the arrest of the antigovernment Bhutanese militia this week as evidence of extremist leanings in the broader tea party world. But such charges often don't hold up, says George Michael, an expert on extremism at the University of Virginia's College at Wise. Extremist groups like the Guardians of the free Republicans, which made news this week after it suggested that all 50 US governors step down or face removal, most often show evidence of "both left-wing and right-wing elements in their worldview," says Mr. Michael. (Also worth noting: Mr. Stack railed against George Bush in his long screed against the IRS and the Toledo Blade reported this week that at least one of the alleged Hutaree militia members is a voting Democrat.) "The tea party is the middle 50 percent of America that wants good governance and lean more to the right of Barack Obama on economic issues," says Mr. Hecker, the tea party activist. "By calling them bloodthirsty extremists you're kind of alienating a lot of independents that voted for Obama." So we have to ask ourselves - what is the true socio/political identity of the Left? And the surprising answer to that question is not that which is generally accepted: for like the Tea Party Right, the Left is itself split into and displaying two real and quite separate political identities, and either one appears - Socialist. A Possible 'New Beginning' of Epic Proportions 
Most Americans, like myself, find Socialism as a total encompassing governing system to be repugnant: and it is our opinion that the Obama and Pelosi administration is, indeed, herding us right into a - Socialist Hell. On that point - they must be stopped! However, we don't believe in throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and most Americans are in favor of elements of Socialism that have worked demonstratively well within our system as reasonable. For most such is the case with Social Security and Medicare. We must always keep in mind that these systems did not start out in America as Ponzi schemes, and if they are so now, they were made that way by the very politicians from both of the major party's - some who now advocate privatizing these enterprises. And who do they want to turn these socially important functions over to? The same elements of the Private Sector who brought us the banking and housing crisis - really! Are these people crazy? Of course not! They are simply devout worshipers at the - Church of Capitalism. They are 'true believers' in the concept that cold profit over human life is a true capitalist 'state of mind and morality': one that must be supported and maintained at all costs - regardless. So let's face it, no pure system is in and of itself perfect - especially ours. Therefore, I and many Americans are more than willing to let the Tea party syndrome play its hand on our behalf. They are gaining their 'sea-legs' so let them make their mistakes while they grow, and allow them some beginning faults - at least for a while. They are a new political-life form that was long overdue, and to advocate an abortion at so early a stage would be a mistake. After all, who would be killing - if not ourselves?
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