June 26, 2003

The Amerikkkan President

Harry Hatchet throws clear, cold water on Ted Rall's latest lump of hyperbolic Third Reich-invoking gibberish. (Bush's Willing Executioners! Shame on you, Mr. Rall.)

Rall, of course, is only one of many purveyors of myriad versions of this absurd exercise. It has become something of a literary genre in itself; and Rall has studied at the venerable feet of Pinter and Vidal.

Such presentations always remind me of those lists of shocking parallels between, say, Lincoln's and Kennedy's respective assassinations. You know the kind of thing I'm talking about: Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy! Kennedy's secretary was named Lincoln! Coincidence? That's what they want you to think!

As for the Twilight Zone notion that Hitler's Germany has managed to rise from its ashes and reconstitute itself in modern American society, Bush = Hitler is merely the most recent version. It has a long pedigree as a goofy, beloved, rhetorical touchstone amongst America's crackpot Left (hence the spelling "Amerika," soon to be further developed by adding a couple more Ks.) This state of mind is difficult to fathom by anyone other than the hipsters of the revolution (you had to be there, we who were not there are so often told.) I imagine lots of things seem to make sense when you're on acid, but it's doubtful whether anyone not on drugs (if such in fact there ever were in 1968) believed it literally. I doubt Rall believes in it either, other than for its virtues as an easy, self-generating column. On the other hand, Rall, like me, is of the generation and the specific subculture that was able to find profound wisdom in the observation that each of Ronald Wilson Reagan's names had six letters (666-- aaaah! the Great Beast!) No one believed that literally either, of course (the Great Beast part, I mean.) You said it as a joke. But we all know people for whom this kind of joke was a mere step along the way to a final slip off the deep end, with or without the aid of narcotics. Purveyors of this latest version, therefore, bear close watching, for their own safety and that of others, if for nothing else.

At any rate, Harry's final comment stands as a suitable, succinct, and politely understated response to the Bush-Hitler parallel-mongers as a group:

in case you are still hoping to be taken seriously at some stage, here is a quick piece of advice. Bush may be right-wing, you may dislike his foreign policy, and you may be concerned about spending priorities and some of the civil liberty issues. And you might not like the dominance of right-wingers in the media and the tone of debate in your country - I can understand all of that.

But America really is not Germany in the 1930s.


Welcome to reality. Should you choose to accept it.

Posted by Dr. Frank at June 26, 2003 07:27 PM | TrackBack
Comments

Forget it. Fred Gall chose the blue pill ages ago.

Posted by: Emily at June 26, 2003 11:38 PM

No, right-wing America is not Germany in the 1930's, but left-wing America is not Russia in 1917 either. Bush != Hitler, and handicapped bus-passes are not a form of social engineering.

Posted by: spacetoast at June 27, 2003 08:05 AM

Spacetoast, I don't believe I said they were. (Now, don't you go a-checkin' my archives-- if I ever said they were at some point in the past I must have been wrong. 'cause they're not.)

Posted by: Dr. Frank at June 27, 2003 08:55 AM

No?

"left-wing America is Russia in 1917"

I make this out pretty clearly whenever I play Milk, Milk, Lemonade backwards...which, incidentally, is all the time. And I'm pretty sure "handicapped bus-passes are a form of social engineering" was the title of one of the Jonah Goldberg pieces you linked to, but I'll have to reread your entire archive to be sure. The spin stops here, Dr. Frank.

Posted by: spacetoast at June 27, 2003 03:48 PM

The culmination of the Lincoln/Kennedy conspiracy:
http://tinyurl.com/fheq

Historians will be debating the ultimate meaning for years to come.

Posted by: Dave Bug at June 28, 2003 06:02 AM

My ears...er, eyes perk up at this story because, for my last semester in school, I did a pretty intense study of fascism (well, it's still on-going), and it kind of struck me that when people accuse each other of being fascists or Nazis, they probably have no inkling of what it means to be either. For one, I don't think either is definable by characteristics as much by sentiment (therefore comparisons of law enforcement, aggressive foreign policy, etc. are pretty superficial). Plus, I think fascism (and Nazism, which I'm no longer sure is the same thing as fascism), was a pretty unique movement which required pretty specific contexts which don't exist...yep, it really CAN'T happen here, literally.

I dunno, I just dig the history books, and the more you delve into fascism, the more bizarre the ideology seems. It's not just EVIL, it's really, really, really WIERD. Gary Busey wierd.

Posted by: Matt from Vegas at June 29, 2003 10:55 AM

Mussolini -- who was, after all, the first fascist -- defined fascism as the "corporative state": that is, a nation run like a corporation, with input into public policy based on wealth and ownership ("stockholding"), decisions made at the top and orders given to be followed, and the ability to "fire" people who aren't team players. Il Duce didn't have the bizarre, neo-Wagnerian fantasies of Hitler. His fascism, and Franco's too, for that matter, were much more mundane, but still extremely oppressive, murderous and awful for all but the social elite. Without bringing up the overloaded terms "nazi" or "Hitler," I think it's very fair to say that Bush wants to build a corporative state -- he practically ran for president on that platform as "the first MBA president," and virtually all of his policy choices have involved giving corporations and the wealthy more power at the expense of everyone else.

Oppressive states tend to evolve: the rulership keeps taking more and more control, and is only stopped when people say they've had enough and resist, or the state is conquered from outside. I suspect that Bush wants our nation to be much more "corporative." I have no idea if it will actually happen, but I do know that the more Americans who call him on it and resist, the less likely Bush is to succeed.

Posted by: Nick at July 4, 2003 03:28 AM

Well, Nick, I'm not totally sure that this isn't a troll, but taking it at face value:

Actually I don't think it's at all fair to jump from Bush's vacuous campaign malarkey about his MBA and "corporate experience" to a comparison with Mussolini's corporatism. The idea that Bush's long term program (if such there be-- I have doubts) is a kind of corporatism in a literal sense rests on nothing more than a pun, as far as I can see.

Bush and his administration have severe deficiencies. Many of his policies are foolish, harmful to various individuals and groups, and some of them may even be wrong in a moral sense. There are always grounds for concern about what is usually referred to as the "erosion of civil liberties," and a case could be made that Ashcroftism ought to cause a bit of a jump in concerned citizens' civil liberties worry-o-meter. But Bush's America is no more "oppressive," broadly speaking, than America under any of its previous presidents. You really think so? Uniquely oppressive, because of the will to power of a single, uniquely evil man?

He may not win the next election. He's extremely vulnerable on many issues and in numerous ways. Even if he wins, he'll only be the president for four years more. Are you thinking his plan might be to nullify the Constitution, seize power and declare himself dictator for life before the time's up? If that's your worry, I think you can relax. It will not actually happen. As Gary Farber once remarked, America has somehow managed to survive every damn president so far, and I'd bet my money on its surviving this one, too.

Posted by: Dr. Frank at July 4, 2003 03:24 PM

I'm new to blogging, so forgive my ignorance (and my long posts): is a "troll" a tongue-in-cheek or satiric post? If so, then this was not a "troll."

I'm not trying to quibble, but I didn't advance the idea that Bush is "uniquely oppressive" or that Bush is bad because he's "evil." Bush is bad because of his long term program: he's trying to dismantle most of what the Federal Government does except for Homeland Security and the military. Most of the power would devolve to corporations and the wealthy. Would this America look like a fascist state to us? would it look like "Rollerball"? I don't know, and I'm not sure the terminology matters. It would not be a country characterized by freedom, justice, or general prosperity, however.

Is it fascist to let Enron write our country's energy policy? or to give the VP's company huge non-competitive contracts in Iraq? Or to support legislation to strip native-born Americans of our citizenship if we support groups that the Atty General says are terrorist? I dunno, maybe it's just corrupt and extremely harmful. I don't think Bush wants to be President for life, or to wear a military uniform and aviator sunglasses...well, maybe he does want THAT, but I don't think he's gonna get a shoulder full of ribbons and medals and wear a sash.

I'm not worried about the survival of the US per se, because whole nations can survive almost anything: Spain survived Franco, Nicaragua survived Somosa and the Sandinistas, Iran survived the Shah and is surviving the mullahs pretty well, Cuba will survive Castro. We as a nation will survive Bush, but millions of actual, living people can be made pretty damn miserable because of his efforts to concentrate more and more money and power into fewer and fewer hands. But in the end, doing something to create a more hopeful future is more significant for all of us than arguing over whether Bush fits the definition of a fascist.

Posted by: Nick at July 8, 2003 03:33 AM