During the 2009 presidential election I did everything I could to help elect Obama, including canvassing door to door. I'm pleased with the recent passage of the health reform bill and am an ardent supporter of financial reform -- what reasonable person could disagree after the great debacle? -- and look f/w to new laws for immigration.
While I'm at it, what are we doing in Afghanistan? They hate us, we're killing civilians, and we're doing no good. Another Vietnam. Why am I telling you this? I think it's important to have well-informed opinions in this complex world in which we live. Admittedly, I'm a newbie on the political front, but immerse myself in reading, and learn a lot from my politically astute boyfriend Scott, as well as fellow blogger Stephen Weinstein.
Stephen sent me a link from an alternative news site called Alternet. I'd like to share with my readers a frightening article by one of America's greatest thinkers, the Philadelphia-born Noam Chomsky, now an 82-yr-old professor at MIT. In essence the pessimistic article says America is headed toward a takeover by a leader who can catalyze the anger and rage of the average American citizen. As in Nazi Germany, scapegoating will take the place of solving our deep fundamental problems such as our sagging economy. We will continue to pillorize blacks and mount a campaign against illegal immigrants, such as the recent tough legislation in Arizona. Racism will explode like never before.
“Every charismatic figure is such an obvious crook that he destroys himself, like McCarthy or Nixon or the evangelist preachers. If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response.
"What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force. And if it happens it will be more dangerous than Germany. The United States is the world power. Germany was powerful but had more powerful antagonists. I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election.”
“I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime,” Chomsky added.
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His predictions certainly do parallel what is happening, and it is frightening, but I still believe that the fringe is the fringe and that even as they grow, they isolate themselves more every day. Plus, the days of an America governed and ruled by a majority based on race is over, because soon there will be no majority in America.
ReplyDeletethank you for your optimism, bill!!! i suppose someone living, like you, in alaska, must be an optimist or you'd never get thru the long winters! we can barely get thru ours here in PA.
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