I wanted to think that a sweeping Democratic victory last November meant we faced less danger from the creeping fascism of creepy fascists. I was wrong, of course. The drive for authoritarian control is still apparent in a huge number of stories outside the average top ten–and sometimes lurking in the headlines.

Find a religious authoritarian under a variety of rocks.

• Evangelical Christians are using various levels of government to preach to captive Americans, resulting in unconstitutional use of taxpayer funds to indoctrinate prisoners and crossing the constitutional line separating church and state.

• The Pentagon Prayer Team, shown in the Christian Embassy video that is getting some notice, makes no pretense of separating church and state. It is quite obvious that they prefer no separation at all–as long as the church running the state is evangelical Christian, naturally.

• Efforts to exert influence over police and military result in evangelical Chistians holding at least 50% of chaplaincy appontments. So far. That is just the tip of the influence, of course. Do you think being part of the military or police should imply that one is: a) Republican, and b) evangelical Christian? It might be easy to say that it shouldn’t, but being honest about your own experience, does it?

• George W. Bush gets his orders from a higher power rather than from the U.S. citizens who (sort of) elected him. (See Mike Luckovich’s take on this higher power.) Even Spider-Man knows a super-villain when he sees one.

Rather than calling these people on their attempts to skirt the laws of the U.S. that separate church and state, those traditionally outside the evangelical right are courting them. I’m thinking of Mitt Romney, willing to do anything radically conservative, it would seem, in order to gain the influence needed to be run credibly for President.

Do you need more information than a few articles can give you? Read a few books. There are many books on the radical religious right and their Christian Reconstructionism. These are just two that have been released recently. Follow the links from them to find a web of alarm.

The Theocons: Secular American Under Siege by Damon Linker. Read an excerpt. Read reviews.

American Fascists by Chris Hedges.

DING DING DING.

We need more than alarm. We need clarity and action. We must be determined to fight those who attempt to undermine our rights.

How far are we down the road to fascism? And, what can we do about it?

read comments (0)

I really need to write about theoconspiracy. I’m hanging on to that one more day. One more day. I’ll use two tidbits to lead in.

Today, I just want to offer the fake Weekly Radio Address, in which “George W. Bush” hopes Congress will give him the tools he needs, and he mentions the tools he already has–veto, signing statements, ignore, and make believe. I admit that I still miss That’s My Bush, but this makes me feel a tiny bit better.

And, I want to offer one article that is worth reading thoroughly, including the comments: “Will Bush Provoke a Constitutional Crisis?” This is part of the ongoing thinking ALL of us need to do about the STILL CREEPING FASCISM. The comments (OK, most of the comments) reassure me that we really are aware and active enough as a people to see and prevent the worst of what is possible. What has to happen before the Congress calls these criminals on what they are doing? Will they try to use ignore and make believe to deal with Congress when called?

Hold the executive branch accountable. That’s all I’m asking. No pardons.

read comments (0)

I get tired of evangelical Christians’s idea of left behind. I get tired of hearing how much money other evangelical Christians make off the idea, too. I think, “Just leave me behind already.” It’s what I like to think of as Left Out Front. I don’t buy into their reality anyway, so I anticipate quite a nice world without that particular influence. Maybe not a world without problems, but let’s deal with one thing at a time.

I figured that just to show I know it’s Sunday, I’ll mention This Week in God, a segment from the Daily Show. Rob Corddray’s (formerly Stephen Colbert’s) God Machine landed on a left behind video game in which righteous Christians blow up unbelievers (minus one point) and save others (plus two points). In an Alternet review of the game, you will find all sorts of fun prayer requests from the makers of the game–as well as hundreds of hostile comments, many with local Utah relevance. Remember that violence is cool as long as the Right people come out on top, way up top, soaring into their clouds.

It is any wonder that self-declared righteous are so eager to get their hands on real guns then find and kill an enemy? Their virtual realities prepare them to believe and participate in their other realities. Or maybe their virtual realities make them crave realities that they have to create in order to find that deep satisfaction in this nasty material world.

Happy Sunday.

read comments (0)

I thought the era of fascist crimes against the American people might have ended with the Democratic majority in the Congress and Senate.

We still need to PAY ATTENTION because the executive has not stopped the self-excused crimes they call Signing Statements. While we were preoccupied with midwinter celebrations, George W. Bush signed a postal reform bill December 20, along with a signing statement letting us know that Bush declares the right to OPEN OUR MAIL under emergency conditions.

“That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.”

Again I’m baffled. Why do these people think it is OK, ethical, legal, even possible to act in direct contradiction to U.S. law? Why? Because they get away with it.

I don’t buy their longstanding fascist emergency or their excuses for illegal spying.

Hello, new Democratic Congress? This is exactly what I want you to deal with. Please investigate the crimes these people continue to commit against the American people. Hold them accountable. I don’t want you to take revenge. I just want to see justice. I want to see them accused and convicted of their crimes. Please show no mercy until it is time to sentance the criminals–if then.

UPDATE:

• Another Daily Mail Story: “The Republican sponsor of a postal reform bill called on President Bush yesterday to explain why he used it to claim he can open domestic mail without a search warrant.“
• Media Matters found that many television news stations either ignored the story or didn’t make it clear where the mysterious new power to open mail came from.

read comments (0)

“Total disaster,” said the headline in the Salt Lake Tribune yesterday on Saddam Hussein’s Saturday execution. What was so disastrous? Most news channels showed a quiet moment of putting a noose around the neck of a calm Saddam Hussein, remarking how subdued he was.

The answer comes in what appears to be a cell phone video of the moments before and after. Hussein was taunted before the noose was placed around his neck and as the trap door opened below him. This was clearly an act of revenge rather than an act of justice.

Justice? Like most in the western world outside the U.S. and like more people in the U.S. since last century, I don’t see how justice can ever be found in the death of another human being–no matter how vicious and merciless he has been himself. I find myself surprised to agree with the spokesperson for the Vatican that “Capital punishment is always tragic news, a reason for sadness, even if it deals with a person who was guilty of grave crimes.”

Just because U.S. spokespeople claim the trial is fair doesn’t silence those who question the fairness. Wouldn’t an unquestionable process of careful justice have helped the U.S. and others find the high moral ground they so often claim? I am thinking of the process of reconciliation in South Africa. I see the answer in meeting violence with nonviolence.

• “Execution chaos called total disaster,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 1, 2007, A5. Story doesn’t appear on the SL Tribune website, but the original (and longer) story is on the Los Angeles Times website.

Update: Democracy Now! held a roundtable on the hanging and international law the morning I posted this.

read comments (1)