An Open Letter to My Pro-Bush Brother-in-Law But I can keep my peace no longer. Today the camel’s back broke. As the story emerges that the torture and abuse and genocide have been condoned and sanctioned at the highest levels of this corrupt administration, I am once again compelled to reach out to you and ask, "Is there no limit to your acceptance of these dreadful policies? Are you not big enough to admit when your president is wrong?" I have wondered many times during this escalating ordeal what you would have done had you lived in Germany in the 1930's. Would you have been a good Nazi in the same way that you are a good American? Would you ever have possessed the objectivity or detachment, even after the war and the liberation of the death camps, to step back and say, "My God. How did I let that happen?" I knew you would scoff at a comparison that today seems less and less remote. More, http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/05/con04222.html
Okay, I'm a pretty liberal person. I don't like Bush or Kerry, but I am really sick about comparisons between the Bush administration and the Third Reich. I mean, really, do they have anything in common, other than the power they posess? If we REALLY looked at every Prez's history, I'd think they'd be alot more even out.
No references to folk such as Pol Pot, Mugabe etc etc... As a proud Englishman it does piss me off when these sort of things appear although i can see where they're comin from there is just no comparison.
The relevant comparison is how far wrong do things have to be before people object? What is disturbing to both the author and myself, is how many of my fellow Americans are willing to rationalize the war, the prisoner abuse, and the erosion of our civil liberties, for a wholly imaginary increase in safety. As Germany slid down the Fascist path, many ordinary German citizens sat by and did nothing, even fought and died for a completely undeserving government. Of course GW isn't Hitler. And we are not on the brink of Fascism. But we are closer than we have been in many years. And that does not seem to bother many of my fellow citizens. And their complacency, and willingness to believe easy lies, is what bothers me the most. Read this from Ted Rall's blog: http://www.rall.com/rants.html His crime? A cartoon that offended them. I think these people need someone to read the First Amendment to them out loud.
How do you know the truth from the lies when everyone is lying? Seems like people are strongly believing lies on both sides of the issue. I think the smidge toward fascism is the result of a new government uncertainty in their ability to effectively maintain stability (or at least provide the illusion thereof). I think a predaliction for control (from the government's standpoint) is inevitable when out of the blue, the twin towers can get collapsed and the pentagon hit (THE PENTAGON WAS HIT, CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW THOSE GUYS HAVE TO FEEL??: "we thought we were doing our jobs!" and now they have to compensate) with basically no warning, and no capacity to stop it.
Wes, what could be easier, from the beginning of this whole debacle, than to sit back and trust that the government in general, and GW in particular, would do the right thing? That they would know who the enemies were, and go after them. It would have been easy. Questioning the wisdom of our chosen path is what is hard. It is much easier, and more socially acceptable, to watch the emperor walk by nude than it is to point out that he has no clothes. Stepping outside of nationalism, and realizing that our government does horrible things isn't easy. As I became politically aware in the early 80's, I used to listen to the local college station, and their constant blathering about Nicaragua. As I got older and read more, I began to realize that we really were doing horrible things there. We were the bad guys. We had installed a brutal dictator, and when the Nicaraguans overthrew his son, we began to arm and supply the remnants of the hated national guard. Reading the history behind the Vietnam war, and realizing what a stupid and horrible waste of life that conflict was for all involved. Did you know that when the French withdrew, the U.N. had made a deal for a nationwide election to take place. The U.S. rejected it, fearing our side would lose. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/vietnam/timeline.htm For more context on our present foreign policy, read this Noam Chomsky interview. . Before dismissing it with a rolleyes smilie, can you refute any of it? I want our government to be the good guys. But I don't think we are right now.
Sure they do. Invasion of Poland = invasion of Iraq. Stripping Jews of basic rights = Padilla and other “detainees.” Death camps = Abu Ghraib and others. Slave labor = setting Iraq minimum wage to 25 cents per hour (same as Saddam). Irrationality = declaring that judges making judgments that you disagree with are “activist” judges. Suppressing opposition = exposing that your critic's wife is a CIA operative. Eagle’s Nest = US military headquarters in Saddam’s palace. Censorship = FBI tracking of library checkouts. And more. Bush is Hitler circa 1933, working up to full-scale evil. And just like with the Third Reich, the majority supports him.
Oh Zanket you forgot: Hitler didn't win the popular vote= Bush didn't win the popular vote. Hitler appointed Chancellor = Bush appointed President Reichstag Fire= 9/11 Communist scapegoats= Arab scapegoats Illegal detentions of "Political detractors"= illegal dentions of Arabs Enabling act= Patriot Act Fascism is surely on it's way to the US, not Nazism, but fascism none the less. Of course if Bush is elected.
"Of course if Bush is [re]-elected." I sure hope not, which is why I'm still here- I still believe in America, that we're not entirely stupid, just out of touch, and getting an education the hard way. I'm so confident in that statement, that, well I just remembered I've got to renew my passport.
No Hype he wasn't elected in the first place...remember. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Actually, depending on what happens in the next 4 years, I will as well. Our current governement is extending it's power and acting in ways that are not justified. The trend seems to be towards heavy conservatism, with a large touch of violence. Sure... 'grass always looks greener on the other side' and all that... but from my few trips to Europe in the past year I have a new view in our countries policies, and a new option for somewhere to live.
"If Bush wins, you're leaving Hype?" Yes, my wife and I have considered, and are preparing for that contingency.
"Where may I ask?" The EU- Czech Republic the one place where we've lived before that is not in the Mideast (I had always dreamed of going back to Lebanon, but I'm conspicuously American). In Czech we have family ties, so it would be most practical to start over there.
I think that the comparison of Bush to Hitler is a fair one. I don't think that it's debatable that Hitler was a lot worse. . . but then Hitler may be one of the only men in history that could run against Bush and actually steer my vote toward 4 more years of the incumbent administration. Bush, like Hitler used scare tactics to gain unprecedented military control (using 9/11 to get congress to vote on a resolution that would let him do whatever is necessary in his war on terror) Like Hitler he subscribes to a radical hard line right wing ideology, you’re either with us or against us! Like Hitler he has drastically increased police forces, going so far as to make a new cabinet level department of homeland security. Aside from that he has completely bypassed the constitution and Geneva convention both by incarcerating people without charges for indeterminate periods of time, and creating the “enemy combatant” status for those held in Gitmo. Like Hitler he took an extremely obscure, old fashioned and rarely used term to describe our nation (homeland, as opposed to Nazi Germany’s Fatherland) and popularized it and promoted it to help incite a new “patriotism” or fierce nationalism designed to make people more obedient and less questioning. Hmmm and come to think of it, the similarities with noteworthy dictators and madmen doesn’t end there. Like Stalin, Bush appeals to vague looming threats to consolidate his position and get his way. Like Stalin he is trying to keep us in a state of a perpetual war, in this case it helps him so that he’ll never have to relinquish his emergency powers (hell that’s kind of like the emperor from Starwars: Attack of the clones! Bush is just that evil!) Seriously, all Bush needs is some kind of creative moustache and he’s a mad leader for the ages. Look at the shape this nation is in after only four years with him in office, do we really want to tempt fait with another four?
"all Bush needs is some kind of creative moustache..." That inspired me to try a little juvenile lampooning. I think the Saddam/Stalin one suits him best: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
You'd think that frothy leftists would've learned by now that the BU$H = H1TLAR references only make them look like a pack of intuitively deficient idiots. By far the easiest partisan hyperbole to debunk, the greater leftist cause would have a lot more merit to it were it not for stupid shit like this. Yeah, there are a lot of problems with this administration. Yeah, I'd prefer it not get a second term (even though I abhor Kerry). But the comparisons to Hitler are really, really retarded. Especially when you consider that they're coming from some of the same morons who got all purple-faced about people comparing Saddam to Hitler. Such gross exaggerations seems to really illuminate the stupid.
