How Hitler and the American Republican Party Seized Their Power

An article in the Los Angeles Times made me think of the old days. Because nothing is new, and Bush ripped his moves from the playbook of the Nazi Party, I could not help thinking of Hitler when I read of how Congress' attempt to enforce the law against White House malfeasance is being scuttled by a Justice Department that puts the president above the Law.

The essential brilliance in Hitler's political skill is the same as our current president's. With a nation fearful of terrorism, co-opt the legal apparatus first, and all other power will follow. As is painfully clear, our elected legislators matter not a wot, if the Department of Justice ignores them.

The scandal that began with the sacking of attorneys at the DoJ is about the White House attempt to secure lasting power to the Republican Party despite the outcomes of future elections. What we who oppose this coming fascism need to fear, as (some) Democrats do their best to slow the process, is an event to parallel the 1933 arson attack on the Reichstag. The leaders of both, the Nazi party, and the Project for the New American Century knew that a national emergency will allow citizens to give up their civil liberties.

Two weeks after the fire, Hitler obtained the 2/3 majority from the German Congress that made him the dictator and above all constitutional constraints.

Christo-Fascists Phone It In

Why is it that Cosimo Cavallaro's "My Sweet Lord" (the chocolate Jesus sculpture recently ejected from a group show in New York) seems so unimportant as an issue of freedom of expression? Is it because the piece is so funny, in a way that Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" wasn't? Perhaps it's because the kerfuffle was ultimately good for the artist, who received several offers for the piece, in addition to very memorable publicity.

Or, is it because we are all ready to accept censorship by threat of violence. Death threats are not legitimate protests, but rather intended to create fear in innocent people. This is terrorism, plain and simple. Are we ready to accept it now as a way of life?

Radical Muslims used violence to react to the Muhammad cartoons printed in a Danish newspaper, and now radical Catholics are using violence to quash an artwork. Most notable is just how easy it was for the religious bullies to get their way. The curator resigned, but the street remains silent.

In the eighties, the NEA Four caused a mass movement of artists and a protracted court battle. In the end, however, the government beat those artists. They won their law suit in 1993, but the Supreme Court reversed that victory in 1998 by declaring that Obscenity was a legitimate reason to deny funding. Further, Congress eliminated the NEA's Grants to Individuals Program.

So is that what happened? The bastards just won is all? And to the victor of the war for expression goes the right to silence artists merely by phoning it in?

ps - Apparently, threatening to kill is also effective for intimidating bloggers, too.

Speak No Ill of the Dead (except Saddam)

I know we all want to feel good about Gerald Ford, especially now that he has died. And why not? He was a war hero, a reliable legislator, an athlete, an Ivy Leaguer, a steadying influence for a nervous and unsettled nation, a loyal and devoted husband, and by all accounts a really nice guy.

Let's go ahead and feel good about him.

But why does this preclude, seemingly, any widespread questioning of his decision to pardon Richard Nixon? Especially in light of the fact that the imperial administration of George W. Bush has been presiding over an unprecedented usurpation of power for the executive branch, championed in large part by none other than Dick Cheney, Ford's Chief of Staff at the time.

So far, the prevailing winds blowing in from the punditry sound like mere variations on the theme of Ford's own view that the pardon meant, simply, that "our long national nightmare is over."

But really, couldn't it be that the nightmare was just beginning?

If there is a major current of opinion in the popular press that has mounted an argument against the pardon, I have missed it. Jake Tapper said something in his blog, "Political Punch", on ABCnews.com, but where is the widespread analysis that might serve to better elucidate the national sentiment regarding the limits of Presidential power, at a time when this issue is of historically consequential relevance?

As Vladimir Nabokov said, "at every moment there is a thus and otherwise." No one really knows where "otherwise" leads. It might have turned out that a trial and perhaps eventual imprisonment of Richard Nixon would have made the nation not weaker, but stronger, both by meting out justice, and thereby lending some credence to the maxim that "in America, no one is above the law," and also by firming-up some of the mushier questions regarding our Constitutional separation of powers. The question can't be answered definitively, but why isn't it being asked?

Apocalypse Soon: The Trouble With Space

The feat of knocking a golf ball into orbit got me reminiscing about a joke I tried out a few months ago. Nobody thought it was funny, and because I couldn't figure out why, I decided to provide a detailed explanation to go along with it. Here's what I came up with-

JOKE:

The first European lunar mission, SMART-1, ended today in a dazzling success when it crashed into the moon’s surface after a three-year journey.

Leading European space scientists hope to crash men into the moon in a future mission. 

EXPLANATION: 

Forty years ago the US landed Surveyor 1 on the moon and it didn't crash. It made a soft landing and sent back data, and that, justifiably, was considered to be a success. Could it be that the European Space Agency set their sites a bit low?  Was a crash landing the only successful outcome they could guarantee? Has some cabalistic recalibration brought about a situation where zero is the new +1? Maybe they are so SMART they will crash spacemen into the moon next. Keep in mind this is supposed to be a joke.

AFTERMATH:

The billion-dollar "International Space Station", which seems primarily to have served as a research platform for determining the best ways to ferry garbage back to Mother Earth, has now become the ultimate 18th hole. Slice it to Venus or hook it to Mars. If you've got the twenty million, you've got your tee time. A new crop of space-golf tourists is certain to pump up the flagging space exploration coffers.

Think of the payoff to Mankind. Maybe we'll find a cheaper way to  produce Polonium-210. Who knows when the possibilities are endless?

Perhaps the notion of "technology transfer", which had previously found its most perfect expression in the form of Tang, the powdered orange breakfast drink, could now be applied to the thorny problem of, say, trash removal in New York City, which has vexed mayors from Thomas Willett to Michael Bloomberg.

 This latest development comes on the heels of a giant copper spheroid hurled at a comet, the meanest beebee ever, the high aspiration of the pocket-protector set: the World-Crushing BeeBee. I know there is a compelling need to study the ensuing dust plumes, but the resemblance to conceptual art is hard to efface.

The Fading Rubric of Mankind's Curiosity

Meanwhile back on Earth, ideologies grate on one another, producing conflict with no apparent end.  Among the greater community of faith, the transcendent belief that God has divinely authorized the destruction of non-believers has served to perpetuate war, even as the means for nuclear devastation proliferate.

Here all paths cross. The scientific method perfects ever-deadlier weapons of war faster than blind Nature can raise a pond full of amoebas. From brilliant pebbles to smart bombs, proof of innovative prowess is proudly stenciled on ordinance to be lobbed amongst the seamy nests of the enemy.

Neo-apoclayptists are lapping it up. Milleniallists transform themselves effortlessly into peri-milleniallsts and wait fretting for the next significant date. Could it be 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar? What about the Doomsday Clock, which stands at 17 minutes before midnight and keeps on ticking, hastening forward and falling back ever more infrequently?

Does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad believe he can hasten the coming of God's dominion on Earth by obliterating Israel with a freshly-minted Islamic bomb? Does President Bush study the Book of Revelations? We shall see.

Recall that science too has its myth of an end time, expressed in the avatar of the Doomsday Asteroid, aloof now and roaming the Kuiper belt with impunity, but always on the look-out for that one perfect trajectory which leads imperturbably to Earth and the subsequent annihilation of all of its living inhabitants. Anyone doubting this proposition need only examine the fossil record.

Making (Up) History

There are many ways to make up truth. The most effective technique requires multiple sources that reference and reinforce each other. For this to work, disparate authorities make seemingly small contortions of fact, and then others refer to these aggregated authorities to make the case that a falsehood is true.

This is what a Committee of the US House of Rep's was doing when the UN's Atomic Energy Agency (IAEC) busted their work. The House committee wrote a report exaggerating the nuclear threat posed by Iran, but the IAEC called that report, "incorrect and misleading," as well as "outrageous and dishonest."

The intended purpose of the report was to give the White House and other war mongers an illusion of evidence to support an attack on Iran. Once the lies had the imprimatur of a "government study," they could then be used as a tool of persuasion. The task of anyone disagreeing with the report would then be to disprove the multiple inaccuracies. In this way the debate becomes a level removed from the question at hand. This technique puts layers of questions into the discussion, making it more difficult for facts to separate themselves from the fiction.

The full effect can be seen by reviewing the work of the White House Iraq Group, and Judith Miller, former "journalist" for the New York Times. In this scam, White House officials led Miller to sources for stories that made their case for the invasion of Iraq, and then those same officials would refer to the New York Times to support their arguments. Much of that reporting was later discredited by the NYT editors, but long after the war had started, and with little public notice.

This technique is tried and true. We've seen it used effectively to cast doubt on the existence of global climate change, the probability of evolution, and the hazards of smoking.

It can also be employed locally as well. To dismiss an employee, for example, supervisors might place small and questionable concerns into an employee's file. When these one-sided anecdotes are taken together, they seem to add up to a larger issue. The employee, to defend herself, must then pick apart and dispute all the smaller complaints. These layers of fallacy are usually too much to overcome.

Brutal History Evermore

Extraordinary levels of brutality are what we see in the declassified files of B Company. The LATimes has printed (and Truthout has posted) horrifying and sad accounts of violence against Vietnamese civilians by American GI's. This archive of war files is a crystal ball that reflects our current quagmire in Iraq. We see the torture, orders to murder civilians, and the rape of young girls.

Like the current war, very few were held accountable. This is part of a system that is out of control, one that makes it impossible for mere men be truly responsible for what happens in a state of hellish war. It is a system of legal absolution, and it is best described by former investigators who said:

"We could have court-martialed them but didn't."
"I don't remember why it didn't go anywhere."
"Everyone wanted Vietnam to go away."

By virtue of being part of the system of war, crimes against humanity are only punishable if the criminals are of the losing side in conflict (as in Nuremberg.) Today, as exactly 62 years ago, victors can do what they please, and for whatever reason.