- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
If I say trust the people to you, m.b.f., I say it with the dangers to democracy made emblematic in the successes -- and civilization-destroying failures -- of the Bolsheviks and the NSDAP still fresh in our collective memory.
Still, you should consider the conditions in Russia, and in Germany at the time of those successes. A lost war which had wiped out an entire generation, and the crushing poverty which followed it in Germany, a huge peasant population in Russia which literally didn't know who was running things, or to what end -- unschooled in modern politics and economics at all. To turn the American people into that kind of cannon fodder would be quite a trick, no matter how distasteful they find kinky sex, or how incomprehensible scientific research is to them.
Also, the creation of alternate realities is an enormously labor and energy-intensive enterprise. Every unpleasant fact, every ideological deviation, must have its counter-foghorn (presently) or its secret policeman/commissar (in your hypothetical future.) Could -- can -- our present right-wing nasties manage this in a country of 300 million consumers? Frankly, I doubt it.
Perhaps, if they were to get their hands on all three branches of government, and the armed forces, they might be willing to try. Yes, they've been working on this project for decades -- the introduction of ideological litmus tests in schools, universities, the civil service and the military, the gutting of regulations and regulatory agencies, the attacks on judges, lawyers and research scientists, the destruction of labor unions -- and, of course the incessant fearmongering and attendant pressures on the media.
In the process, they've also made a lot of enemies. How do you think we know the exact contours of GWB's lies? Somebody on the inside fed the information to the outside. All closed vessels leak, especially those built by not-too-bright folks who rely solely on ideological blueprints.
And then, of course, there's us. We aren't exactly standing around, I hope....
