Letters to the Editor
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@ Silenced and Chris Dowd & WT
Silenced, do you think Rudy really believes that the USA, rather than the USSR, was primarily responsible for defeating the Nazis, or is he just being politically smart by pretending historical ignorance? Maybe it doesn't matter. As you suggest, an accurate thumbnail description of WW2 would be that the USSR defeated Nazi Germany, with some assistance from America and Britain. But you just cannot say in this country that the Russians saved the world, can you? If, as many believe, defeating Nazism was humankind's greatest achievement, how could it not be an AMERICAN achievement?
Southerners (and when I say southerners, I mean white male southerners, as do most people, consciously or not, when they say "southerners") are a strange breed. Flag-waving super-patriots whose greatest heroes led an armed insurrection against the USA... I lived in the Deep South for a number of years and never did figure that out.
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Rudy has a chance, of course, against any Dem
but escpecially if there is another attack in the USA; the whipped up frenzy would likely allow him to seize the government outright. To "prevent" something worse from happening. No elections. Who needs them? Decadent remnants from another era. Get rid of them. Messanic Man of Action With The Fire In The Belly! Gotta have it. Rudy is Our Man!
Seize the Day.
We have gone so far down the road to American Fascism it wouldn't even seem strange. I can bet right now there would be no massed lawyers in the streets getting their heads clubbed in and being hauled away to "detention" if it happened. Absolutely not. This is no backwards third world country like Pakistan.
The mass of Americans might think that a Rudy seizure of the government was wrong, illegal, unconstitutional, but in an emergency -- we have been trained to believe -- it is better to go too far than not far enough; better to clean up the mess after the fact than prevent it in the first place.
Just as Rudy is still called "America's Mayor", I saw a headline the other day that referred to his pal Bernard Kerik as "America's Cop." This was on top of a brief blurb mentioning his indictments. As if they were some kind of inconvenience for an already Proven Hero of the Realm. When we're dealing with this kind of Created Reality, in the campaigns and especially through the media, all of which seem to be following the FOX lead on the Right Choice of Candidates (Hillary for the Dems, Rudy for the Fascists, Mitt for the Corporatists), the People may sense or even know the truth, but they can find very little validation for it.
Used to be the Rs worked overtime to "choose the Democrats' candidate for them." Now they don't have to do a dambed thing. The conglomerate media, following the lead of FOX News, does it for them. And not only that, they are choosing the Republican candidate as well. And once their choices are confirmed, by a plebicite they manipulate, the conglomerate media, following the lead of FOX News, will decide the outcome. Elections as such are boring for them; they want instant gratification. They are fully prepared to declare an outcome long in advance of Election Day, and simply go with their choice, regardless of the People.
They believe they have complete power now to manipulate the People's Will any way they want. They certainly believe there is nothing The People's Representatives would dare do to them to resist the media's conglomerated will.
Certainly a Rudy Presidency would be entertaining, would it not? All the domestic shootouts and roundups and all the wars of extermination abroad should provide endless hours of "product" for the cable nets, and as we know, Rudy himself is as much of an Entertainer as Hugo Chavez -- who of course would be in his sights for termination, there being only room enough for one entertaining President on the air in this Hemisphere.
Knowing all this, just what can -- or more importantly will -- the People do? Every indication is that they will do what they have done up to now, despite Overwhelming Disapproval of the Bush Regime: they will do nothing, except futilely try to operate the mechanisms of a system of government that long since ceased to function. There will be no resistance, no uprising, no taking to the streets, no general strikes, no banging on pots and pans, no demands for a Restoration of Liberty. It's not that nobody cares; it is instead that nothing the People have tried to do has worked, and the People are defeated.
This is what happened in Italy when Mussolini seized the government; it's what happened in Germany after 1933. There were no civil wars, and protest was promptly and efficiently (and brutally) put down; opposition was eliminated or went underground or emigrated. By 1939, much of Europe was ruled by Fascist and quasi-Fascist regimes, even before the Nazis went on their Blitzkrieg of Conquest. In many ways, the People were already defeated.
And yet, there was still a spark that refused to die...
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@anonymous
Those clever lil shrimps must sure have something on Paul, for him to support them despite all the anti-shrimp rhetoric he uses. Why, it's as bad as taking AIPAC money.
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Fighting Crime vs Fighting Terrorism
Perhaps possessing limited mental faculties, like Bush, Giuliani can not grasp the concept that fighting crime differs from fighting terrorism. Aggressive methods, used successfully to fight crime, actually increase terrorism if underlying legitimate grievances are not addressed. For instance, when Muslim hatred is due to US support for Israel's occupation of Palestine, obviously this hatred will increase when we invade more Muslim countries. Thus, terrorism increases. Of course Giuliani's neocon advisors have no interest in addressing underlying legitimate grievances. War and conquest are much more profitable.
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Are Americans really this confused about WWII?
Do most Americans not understand that the most horrific battles with the worst casualties that did the most damage to the Nazi war machine were fought on the eastern front by Communists, not in France or Italy by Americans?
Have Americans been that seriously misled by American war movies?
Once I showed up in Moscow on Victory weekend. I forgot to change my money at the airport, I didn't have a Metro pass and I was staying in a private apartment. And everything was closed for the holiday. So I had absolutely nothing to do for three days but watch Soviet war movies on Russian TV.
Man those things can make you cry!!! Americans never suffered like that during the war. I spent three days crying and crying and crying over how the Russians suffered during WWII.
Some of those movies should be shown on American TV.
Then more Americans will understand why Sergeant Schultz was so afraid of being sent to the Russian Front by Colonel Klink.