When fascism comes to America, it will be carrying a cross and wrapped in the flag

[ellid]

Screaming mobs at town hall meetings...right wingers tweeting their followers to bring guns to intimidate politicians...Sarah Palin claiming that the Obama health plan will result in "death panels" deciding whether her handicapped child will live or die...Shona Holmes lying about her medical condition...Glenn Beck calling the President a racist...James van Brunn shooting up the Holocaust Museum, George Sodini plotting to kill women in between racist pot shots at the President, Scott Roeder shooting George Tiller in a church...Michelle Bachmann urging people to resist answering the census next year...Obama getting thirty death threats a day...John Boehner cackling over Democrats having a "hot summer" thanks to all the Astroturfing activists whipping terrified men and women and children into a howling mob....

I first read this book when I was fifteen. It terrified me to the point where I haven't read it since. But it sensitized me to what has been going on in this country over the course of my lifetime, getting worse and worse whenever a Democrat or even a moderate Republican was in the White House.

It is happening here. Just as Sinclair Lewis predicted in 1935.

God help us all.

Comments

[canellaphile.livejournal.com]

I'm right there with you.

It reminds me of in the movies, when a demon is about to be exorcised... the body flails, screeches, and threatens doom. That's what change is going to be like in this country. We'll see.

[rwday.livejournal.com]

I'm right there with you on all of it except the census. I think Michelle Bachman is a total fruitbat, but I have (and have had since 1990) serious issues with the type and quantity of information the census demands. They need to count people for the purposes of apportionment, but especially if you get the long form, IMO, they're asking things that are none of the government's business.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the long form is a bit much...I didn't answer mine when I got it. Didn't have jack-booted storm troopers show up, either.

Although I would have preferred them to Michelle Bachmann. What is *wrong* with her????

[rwday.livejournal.com]

What is *wrong* with her????

Off her meds? More to the point, what's wrong with the people who voted for her? I always think of Minnesota as a progressive kind of place.

[hudebnik.livejournal.com]

If all the right-wing-nuts in the country refuse to answer the census, their districts will be undercounted and therefore underrepresented in Congress, which is OK by me. They'll also get less Federal money, which they don't believe the Federal government should have had in the first place, so that's probably OK by everyone involved :-)

I don't think I've ever gotten the long form. BTW, the Census Bureau says there will be no long form in 2010; that information will be collected in a separate, voluntary thing called the American Community Survey.