the rix mix

Thinking about this but it's bumming me out.

A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism

I believe we crossed the line in the 1994 midterm elections. The Clinton/Gore/Clinton administration, though hardly far left or even very liberal by European standards, represented such a profound cultural-generational shift that it had to be marginalized, rendered ineffective, & destroyed if possible. Bill Clinton was a non-militarist - unique for a Post-WWII president but not unusual for a Boomer - assuming office after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was perceived as tremendous threat to the "military-industrial complex" President Eisenhower fruitlessly warned us about in 1961. Americans were talking about "peace dividends." But 1994 proved that right wing radicals had taken over the Republican Party, they weren't authentic conservatives, & they were using a specific form of peculiarly American protestanism to prop up their claims to moral superiority. All Republicans (& not a few Democrats) are collaborators in the coup d'état that subsequently occurred in The United States in the 2000 presidential election.

The Constitution is being methodically reduced to a symbol, like our national flag something to be saluted.

All the Democratic presidential candidates have some idea of what they're up against. Chris Dodd is the one candidate I believe understands the situation in all its terrible reality, & also understands how he contributed to it. I think guilt is part of his motivation for running. However, I'm not endorsing the Senator.

All of the Republican candidates, even Romney & Huckabee, are confident they can beat any Democratic candidate. Right now, their confidence has some justification. Republicans will do anything necessary to win, sell their children's souls to Satan if that would guarantee it. The stakes are that high. They're stuck with Iraq, which doesn't mean they can't turn it to advantage over the next year. Giuliani, a divisive, ruthless man, has shown the way. All of them will resort to demagoguery.

To succeed, a Democratic president must be very wise, very careful, very strong, & an expert politician. He or she has to extricate us from Iraq while engaging in difficult, delicate international diplomacy. There must be a "100 days" domestic agenda for the American public. But the trickiest task this president faces will be making changes in the Pentagon & throughout the vast federal bureaucracy. This is inside work requiring the expertise of insiders. Of the three top contenders, I think Obama has the smallest chance of accomplishing what must be done to bring America back to the Constitution. Hillary is the best prepared, & I don't discount the revenge factor in her motivations; she's angry & means to settle some old scores. That's fine with me. But most of her (& Bill's) biggest antagonists & enemies are gone from the national scene now. She's built bridges across the aisle in the senate, & Bill has even built a bridge to the Bush clan. I'm concerned that she's too invested. John Edwards is also angry. He's been thinking about what he wants to do as president for a long time. I haven't yet got a sense of who he would bring into his administration, his "brain trust."

On Constititution Day I'm thinking of how America can save the Constitution. The surest way to throw the Constitution away forever is by electing another Republican president.