Plot Against America
Check out Blue Lyon’s latest post for Bob Herbert’s editorial on the Bush administation’s effort to keep Americans in a perpetual state of fair. It makes me think of Plot Against America, Phillip Roth’s latest novel that recently won some votes for the best piece of American fiction of the last 25 years, so its safe to say its a good book. You can read and excellent and exhaustive NYTimes review here.
Was Bob Hebert thinking of it too? I actually have to read the last few pages tonight, but the basic plot is that Charles A. Lindbergh, running on an isolationist platform, beats FDR in the 1940 election, allies the United States with the Nazis, and begins a slow but methodical march down the road to facism that is entirely convincing.
Fear has always been the tool of choice for facist governments, and after reading Plot Against America, you shouldn’t feel some of the things happening today are as innocuous as they seem. Roth explores what happens to a citizenry that rolls over and lets a “decider,” who would be king make all our decisions for us, because we believe he’s protecting us from terror, or in this case, war. In fact, in Plot Against America, Lindbergh often compaigns in his flight gear, bringing to mind Bush’s notorious proclamation about the end of combat operations in Iraq swathed in his borrowed flight gear. And in another eery smiliarity, Lindbergh’s administation begins to re-educate and relocate Jews through innocently labeled programs like “Just Folks” and “Homestead 42.” Sound like any government program you’ve heard about in the last few years where torture and surveillence of American citizens is conducted under the guise of patriotism? Slowly but surely, Lindbergh’s program to remove the Jews from the country turns violent with the murder of a Jewish presidential candidate and pogroms in Cleveland, Detroit, and other cities. I don’t know if you caught Anne Coulter’s latest efforts to incite violence but David Neiwert did. (Neiwert is one of the best bloggers out there by the way). First fear, then violence, then…..
And so I’ll end this post about Roth’s warning to us all by quoting Bob Herbert’s warning to us all:
Well, I give you fair warning. This is a road map to totalitarianism. Hallmarks of totalitarian regimes have always included an excessive reliance on secrecy, the deliberate stoking of fear in the general population, a preference for military rather than diplomatic solutions in foreign policy, the promotion of blind patriotism, the denial of human rights, the curtailment of the rule of law, hostility to a free press and the systematic invasion of the privacy of ordinary people.
There are not enough pretty words in all the world to cover up the damage that George W. Bush has done to his country. If the United States could look at itself in a mirror, it would be both alarmed and ashamed at what it saw.
The Plot Against America
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[...] Damn, hate of SUV hate is getting serious. Mr. Schneider just pulled the Nazi card. I guess he thinks Ms. Larson is part of a movement that will start by seizing SUVs from their proud owners, and then identifying former SUV owners with special clothing badges so they can be easily rounded up and placed in special camps where they have to build hybrid cars for the rest of their evil little lives? Plot Against America anyone? [...]
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