Monday, June 23, 2008
Zimbabwe on Potomac
The GOP goon squads sent to threaten the Florida canvassing boards in December 2000 weren't carrying machetes, but the results were the same as if they had.
Mugabe's thugs are admittedly less sophisticated than RNC goons, but Zimbabwe adheres to a model flexible enough to include variants on the fascist theme. Russia provides another variant, slightly more crude than that of the US, but -- like the two American political parties -- increasingly syncretic.
Republican Party synchronization with militias against immigrants since 2005, like White House support for industry-financed vigilantes against environmentalists in the early 1990s, are indicators of an attitude only reined in by withering institutional mores. Mores now nearly vanquished by incremental intrusion into personal privacy, sweeping erosion of civil rights, and brazen hostility toward free expression.
Mugabe's thugs are admittedly less sophisticated than RNC goons, but Zimbabwe adheres to a model flexible enough to include variants on the fascist theme. Russia provides another variant, slightly more crude than that of the US, but -- like the two American political parties -- increasingly syncretic.
Republican Party synchronization with militias against immigrants since 2005, like White House support for industry-financed vigilantes against environmentalists in the early 1990s, are indicators of an attitude only reined in by withering institutional mores. Mores now nearly vanquished by incremental intrusion into personal privacy, sweeping erosion of civil rights, and brazen hostility toward free expression.
