How many of us think we will live to see the end of the BushPutinist State in Amerika?

[tom_paine]

This question was prompted by a couple of books I am currently reading.

2 volumes: "I Will Bear Witness" by Victor Klemperer

http://www.amazon.com/Will-Bear-Witness-1933-1941-Paperbacks/dp/0375753788

I finally picked these books up because I had to know, from the perspective of a regular person "on the ground", exactly how different Amerika 2007 was from Nazi Germany 1937.

The answer, frighteningly enough, is not much at all. Germans, even as late as 1943, were behaving kindly towards Liberal Jews.

Examples: In 1942, Klemperer is pulled to shovel snow in Dresden (just like Schindler's List). The foreman treats him kindly and says things like "I can't tell you to work slower. You have to tell yourself.

As they are shoveling, in mid-1942, a woman walks by and snorts in open disgust, "So, THIS is what Germany has come to. Anyone can see you all have other professions..."

Shopkeepers treating Liberal Jews kindly, even as late as 1943, giving them rations without coupons, or giving a little extra where possible.

I actually think this is BETTER treatment than the Imperial Subjects of Amerika would give to any group designated as "terrorists", in my opinion. But we will have to wait and see to compare.

There are many other examples of Germans behaving like we would never dream they did, certainly after 1941. Read the book to see them for yourself.

And it appears as if Hitler never really had more than 2/3rds support...most "supported" him by being silent and doing nothing. The number of Hannity-watching Bushies, I mean strongly-pro-Nazis, seemed never to rise much higher than the 15-20% it is today in Amerika.

So, psychologically, I would say that the Imperial Subjects of Amerika RIGHT NOW are so much closer to the composition and mindset of the 1937 German it is not to be believed.

Finally, the reason for my question:

As it fnally dawns on Klemperer what is happening and where his country is going, he repeatedly prophesied that he would not outlive the current incarnation of Totalitarian Evil.

He was wrong. He did live through it. But as a German Jew, he had to survive against the odds of roughly 20,000 to 1 (the number of German Jews before 1938 in ratio to the number of German Jews who survived until 1945)

Therefore, his prophesy, while prescient, did not turn out to personally apply to him.

So I ask again: Do you think you will live to see the end of the BushPutinist State in Amerika?

A couple of notes on replies:

This question DOES NOT ask if you think the Bushies are going to open up the Halliburton Concentration Camps and start making soap out of Liberal Skin (they wouldn't that specifically, but only because of the bad-PR associations with such an act).

This question, therefore, DOES NOT ask HOW you think your death might come. Natural causes, hit by a bus, or clubbed by Bushie Sormtroopers (although they won't call themselves that, perhaps Dittoheads, which is the same basic title, only described with a more positive PR spin)...it doesn't matter.

This question DOES NOT ask about the 2008 "elections", since I have become nearly convinced that not even the unlikely (because of the massive Bushevik Vote Theft, Suppression, and Inflation strategies, four times now unchallenged, that will continue to expand it's power) event of a Democratic landslide that gives the Dems all three branches of Imperial Governance, can solve the larger issue of the Death of the American Republic and the Shredding of the Constittuion.

So I ask again: Do you think you will live to see the end of the BushPutinist State in Amerika?

[lateo]

1. It will never be fixed until...

We remove corporate power from our government. They must not be able to have lobbyists right bills that our Congressmen and women turn into laws. Money is NOT free speech. We need a Constitutional amendment, like the one Jefferson and Madison attempted, that limits corporations powers.

[bryant69]

2. Yeah I'm pretty sure I can make it another year and a half

I know you say you don't want discussion of the 2008 elections - but that's how regimes come to an end in this nation.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[tom_paine]

5. I didn't say the Bush Regime, I said the BushPutinist State.

and those are two VERY different things.

The Bush Regime will end primarily becuase staying on is one of the handful, and I do mean handful, of things the Bushies dare not try because the illusion will be shattered, even for half of their Right-Wing Authoritarian Followers.

Of course the regime will end, but the BushPutinist State will continue. Maybe not in the event of an Extreme Three-Branch Democratic Landslide, which I no longer believe is possible no matter who pushes what buttons on "election" day.

But probably yes. Why? It comes down to the difference between Nero and Vespasian. Sure Nero was our Bush and Hillary or Edwards may be the Amerikan Vespasian to follow, but I will tell you why, in the absence of concrete legal action to restore the Constitution at the very least, the only difference between Vespasian and Nero, ultimately, is that Vespasian was a "good Emperor", respectful of the Senate and responsive to the needs of the Roman People (at least in comparison to what had come before) because he WANTED to be, not because he HAD to be.

Therein lies the key difference. Hillary or whoever may well do a Vespasian and respect the Senbate and the wishes of the American People, but if she takes no actions other than behaving that way, then the BushPutinist State still exists, and all it's unConstitutionality, too.

[bryant69]

6. To you that may be the same thing

But I don't agree. I mean basically you set this up so that it implies we agree with your paranoiac view of the American Government. Certain of the Bush Excesses will almost certainly get rolled back after the Bush Presidency is out of power.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[tom_paine]

9. That you can even say with a straight face "paranoiac view of the American Goverment"

is beyond me.

Like Pat Tillman never happened.
Like Bush and Cheney testifying TOGETHER and NOT UNDER OATH, at their insistence, never happened.
Like there isn't ample poof, across the board, that Bushies are factually untruthful at roughly Soviet and Nazi levels.
Like the Bushies telling the EPA to lie about NYC's air quality, now leading to the suffering and deaths of thosuands of Little People from respiratory ailments.
Like Bushies routinely ignoring subpeonas and the Rule of Law isn't broadcast live on TV every fucking day.
And a thousand more examples of tyranny aborning...

How grotesquely naive could you be? How interested in maintaining the Good German of 1937 "nothing is wrong we'll toss him out in the next election and everything will be fine" can you be?

You don't agree because you CAN'T. No amount of reading of history, no amount of fact, no amount of words can make you think white isn't black, slavery isn't freedom, and ignorance isn't strength.

Enough. I've had enough of your bullshit and denial. You are going on ignore, Good German, and don't respond to any of my threads anymore or I'll dime you to the mods as harassing me after I put you on ignore.

So you can write a response, but don't. Not only won't I see it, but I could practically write it for you.

Good Germans make me sick, and you are no different. Go somewhere else to dump your shit.

[bryant69]

10. Not sure how to respond to this.

I mean the obvious response is just to fill the screen with invective - but you've kind of stolen my thunder there.

I'll just say I intend to respond to every thread you start that I see - I don't like being threatened.

Bryant

[Nostradammit]

12. Some people live to discourage. n/t

[bryant69]

13. Yep -I agree. That Tom Paine's kind of a . . .well I'd better not say. n/t

[tom_paine]

14. Of course they do. The world is made up of every kind of person you can think of.

Good, bad, and everything in between. Sociopaths and saints and all else possible. I cannot know, I will not know whatever that asshole said of me after I finally put him on Ignore (long overdue, and I am a person who has few people on their ignore list, and hasn't added to it, literally, in a couple years), but I can imagine...

Thanks for the defense, but you should know that some people have worldviews set in stone and will not change it.

One of my greatest fears is that I should become a version of that. And yet still daily, I scour the news for some small reason to hope. To hope, and hope BELIEVABLY. Sometimes I find them (and I will usually post about it here on DU, so these hopeful moments are archived here), but they are isolated specks of light in an inky "city sky", metaphorically speaking.

I pray that I shall be proven wrong, but when I see what it is that is defending the "Nothing wrong here. You're paranoid." and all that bullshit which no doubt a person like me heard from LOTS of Germans in 1928-1937, I despair even further.

While each day the Bushies overtly take steps which narrow the gap between their behavior and that of Nazis or the followers of Pinochet, then shove it in our faces.

But, rather than point to examples to give hope to someone like me, how much easier it is to do what the Germans did, sneer at and dismiss me until reality overtakes denial (I wonder how often, the last time this happened, that such denial was only pierced by those first few whiffs of bitter almonds at the very end).

None of it matters, at this point, as a point of no return has very likely been passed.

And the dynamic plays put just like the psychological dynamic played out (by that which I mean the denial and self-deception, not the exact details of different tyrannies) always, with very few exceptions.

Germany
Ancient Rome
Soviet Russia
Marcos' Phillipines
Baby Doc's Haiti
BushCheney Amerika

to name a few...

In all cases, evil wins, and sometimes...it wins for generations and generations, like the Soviets & the Caesars did, and as it appears the Bushies are likely to.

Ghandhi may be right, that tyrants always but he never mentioned how long humanity would have to wait, in some of these cases. Hitler lasted 12 years or so. The Communist Party lasted 75 years and is now making a comeback under the New Totalitarianism methodology, which I call BushPutinism because it won't have a official name until many years from now, as it is so concerned with camoflauging it's reality to the ignorant and those in denial.

And the Roman Bushies? Well, lets just say they kept on "winning" for another 500 years, and Rome never was a Republic again.

Not a very good example, time-wise, considering that Amerika's tranisiton to tyranny has at least as many aspects similar to the Caesars of Rome as it does the Nazis of Germany.

We need to face it, at least as a possibility growing stronger every day.

America may never again be a Republic in any sense of the word besides window-dressing and Bushie lies.

[Nostradammit]

19. Funny that you should think I was coming to your defense.

All your doom and gloom posts do nothing to help our cause.

Nothing.

[tom_paine]

20. Funny, but my $1,000+ in contributions to Democratic Candidates

and the hundred or so hours total that I have spent phone-banking, precinct-walking, envelope-stuffing and errand or voter-driving in the '02, '04, and '06 "elections" DID help our cause.

Or are you going to tell me it didn't? How 'bout you? Can you match that? In dollars or man-hours spent working directly for Democratic candidates?

Even if you can match or exceed it, even if you did all that while working a full-time job, as I did, I don't give a shit.

It's far too late for that.

And quite frankly, if you think I say what I say simply out of a bitterness and a desire to discourage, I would say you don't know what you are talking about. Maybe after you've helped out cause as much as I have, not just with your checkbook but with your ass out on the streets, doorknocking and walking until your fucking feet feel like they were going to burn right off (and this from a guy who hiked avidly in his younger days...alas, walking 2 miles of dirt trail vs. 2 miles of cement is a far different matter), then maybe I will listen to you.

On the other hand, I have read my Karl Jaspers, my Victor Klemperer, my Sebastian Haffner, my Milton Meyer.

They said they don't give a shit what you have to say, either. They said to tell you Principiis obsta and finem respice.

Don't believe me? Read for yourself.

http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/jaspers02.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Will-Bear-Witness-1933-1941-Paperbacks/dp/0375753788
http://www.amazon.com/Defying-Hitler-Memoir-Sebastian-Haffner/dp/0312421133/ref=sr_1_1/002-2758075-4896800?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190350181&sr=1-1

I usually don't say this, but go Cheney yourself.

[Nostradammit]

21. Impressive

It doesn't change the fact that every post I've read from you for the last few months has equated to:

"It's hopeless, we are dooomed, they have taken control and we will never get our country back!"

If you would inspire change, you must at least occasionally provide hope.

I was beginning to think you had nefarious intentions.

Glad to know I was wrong.

Look at these photos and tell me if you think they look like they believe themselves to be successful:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1853459

[tom_paine]

23. For me to provide hope to others, it must be provided to me

Sorry I snapped at you, but this sort of thing is pissing me off to no end. This blatant and willful misunderstanding of what I am saying and why. Et tu, DU?

All I want is something which gives hope, but it has to be REALISTIC hope (and please feel free to check on this, but on those rare occasions when hope is warranted, I usually pop onto the thread with a happy or congratulatory or hopeful post - it just happens so rarely that these posts are seldom seen and seldom remembered because they aren't controversial - hell, I believe I posted one in one of the recent Dan Rather Lawsuit threads, because FINALLY Rather is speaking up and speaking truths that few, even now, dare speak in public, and that is the definition of hope in our situation).

Please click on my sigline link, and if you have the time and inclination, read the free online book.

It states very well my concerns, and one more confirming reason why I am so hyped on the Nazi-Bushie similarities. Because, if you sit down and read this book (and if you do, please PM me with your observations, now that I see you're not a person who gets their jollies ripping people they disagree with, like the poster you were defending, I DO happen to give a shit what you say, it turns out) I think you won't be able to fail to understand why I see the Nazis and Bushies as two sub-families of the same class of Right-Wing Authoritarian Followers and the High Social Dominators who mentally harness them for their own nefarious ends.

It has the advantage of being backed up by decades of research and hard data (although the book boils all those years of data down into layman's terms), and it explains my Paul Revere-ing with these "doom and gloom posts" not because I get my rocks off on it but BECAUSE IT IS WHAT I HONESTLY SEE, and it is both terrifying and enraging.

But please, don't take my word for it. Click on my sigline link and read "The Authoritarians", or click on that Jaspers link (Jasper lived through the rise of Hitler, so I am guessing he knows of what he speaks) in my last post and read his much shorter paper (which itself is a summary of longer works).

My ends are not nefarious here. I, like hundreds and perhasps thousands on this board, woke up one day to find that the organizations which we worked so hard for an donated so much to, wouldn't piss on us if they saw us on the middle of the road on fire.

I woke up one day to find that the organization I gave so much of myself to (yes, I am well aware there are plenty of people who give more and do more than I), views me with nearly the same diagust and contempt the Bushies do.

Finally, I woke up one to the unmistakable knowledge that not only have the Democrats taken impeachment "off the table" but that they do not seem to have the inclination to take ANY sort of concrete legal/criminal action against Bushie Felons, no matter how airtight the evidence uncovered.

I present Gonzo's repeat felony perjuries as example, which are on video tape along with Mueller and all the other testimonies that prove perjury to a degree that would land you or me in jail for a decade.

(this is one I still hold out hope for, that they will actually initiate criminal action against even just ONE Inner Circle Bushie Felon, considering there are so many felonies openly performed and Bushies to choose from)

I will vote for all the Democratic candidates in 2008. At this point, until they cease and desist with their fealty to tyranny and tyrants, I won't even vote Republic Party for dogcatcher, for even that is Feeding the Beast Which is Destroying us.

But I can't work for them anymore (this might change if our pRes. candidate is Gore, Edawrds, or Kucinich) under the conditions I outlined above.

It's called being at rope's end, and I am there.

But about the Bushie/Nazi thing, please read The Authoritarians by clicking on my siglink. It is NOT hyperbole to say that Bushies and Nazis are deeply related on a psychological level, and therefore it is not hyperbole to speculate that perhaps two group with similar mindsets might be capable of similar levels of atrocity (not that it means it WILL happen, but the possibiltiy is enough to get me Paul Revere-ing).

Read the book. Then please PM me and tell me what you think.

And thanks for responding civilly after I snapped at you, for which I apologize. You didn't have to, and quite frankly I am not sure I deserved a civil response. But it was much appreciated.

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. The spirit of what this country is will come back

but not in our time... I agree with you

It will someday, in a future society, perhaps even in what remains of the US...

And the denial is deep, as well as fear of their own government

I fear that we are quickly reaching the point of running for the doors, or making a stand or giving up

But I don't expect to see this country back

yet, I sent yet another letter to my Senator... like that will make any difference.

And no, you are not paranoid...

As I told a kid today, I didn't really understand how Germans allowed it to happen, now I do in spades.

[tom_paine]

25. I pray you are right, nadin.

I keep thinking about the 75 years of Soviet Russia and the 500 years of Roman Empire after Caeser.

And My God, to how many people have I said that very line of yours I didn't really understand how Germans allowed it to happen, now I do in spades.?

Oh, at least fifty, I would guess, and perhaps more. I also add that this is a far closer view of the process than I ever imagined I would get to witness a mere seven years ago.

But now we know..we ALL know and understand the dynamic of how Hitler came to power by living it. And while Bushler may or may not, in the end, turn out be be as evil as Hitler or Caligula (I still think we are going to have to wait for Emperor George P. Bush before we see that level of depravity openly performed by Emperors), he is definitely pschologically realted to those men...their delusions, their serial lying, their utter indifference to human life...

[MedleyMisty]

3. I'm 26

but I voted for the second option for my age group - I expect it's not supposed to say "under" 25-40?

Actually just the other day my husband and I were talking about life expectancy and how if technology and information keeps increasing at the same rate we could live quite a long time. But then we were like, "Yeah, but we'll probably be dead way before then by bombing or camps or some natural disaster caused by global warming or something."

I spent much of my youth reading Holocaust survivor accounts. You know what they all had in common? Extreme good luck.

[ToeBot]

4. BushPutinist State? Whatever. nt

[Annces]

7. It will get better, but will not end

until we stop money from talking in government.

Speaking of Putin, I came across this the other day.

"In January 2000, a bill to ban seal hunting was passed by Russian parliament by 273 votes to 1, but was vetoed by President Vladimir Putin."

These people will drive the earth and its inhabitants toward death.

[catmandu57]

8. This too shall pass

I have confidence that this won't last. I think that this regime is on it's last legs and when they pass the movement will be weakened enough to affect the change away from corporatism. Whether I'm alive or not really doesn't matter, hopefully we've been through the darkest part and I'll enjoy living in the new age, but, eventually something else will take the place of what we're experiencing now.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. Great books!! The best about what living under fascism is like.

They really should be a "must read" for anyone interested in the rise of fascism and it's effects on real people.

[tom_paine]

15. Yes, and that is why

will ever read them.

And you can damn sure forget about it ever being taught in schools, especially since such books would be "unpatriotic" in that they raise questions about the similarities of Bushies and Nazis, and of Germany 1933-37 and Amerika 2001-2007.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

16. Interestingly, they were best sellers in Germany and became a TV series.

Awful as it is, the Germans seem much more able to face their past, than we Americans are able to even inquire about it.

[tom_paine]

18. So true. But then, they have been to The Bottom.

Hitler took them on a trip to The Bottom...of call it whatever you want but I will say The Bottom of Amoral Consciencelessness.

So I have heard, those who hit bottom and manage, through themselves or the help of others, to pull themselves up from the literal rock bottm, never forget it and are less likely to hit bottom again than those who have never been there.

America, through 224 1/2 of Republic and seven yeaars of Empire, has never yet hit The Bottom, but now it certainly is in sight.

Wanna know something scary? Another generation or two and even Germany may become so forgetful that BushPutinism, the New Tyranny, finds it's way across it's borders.

Hey, wouldn't it be wild if, sometime in the totalitarian future, the Germans liberate America and restore freedom and democracy?

But I suspect that's unlikely to happen, just as if Hitler has stopped with Scandanavia and the Low Countries, Germany would have likely eradicated the European Jews and might be goo dfriends and allies with our Busheviks today.

Anywa, it's nice to see Germans behaving with more conscience and consciousness than the Imperial Subjects of Amerika. Maybe there is hope for Amerikans, after the Bushie Reich has finished and if it is ever turned back.

[rucky]

17. 30 Years from now:

Same shit, different smell.

[Selatius]

24. I think the US bares more resemblance to Germany 1933. By 1937, the veneer of democracy was gone.

In the US, things have not progressed down to that level of destruction. Also, in 1937, all opposition parties had long since been outlawed and "liquidated."

[tom_paine]

26. It is hard to make an exact analogy considering the details of which you mention

I suppose I am looking at it almost "over" the individual details, which I have always asserted will be different BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO BE.

Direct imitation of Nazi tactics would be recognized even by a third of Loyal Bushie Followers, even, and they are the dimmest bulbs the nation has to offer. It's bad PR, you see, the very worst, to emulate the old discredited product that is being reinstated under a new guise, and likely with very different details and results.

You are correct in your comment, but so are we in 1940 also, using select details involved aggressive invasions. Iraq=Poland, then sitzkreig (much longer than the Nazis because the Bushie have to pretend certain niceties that original Nazis would laugh at and ignore...different eras and different peoples), which would make the next attack, probably Iran, maybe Syria, would be the Low Countries.

Same with the outlawing of other parties. For the Bushies to do so would be to IMMEDIATELY break cover in such a way, thanks to Hitler's previous discrediting of Bushie-style totalitarian policies (and no, I am not speaking of industrialized death camps, which the Bushies may also never fully embrace due to the bad PR of exposing who they are at the psychological center - click on my signature link and please read my other posts above understand more about where I am coming from with all this).

But you see, matching up individual details doesn't work, and that has NEVER been what I am talking about. I am speaking of the larger psychological transitions which have occurred, such as the wholesale reprogramming. of the population to not be upset by lies and felonies committed openly and shamelessly, of the increasing ability of the populace to entertain contradictory Orwellian Doublethink thoughts like the Bush-Party Sub-Media and Lie Laundry has turned into conventional wisdom by repetition and lack of opposition.

I also believe, like the Nazis, the Bushies are deliberately cultivating and growing the Nazi-like madness, described so well in my signature link below, for their own nefarious reasons.

It also may be that they are simply playing with fire, and are not that directly evil as we think. But the mental fires that stoked Nazism, hatred and particularly dehumanization of fellow citizens, are uncontrollable, and we will all likely learn that within 30 years or less. (unless the Bushies can be stopped, and there is still slim hope of that).

Anyway, I do agree with your initial point, but I do not believe the individual details are less important (because of Bushie re-branding of Kinder and Gentler Nazism for 21st Century Amerikan consumption), than the larger psychological issues and deep similarities outlines in the book linked to by my sigline, "The Authoritarians".

For when I read it, I better understood my own opposition, which I had been making since what was said in The Authoritarians was become clear in 1998 and crystal clear in 2000, but I lacked the words to describe my concerns in proper words, for which I thank Dr. Altemeyer deeply for his years and years of research that have underlined and given even more credence to the idea that Bushies and Nazis spring from the same poisoned well.

[Selatius]

27. I agree with you on authoritarian tendencies. Bush is a classic right-authoritarian.

He probably would be as brutal and destructive as the fascists of old if there weren't the obvious history of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and Franco's Spain to draw lessons from. (i.e. concentration camps, liquidating the opposition, suspension of elections, etc.) Unfortunately for Bush, there is a history for people to use as a reference, so you're right in saying that they're never going to use the same tactics again, yet at the same time people have a blind spot in terms of identifying new tactics used by the same kind of authoritarians. History rarely repeats itself in the same fashion, but trends appear.

While I'm hesitant to call Bush and the people around him bona fide fascists given the sheer level of horror and sheer brutality committed by his ideological fore-bearers 60 years ago, since I mean not to downplay or lessen the level of suffering survivors of the last world war and the Holocaust endured with comparisons between Hitler and Bush, I would have to say that he and the people around him are even more malevolent than the fascists of old because of their tactics and their insidious ability to creep into power and their subtle moves in the night.

They used to build prisons out of steel and concrete. They have discovered it's more efficient to build prisons made of ignorance and fear instead, with the corporate news outlet serving as the construction worker. It's more subtle to have corporations buy up the outlets and bend the information than to have the state come in and nationalize the networks, this so they can claim that information is still free from state control neglecting to mention it is enslaved to corporate control instead.