A more appropriate comparison than "Nazi"?

[FirstTimeVoterAt37]

I'm breaking some personal rules here regarding points of comparison. Similar elements do not equate to sameness, and I usually demand more near-unique traits to highlight. So maybe this is pure tinfoil hat stuff and I should be disregarded. So why's this so frightening to me? Because this all took place within our own nation without the help of a 24-hour nationwide duplicity machine working overtime.

Most of these quotes come from the Crime Library ( http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/index.html ) Bold is mine.

As viewed by prison officials: “(Charles Manson) seems to have an intense need to call attention to himself... remains emotionally insecure and tends to involve himself in various fanatical interests.”

To me, the above describes Palin, Limbaugh, Beck, Gingrich, Robertson, and a list of others that the memory limits on my computer won’t allow me to list in full. Nothing scary so far, that's a pretty standard behavior pattern.


Aging gangster Alvin Karpis had some interesting insights into Charlie's true personality: "There was something unmistakably unusual about Manson. He was a runt of sorts, but found his place as an experienced manipulator of others. I did feel manipulated, and under circumstances where it hadn't been necessary."

I believe the term is "pathological".


“Charlie started to attract a group of followers, many of whom were very young women with troubled emotional lives who were rebelling against their parents and society in general. He battered down their inhibitions and questioned the validity of their notions of good and evil. For the most part, Charlie's followers were weak-willed people who were naïve, gullible and easy to lead.”

Ignoring the general teabagger "mentality", instead maybe we can list the women and minorities so convinced of their own inferiority that they actively campaign against their own human rights?


“To a large extent, this "philosophy" was a con, something he dreamed up to impress his followers, but he probably believed some of it (...) Charlie preached that the black man was going to rise up and start killing the whites and turn the cities in to an inferno of racial revenge.”

Replace “the black man” with either “Obama” or “Muslims”, and tell me this couldn’t have been on Fox News this morning.


“Helter Skelter would begin, according to one of Charlie's devotees, 'with the black man going into white people's homes and ripping off the white people, physically destroying them. A couple of spades from Watts would come up into the Bel Air and Beverly Hills district... and just really wipe some people out, just cutting bodies up and smearing blood and writing things on the wall in blood... all kinds of super-atrocious crimes that would really make the white man mad... until there was open revolution in the streets...'"

Now I’m getting into assigning motive, which I don’t like doing, but this completely creeps me out. Who needs a new atrocity when you can easily pretend an existing one is representative of an entire culture?


“(Manson prosecutor Vincent) Bugliosi considered motive an important piece of evidence, especially since Manson was not physically present at the Tate murders. Bugliosi set out to establish that the primary motive was (...) that he could start a race war and personally gain from it.”

Seriously, folks, I hope I’ve gone off the deep end with this. For my own peace of mind, please smack me down.