Sunday, September 18, 2011

Repealing the 20th Century: An Urgent Wake-Up Call. by Scott Ross on Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 1:49pm . PREAMBLE: Sixty-six years ago, humanity pledged, "Never again." Yet, we need only thumb through the iron-fisted regimes and genocides of post-WWII history to acknowledge that we haven't upheld that promise. But would we look away in passive resignation if America was encircled by an oppressive enemy, bent on repressing our constitutional freedoms and installing an authoritarian state? Not likely. We'd wrap ourselves in stars and stripes, rise-up as one, and fight to the death to defend the homeland and our freedoms. But what if we didn't see it coming? What if we were somehow distracted? What if our defense systems failed to recognize an approaching threat? What if we were so absorbed in defending the integrity of our borders that we failed to notice that the integrity of our democracy and Constitution were under siege? From within. And it was too late to stop the insurrection. American democracy had been quietly surrendered in a bloodless coup. It's not science fiction, nor a Tom Clancy espionage thriller. It's a legislative coup d'état, already in progress. Right under our noses. And as the insurrection inches forward with evangelical determination and bottomless funding, our cognitive defense systems are failing to recognize the approaching threat from within. We're in trouble big. I shit you not. If you understand the sequence of events which characterize the rise of the Third Reich, the perfect storm of timing, circumstance and political unrest in America recalls a familiar harbinger. If you need a refresher, search "Third Reich" and "Fascism" at Wikipedia.org for the abbreviated highlights. When citizens unwittingly surrendered their voting rights to the will of a single political party, minorities were scapegoated, then eliminated ... dissenters were fingered, then silenced ... freedoms were seized in the name of the party ... and extreme fundamentalism was imposed as rule of law. You know the rest of the story. And the body count. In America, freedom rang for some, but not all. Southern state legislatures imposed literacy tests, poll taxes and other oppressive Jim Crow laws to preclude black Americans from exercising their constitutional voting rights. When challenged, emboldened southern extremists and police enforced compliance with violence, intimidation and murder. Elsewhere, similar solutions disenfranchised Native Americans and immigrants from exercising their voting rights. The federal government dallied. The Supreme Court yawned. And "Never again" remained on hold until a more temperate Congress submitted to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now, it's happening again . . . this time, oiled with dirty money and engineered to hijack the American political process -- state by state -- overtake government with a vertical political monopoly, rewrite the U.S. Constitution and install government of the Party, by the Party and for the Party. Mein Kampf in America. The parallels are primed. The timing is ripe. Economic chaos ... jobs scarce ... government losing the peoples' trust ... tax revolt ... class warfare ... anger ... finger-pointing ... immigration renews racial divides ... science and mainstream media maligned ... pundits stirring discontent and disinformation ... social media escalates conflict and vitriol ... national unity segregated into red states and blue states ... secession becomes a topic ... dormant hate groups reforming ... partisan militias recruiting, organizing, training for combat ... sales of guns and assault weapons skyrocketing ... extremism pits neighbor against neighbor. We've lost our center, our balance, our national equilibrium. The country is vulnerable, perhaps more so from within than threatened by foreign enemies. Partisan extremists -- empowered by 'patriots' with second and third generation ties to the John Birch Society -- have hijacked America's venerable conservative movement and are using the G.O.P.'s institutional standing to remake oppressive laws, rescind civil rights, resegregate public schools, redraw favorable congressional districts, restrict minority voting, and wrest control of election outcomes, en route to crashing the U.S. capitol in a fireball of neo-fundamentalism. The alarm is screaming. This is your wake-up call. DO NOT hit the snooze button. If this covert assault on democracy is allowed to succeed, you can kiss your individual freedoms goodbye. If you are an unwelcome minority or part of a political resistance movement, you can kiss your ass goodbye, too. American Fascism -- once, an oxymoron -- is poised to overtake democracy and constitutional law. If we don't protect and defend every American's constitutional right to vote and resist congressional redistricting tailored to fix election outcomes, America, as we know it, will soon collapse into oppressive, single-party authoritarianism. State-controlled media will feed us our opinions. Game over. It CAN happen here. Be afraid. Be VERY afraid. More importantly, be alert, informed and proactive in sharing and discussing Ari Berman's chilling wake-up call with family and friends. Open the dialogue. Learn more. Demand answers and accountability from your state and federal government NOW, before democracy is allowed to ebb, and government of the Party, by the Party and for the Party demands answers and accountability from you! 'Never again' starts now. Right here, at home. Here's the story link: The GOP War on Voting: In a campaign supported by the Koch brothers, Republicans are working to prevent millions of Democrats from voting next year http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-gop-war-on-voting-20110830 ■http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-gop-war-on-voting-20110830

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