Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps (1 Viewer)

[Scientician 0.8]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2063979,00.html

 

[plug]

I assume you mean america, united states of.

 

[broken arm]

i think she should spend her time writing about places like burma, sudan, blanchardstown and china.

 

[plug]

don't forget central america!

 

[shitepipe]

as i read this i just found myself thinking.... "fuck it"

 

[broken arm]

4 720 words doth not make 10 easy steps

 

[Latex lizzie]

that article is a load of bollox though. Comparing george bush to hitler just doesn't do the left wing argument any good in the long run.Fascist america? methinks not.I had a close american friends dad explain it last week to me..they got a two party state thing going on which is always just ticking along and will swing left and right as the time dictates..the republicans will loose the next election and you will have a few wrongs righted..and a whole lot of new ones made that the democrats can claim to fix when they want in again.However the idea of a military state with curfews and lockdowns etc is just absurd if you ask me, just because it would never happen.The individual americans would just never stand for it.Naomi is making the case here that the idea of "freedom" and how democracy and legal workings are not being taught in schools in america???? they are and this is a constitultial thing that to my mind wont ever have the possibilty of massive change.besides everyone has a gun wha?

 

[Squiggle]

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective.

Hmmm... the coup in Thailand may have been military but the members of my family who live there and my sister-in-law and her family would take serious issue with the suggestion that there was a democracy prior to the coup or that there is less of a democracy now.

Thaksin was a dictator who owned and controlled all the TV and Radio stations, newspapers etc. He openly bought votes with taxpayers money and denounced anyone brave enough to run against him through his media empire. Before he was diposed he was in the process of having controls imposed on foreign media in Thailand. Government contracts almost always went to Thaksin controlled businesses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaksin_Shinawatra

The author's suggestion that Thailand is heading towards Fascism is, at best, uninformed.

 

[oh shit]

the idea of a military state with curfews and lockdowns etc is just absurd if you ask me, just because it would never happen.The individual americans would just never stand for it.

depending on who you are and where you live in america, it's not that absurd
but can't y'all recognise polemic when you see it?
she's playing provocateur. theren't nuthin wrong with that.

i would be very concerned about some of the legal shifts that have occurred in the US in the last 7 years, and that's just from reading the memos that led to guantanamo.
the doublethink is terrrrrifying.

 

[egg_]

Imagine if the US did become a dictatorship though, that'd be mental, wha?

 

[Latex lizzie]

depending on who you are and where you live in america, it's not that absurd
but can't y'all recognise polemic when you see it?
she's playing provocateur. theren't nuthin wrong with that.

i would be very concerned about some of the legal shifts that have occurred in the US in the last 7 years, and that's just from reading the memos that led to guantanamo.
the doublethink is terrrrrifying.

I dunno about the "there aint nuthin wrong with that sentiment" though.Inventing situations that are plainly in the realm of fantasy leads to the "looney left" tag.Better to stick to a more realpolitic version of events.tha's just my opinion.

 

[Scientician 0.8]

I've always been struck when visiting the United States by how militarised their society is compared to Irish. That's neither here nor there with regards to the original article but something I've noticed.

 

[oh shit]

I dunno about the "there aint nuthin wrong with that sentiment" though.Inventing situations that are plainly in the realm of fantasy leads to the "looney left" tag.Better to stick to a more realpolitic version of events.tha's just my opinion.

that's what a polemic is

do you think if Orwell had written a neat little essay and called it "a possible vision of britain by the mid-1980s" we would still be referencing it?

or if Kafka wrote a book about a guy called Josef Kelly who got a parking fine one day and then found it really frustrating to get through to the call centre to pay it and ended up getting busted and then had to go to court but the magistrate didn't really listen properly so then he tried to appeal but ...

and so on...

i think it's a fair enough article, based entirely on facts, drawing different strands together and painting a deliberately dystopian vision of where it might lead us.

i don't think she's trying to prove that there's a dictatorship actively brewing as much as just trying to shake people out of the stupor.

"the price of freedom is eternal vigilance"... now who was it said that...