As Mussolini so succinctly put it:
The State, working hand in hand with the State's corporations, is the essence of Fascism.
In Nazi Germany, the people were persuaded to support a system that we are all familiar with. Many Germans did this willingly (often by purposefully remaining uninformed), at least in the beginning. It was only later, when they were so invested in the system, and the penalty for opting out was so great, that they realized how much they had erred.
That some members of our own government are trying to turn our nation into a fascist state has been a subject in these pages for some time. The evidence of this is well documented, and some Neocons even tout it. These Neofascists (which is a more appropriate monicker) assure themselves that the American people are too self-absorbed, too ignorant and too lazy to notice what is being done right out in the open, and unfortunately, their confidence is well justified.
But I feel that the American people, despite all of this, will not be persuaded as easily as the Germans of the 1930's were. We are not looking to restore national pride, nor are we as homogenous as the Germans.
But there is a way to enmesh the American people in the fascist, corporate system: privatization of the Social Security System provides that trap.
Until recently, a very small percentage of us relied on their investments in domestic and multi-national corporations for their retirement. Most often, it was a combination of personal savings, pensions and social security that has seen seniors through The Golden Years.
Now, more and more Americans own stock, and this implicitly ties them to how those companies perform. Imagine what things would be like if most Americans relied on their portfolios to cover ALL of their retirement expenses.
Think of the power this gives to the corporate world. You think that the Cheney/Bush administration's attempts to roll back years of environmental and worker safety regulations has been outrageous? How will those with private accounts argue against claims by CEO's that more and more of these "restrictions" to business need to be repealed? What argument will be put forth as government officials and corporate heads demand all sorts of concessions?
There will be none to make, of course, as we will all be trying to hold onto what little we have left.