I posted the following comment to an article on Alternet and got only one comment in response.
Someone calling me a nut for thinking that Obama could deal with this issue in this climate. I replied, that it needs to be handled with subtlety (ask John Stewart how), but must be done in some fashion.
http://www.alternet.org/...
Hitler vs Mussolini
Posted by: daw13 on Sep 16, 2008 6:46 AM
Current rating: 2 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Lots of people have little faith in any politician. Or in government's ability to compete with Industry's manipulations of the public toward keeping us all consuming and subservient. Lots of people think the system has always been an oligarchy. Usually, fairly benevolent, like early Mussolini. Lately harsher, like late Mussolini, or early Hitler. As things get worse, it looks to lots of people like lining up with Hitler might be the wisest choice. Kind of like being on the right side during the Gilded Age, when Tammany decided who got taken care of, not governments elected by the people, of the people and for the people.
Recent Democratic presidents don't provide much better historical reference points than Republican ones for refuting this view of things. For a getting-poorer-white guy trying to raise a family, all of the options seem bleak. As his peers build something analagous to the Nazi Party in Germany, a true grass roots movement that seemed to empower people in an awful but tangible way at the time, his thoughts turn toward survival and away from contributing to an ever more illusory social solidarity based on decency.
If Obama will acknowledge these concerns, admit to his own identifications with the ruling class, and lay out in detail how illusory and dangerous fascism as a solution is today, he will win easily. He needs to paint the McCain campaign not as conservative, not even as regressive -- but as Strangelovian.