Lies like Palin's are what created Nazi Germany.
I want to write about an episode of the twighlight zone called "He's Alive" that ran recently on the Syfy Channel.
It ran around July 17th, when this relatively ignored blog was posted.
Go there for the YouTube link, if you did not see the episode.
Part of Fascism is false victimhood.
They call us hate mongers... the minorities? We! We are the minorities! Because to live in a free white America seems to be of a minority opinion.
The reaction to the episode was even stronger than the hate mongers' reaction to being called the American Taliban:
'Within a week after the telecast, Serling and his staff received four thousand letters for which the designation "hate mail" was much too mild. Communications were received from the followers of the prominent anti-Semite Gerald L.K. Smith, from the disciples of faith-healer/politicizer Billy Jo Hargis, from such august concerns as "The White Citizen's Councils" and "Christian Anti-Communism Schools". Serling and company were addressed as "commie bastards" by some, while others characterized the Twilight Zone people as "kike lovers" and "nigger lovers." An organization called "Geo Politics" offered the novel suggestion that "Jews should be put in gas ovens and niggers shipped back to Africa."' —Hal Erikson, excerpt from "All the Little Hitlers" published in the October 1986 edition of The Twilight Zone Magazine.
What I want to say is this -- don't take these lies as harmless. They could potentially result in the assassination of Barack Obama and the end of Democracy in America.
The episode concludes:
"Where will he go next, this phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare - Chicago; Los Angeles; Miami, Florida; Vincennes, Indiana; Syracuse, New York? Anyplace, everyplace, where there's hate, where there's prejudice, where there's bigotry. He's alive. He's alive so long as these evils exist."
The right reaction is this.
Kudos to Kossack IndySteve.
The antidote to ignorance is truth and the antidote to insanity is calm.
Postscript -- the use of fascist imagery
Some google searches on the use of the words "Hitler" and "Nazi"
21,000 hits for Nazi at Freep, 7,200 at dailykos (anyone know the relative size of the two sites?)
google hits for nazi+obama -- 5.3 million, including the attempted assassination of Obama shortly before the election