is the first part of the title of piece by Thom Hartmann distributed today through www.commondreams.org
I strongly urge everyone to read the entire piece, which is entitled in full When Democracy failed -- 2005: The Warnings of History. Hartmann provides a detail comparison with the rise of Hitler and the Nazis to our current situation. One does not have to agree with all of his parallels to be concerned.
see below the fold for the beginning of the piece.
This weekend - February 27th - is the 72nd anniversary, but the corporate media most likely won't cover it. The generation that experienced this history firsthand is now largely dead, and only a few of us dare hear their ghosts.
It started when the government, in the midst of an economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist. Some, like Sefton Delmer - a London Daily Express reporter on the scene - say they certainly did not, while others, like William Shirer, suggest they did.)
But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted.