I am about to throw 2 analogies into a blender, thereby using a total of 3 analogies in this diary. Please indulge me and forgive me.
Turn the heat up slowly and a frog will let itself boil to death. Rescind democratic rights, principles and institutions gradually enough and people will submit themselves to oppression.
Similarly the phrase "death by a thousand cuts" comes to mind. But it was not a thousand cuts that saved America from totalitarianism. From the media reports it was the gaping bleeding wound that is Iraq. Each little cut didn't really damage the administration, like each little degree does not damage the happy little frog.
Some of those "little" cuts are listed below. But really, none of them are little at all.
- the lack of funding for "No Child Left Behind"
- the gutting of environmentmental laws under news banners with Orwellian names
- government leaders praising child labor/sex slave operators in the Mariana Islands
- government meddling in the private life/death choices of families in crisis
- redacting their complacancy in 9/11
- profiteering by a Vice President and his "former" company
- letting Osama Bin Laden escape from Tora Bora
- outting a CIA agent as revenge
- illegal spying on Americans
- releasing merancenaries to terrorize civilians in Iraq
- torture
- rescinding Habeas Corpus
- prohibiting government negotiation with drug companies
- censoring science
- encouraging out-sourcing of jobs to cheaper labour markets
- leaving the people of New Orleans to fend for themselves
(Well, there is 16, can you add the other 984? shouldn't be too hard.)
Negative reactions to all those issues as a group probably would not have saved America. It really took the massive hemmoraging of Iraq to finally wake up enough more Americans to make the change that 1000 little cuts could not stir. How scary is that? If Bush did not invade Iraq, there would be no change in Congress and no opposition for 2 more years. This time the frog was saved by a catastrophic error which raised the heat too high and too fast. Maybe next time, the fascists won't blunder.