This article is beyond disturbing and almost crushes my spirit to the core.
The Scorched-Earth Politics of America's Four Fundamentalisms
United States has more in common with authoritarian regimes like China and Iran "than anyone may like to admit.. United States has become a breeding ground for authoritarianism by focusing on four fundamentalisms: market fundamentalism, religious fundamentalism, educational fundamentalism and military fundamentalism.
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How such assaults on the rule of law, justice and democracy could take place without massive resistance represents one of the most reprehensible moments in American history.
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American politics is being shaped by extremists who have shredded civil liberties, lied to the public to legitimate sending young American troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, alienated most of the international community with a blatant exercise of arrogant power and investment in a permanent warfare state, tarnished the highest offices of government with unsavory corporate alliances, used political power to unabashedly pursue legislative policies that favor the rich and punish the poor and perhaps irreparably damaged any remaining public spheres not governed by the logic of the market.
They have waged a covert war against poor young people and people of color who are being either warehoused in substandard schools or incarcerated at alarming rates.
Academic freedom is increasingly under attack by extremists such as Rick Santorum;
homophobia and racism have become the poster ideologies of the Republican Party;
war and warriors have become the most endearing models of national greatness;
and a full-fledged assault on women's reproductive rights is being championed by the current crop of Republican presidential hopefuls and a not insignificant number of Republican governors.
While people of color, the poor, youth, the middle class, the elderly, LGBT communities and women are being attacked, the Republican Party is supporting a campaign to collapse the boundaries between the church and state, and even liberal critics such as Frank Rich believe that the United States is on the verge of becoming a fundamentalist theocracy.
This is soul-crushing to me because I see many, even on the left, clinging and still making excuses for these bastions of male dominated authority GROUPS.:
1.market fundamentalism,
2.religious fundamentalism,
3.educational fundamentalism and
4.military fundamentalism.
Individually, one can take oneself out of any of these groups, stop supporting them, stop giving them money and not voting for anyone advocating these groups.
Not voting republican is the easy thing to do for us, but what was so crushing to my spirit, if you read the whole article, is that the left is pretty entrenched in much of this also.
Women are being attacked from all sides as are our the children. Children are being attacked by ignorant fundamentalist educators, who are falsifying history and science books, by Big Pharma The Diagnosing and Drugging of 'ADHD' Children -- An American Tragedy Worsens. They want us Numb and Dumb.
All of us have fallen in one or more of these four fundamentalist traps, and we didn't suspect it or know it. Now many of us do know. I don't think the politics of today is going to solve these problems.
People who want Freedom might. Aside from OWS growing, I don't know how we begin to dismantle this scary shit. Especially when the next election seems to be either Corporatocracy or Theocracy.
Where to go from here is the question each person needs to ask themself.