I normally don't pontificate in my Diaries, but reading about the unending web of pathetic, miserable lies that this Administration and its goons keep spreading, before a complicit media and seemingly amnesiac public (the latest examples being highlighted on John Marshall's
Talking Points Memo site) made me want to vent.
So apologies for the tirade.
Too many years of cheap WWII drama and CAPTAIN AMERICA comics (yay, Jack Kirby!) have made the average joe believe that fascism is a dictatorship where the population cowers in fear under the heels of jackbooted thugs who speak with funny accents.
The part about the jackbooted thugs is true, but the ones doing the cowering -- or more accurately the disappearing after being raped, tortured and summarily executed -- are usually the gays, the jews, and the leftists. Actually, by "leftist", I don't mean the grinning anarchist with the round black bomb under his poncho (another cliché) but virtually everyone here on this blog.
You will find a list of the desaperecidos from Chile here. Worth looking at. These are folks like you and I, branded "traitors" by the Chilean Ann Coulters of the day... Who still live in peace in their haciendas... Say muchas gracias, Señor Kissinger...
But I digress.
My point is that fully 70% to 80% of the good christian population supported the fascists, and in their hearts secretly embraced their machism, brutality, law & order, S&M iconography, ubermensch ideals, etc, etc.
No one overthrew Franco or Pinochet... I was in Spain when Franco was alive, so I know from first-hand experience... Eventually they get old, they retire, they die... But the ideals live on...
If fascism was ugly, no one would support it. There is a SEDUCTION to fascism, a BEAUTY, an APPEAL... Leni von Riefenstahl captured it with her undeniably artistic talent better than anyone else ever has. Germany was not Jack Kirby's Germany from Captain America, there was no grinning Red Skull. Leni's Germany was the real Germany.
Facts have nothing to do with this. Dragging a country into ruin has nothing to do with this. Many Germans knew Hitler was bad for Germany but, ah! the appeal of the Gotterdamerung... How can one resist that? Replace Gotterdamerung with Rapture, and what do we have?...
This is why, in many ways, the battle for the November elections is not about facts, figures, jobs or even foreign policies. It truly is a battle for the soul of this country.
