"We want individual freedoms. We want the government to stay out of our lives, except that we want the government to prohibit acts of wickedness." - Randall Terry, founder of "Operation 'Rescue'" (on National Public Radio's Fresh Air, July 30, 1993)
  • No one likes polititians, for good reasons of course. Only one out of a hundred are decient human beings. The rest are scum out to line their pockets at the expense of the citizenry. This is blatently obvious.

    But nearly everyone loves politics. Stupid shits pontificate for hours on the subject. "It's the damn Lib-Er-Ahls!" they wail. "It's the damn Lib-Er-Ahl President!" they moan. (Never mind the fact that the USA has not had a liberal Presidence since Lincoln. Never mind the fact that they don't even know what "liberal" means.) "It's the damn Ho-Mo-Shex-U-Ahls!" they scream. "Niggers; Japs; Jews; Women; Mexicans; Irish; Catholics--- they're the ones who have distroyed / are destroying America!" they exclaim.

    And not a one of them knows what the fuck he is talking about. (And it's usually a he.)

    What we see in the USA Republican Party is what our grandparents saw in the German National Socialist Party in 1935CE, otherwise known as the Nazis. Read any history book about The Third Reich and you'll see 1980s and 1990s American Republican politics. The propaganda is the same; the paranoia is the same; the targets are the same; the appeal to ignorance, fear, and superstition is the same.

    "I don't think Christians should use birth control. You should consumate your marriage as often as you like and if you have babies, you have babies." --Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue
    Orange County Pro-Choice Coalition. I remember in 1989, standing in front of a women's health clinic, keeping the doors open for girls and women to enter while the army of darkness, the forces of the night, tried to keep girls and women out. I was standing, left arm linked with an elderly Jewish woman's right arm, at the door, keeping a corridor open so patients may enter. The woman had a pale, grayish-blue mark on her arm that I at first took to be a burn mark. The old woman saw me studying the tattoo, and told me she received it when she was eight years old, from the Nazis.

    While we stood there in the hot sun, pushed against and prayed at by the ignorant pawns trying to close the clinic, she told me about her experience being a little girl in Nazi Germany. "All this," she said, waving her free arm to indicate the "Operation 'Rescue'" puppets surrounding us, "is just like how it was in Nazi Germany." She told about how the Nazis first provoked nationalist, patriotic feelings by appealing to the weak, the ignorant, the fearful. Then they "idolized" girls and women by stripping them of power and stuffing them "back into the home." Abortion was out-lawed. Women were considered "national treasures," to be "protected" and "safe," all the while being chained and enslaved by the male state. The Jewish woman standing next to me said she was seeing it all happen again, and that was why she was a clinic defender. She said she was too young to fight fascism when she was a girl; she said she was not too old to fight it now.

    It's been almost a decade since I talked with her. Have things improved? No, of course not. The evil "Religious Right" still rules the USA Republican Party; women and minority citizens are still targets of legal and illegal abuse. The radio, newspaper, magazine, and TV media are still hyper-conservative, with a tiny handful of moderate and liberal organizations here and there.

    That is not to say the fascists in the USA Republican Party have won: if that were true, we would all be wearing swastikas (except for Jews, homosexuals, barren women, black people, and Catholics: they would all be dead). Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson is still mired, held at bay by the USA Constitution; his dog, Ralph Reed, has gone on to "better" ($$$) things. The economic standard of living for women and minorities is slowly, slowly improving. And everywhere, tiny numbers of liberals are defending the USA Consititution.

    But things can get worse, quickly and easily. The religious fascists inflict Creationism upon children in public schools; coerced prayer is still found in some public schools; "school vouchers" are mandated; criminal (i.e. unconstitutional) redress against discrimination is no longer the law in California, but must be addressed civily. And everywhere, superstition and ignorance is inflicted upon the citizenry, as a tool to control and manipulate it.

    The Solution: A liberal, varied education is the solution to the nation's ills. Every citizen should be well-educated, in the humanities, sciences, and arts. Critical thinking ability must be taught--- it is not an ability humans are born with: it must be cultivated. Patriotism and Nationalism must be castigated and reviled as the evils they are. The ability to think about claims rationally and clearly must be engendered in society. Only then can a society be healthiest for all of its citizens.

    Of course the fascists will oppose education for the masses. Teach a kid to read, and more importantly teach that kid to LOVE TO READ, and the fascist can no longer own him or her. The body can be chained, but the spirit could never be: abandon provincialism, and one is free.

    Will it ever happen? With the USA ever have a healthy, happy, liberal society? No. Evil exists in too great a degree in humanity.

    But one can dream.

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