Dictator? I Hardly Know Her!

I have shared my fears with some of you that the second Bush administration has begun to smell a bit fascist. But it's hard to talk about the F-word without sounding like a raving lunatic, or like I'm comparing Bush to Hitler, which I am not. However, some of America's most well-respected publications are asking questions about the erosion of our rights as U.S. citizens. The current administration has been really great at controlling the media to their advantage. Here are some recent articles that slipped through the cracks:

This weekend the Boston Globe examines the re-release of Sinclair Lewis's scathing political satire, It Can't Happen Here. Just try to read the book without making comparisons to the W. regime.

Also this weekend, the New York Times tells us the government is spying on citizens. Note that the story was supposed to be published a year ago but was not, at request of the government, and now that it has published, it's buried in the Washington section of the Times. Hmm.

Finally, for those of you who missed it in Harper's this fall, here is one of editor Lewis Lapham's last columns before he announced his retirement in November. (via Organic Consumers)

Are we so comfortable with our idea of America, with our own patriotic myths and legends and heroes that we don't notice, or worse care, when these myths are used to keep us docile? If you're against the war, you're against the troops and that's unpatriotic. If you're against our government spying on it's own, then you're a friend to terrorists. If you question this administration, you are clearly a gay drug-sniffing commie and gay drug-sniffing commies aren't what America is all about. No, apparently these days America is all about keeping your mouth shut and reading your celebrity weeklies and letting the people in power step all over your rights as an American because that's clearly the only thing keeping us all from being blown to Kingdom Come by angry brown people.