Outrage Deficit

Bob Dole once famously growled, "Where's the outrage?" His question was, I believe, a few years premature. In today's America, there is reason to be outraged every day, every hour, as the current administration is doing its level best to suspend civil liberties, to disenfranchise millions of people, to turn this country into a police state and to finally, once and for all, grind down and kill the American dream.

At the risk of invoking Godard's Law, I'd like to point out an excellent essay by former SF Chronicle writer and editor Bernard Weiner comparing Germany in 1933 with America in 2006. He doesn't go frothing at the mouth saying George Bush is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, but instead, in a calm and reasoned tone makes the case that many of the events and occurrences that led to the creation of the Third Reich and Nazi rule are now being repeated here in our country. Where, he asks, is the outrage?

I must confess that I'm utterly baffled by the lack of sustained, organized outrage and opposition from Democratic officials and ordinary citizens at the Bush Administration's never-ending scandals, corruptions, war-initiations, and the amassing of more and more police-state power into their hands.

And so, facing little effective opposition, the Bush juggernaut continues on its rampage. How to explain this? Certainly, one could point to a deficient mass-media, to the soporific drug of TV, to having to work so hard that for many there's no time for activism, to education aimed at taking tests and not how to think, to the residual fear-fallout from 9/11, to a penchant for fantasy over reality, to the timid and unimaginative Democratic leadership, to scandal-fatigue, etc. But I would suggest that even more disturbing answers can be found by examining recent history.

Weiner goes on to cite a good number of comparative situations -- such as the burning of the Reichstag and the 9/11 disaster, Germany's "Enabling Act," which gave Hitler unlimited autonomous power and today's Patriot Act, the constant drumming of propaganda and effective use of the "Big Lie" technique, etc. -- all leading to the conclusion that we could very easily be headed for the same place that Nazi Germany found itself if we don't take preventative measures -- if we don't express some outrage -- soon.

So, let's see: a Supreme Leader who has taken his country into blitzkrieg ("shock & awe") attacks on foreign nations, bogging down in an ill-advised invasion quagmire in Iraq; who has traded historic civil rights and liberties for defense of the fatherland; who has destroyed or rendered toothless his nominal opposition party; who has wrapped himself in the flag and questioned the patriotism of those who raise questions about his policies; who has engaged in a Big Lie propaganda strategy to move his agenda; who has demonized internal enemies; who violates the law to get what he wants and claims that he serves a higher power in doing so; who has marginalized the other two branches of government; who effectively controls the voting process; and so on.

What's scary is that it didn't take much verbal stretching to come up with those parallels, even admitting that life in Bush's U.S.A., however comparable in many areas, can scarcely be equated to life in Hitler's Germany.

Even so, history has presented its warnings to us. Will we understand and act in time to return our country to a more moderate balancing point, thus making us better protected in terms of national security? It's up to each of us.

I highly recommend that you read the entire essay, as it makes point after point that illustrates just what is happening to our country and how it has happened in the past to disastrous consequences.

What can we do to keep this nightmare scenario from becoming a reality? (And is it already too late to stop the Bush totalitarian juggernaut?) Polls are showing that Americans are becoming more and more disenchanted with the Bush machine and its deadly bumbling, secretive, arrogant ways, but the will of the people has never meant much to the Cheney-Rove administration. What is desperately needed right now is an opposition party with some muscle and some nerve (plus a few Republicans with a sense of ethics and conscience; generally an oxymoron, I know), and the will to do what is necessary to remove the BushCo cabal from office. Lewis H. Lapham, editor of Harper's magazine, makes the case in the current edition that we can no longer afford George Bush as head of our nation, and that, to keep America from becoming nothing but a lost dream, we simply must impeach the man and his cronies. You can read an excerpt of his article here, but to read the whole thing -- which you definitely should -- you must get a copy of the current issue. (You can borrow mine, but you'll have to come pick it up yourself.) Here's just a bit of what Lapham has to say:

We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country's good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world's evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation's wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal—known to be armed and shown to be dangerous.

You can also order the Center for Constitutional Rights' paperback Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush, which spells out the case clearly and concisely, and should be sent to every member of the House and Senate for their edification. We can't afford to wait until it's too late -- because it very well may be already.