corrente

Wow. Following in Xan’s steps here of ripping off the best (see below), the best things I’ve seen yet on the “creeping fascism” meme. From Luciana Bohne:

February 22, 2005—Fifty years from now, historians (if any survive the next 50 years in any fit shape to take time out from foraging for food to scribble and to theorize) will puzzle over this question as Italians still do today over the exact beginning of fascism (roughly, 1920-1943).

Was it with the USA PATRIOT Act? The military tribunals? Nine-eleven—Reichstag fire that some think it was? Florida elections 1998-2000? Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib? Gonzales? Negroponte? PNAC? Panama invasion? Gulf War I? Reagan? NAFTA and the Washington consensus, in general? Chile coup?

Or was it with Hiroshima and Nagasaki—when the US showed the world that it would back its existing economic hegemony with its military death machine?

The whole thing’s at Attacks on academic freedom, or when exactly did Bushism begin in the USA?

And this from Mark Drolette:

…Have I been dropping the f-bomb too casually, verbiage that has been guaranteed to stop practically any conversation in America dead in its tracks for just about forever? Or have circumstances changed such in this country that it can now be spoken without shame (though regretfully), and that, instead of causing jaws to drop, heads to shake, and people to leave, the moment is upon us in which this once-spurned term may now be considered appropriate (an unfortunate necessity) for everyday conversation?

I assert the latter: it is time to acknowledge our democratic system of government has been replaced by fascism.

Find the whole things at Part I and United States government, 2005Part 2: If it walks like a goose . . . over at Online Journal.

Worth a trip. Now, off to find some whiskey. And consume it.