I just started re-reading The Plot Against Against America by Phillip Roth last night. It’s a frightening alternative history in which Lindbergh defeats FDR for President in 1940 and institutes a fascist US government that suspends the civil liberties of minorities deemed a threat to national security (in this case American Jews) and signs a non-aggression pact with Hitler. Naturally this brings out the worst prejudices and nasty behavior from a number of people who feel entitled to act like thugs.
[T]wo years into Lindy’s presidency, killings and riots have begun and many Jews are fleeing over the border into Canada. The nadir is the assassination of the Jewish journalist and broadcaster Walter Winchell, a prominent critic of government policy.
Today I read about how great it was that some dumb “unhinged liberal” b**ch got her head stomped. That is, she deserved to get her head and neck stomped by a Real American Patriot (read comment thread).
I’m not saying there’s any connection, but it did feel a little eerie ton say the least …
Last night I also watched on MsNBC the program “The Assassination of Dr. Tiller” the Wichita late term abortion provider who was gunned down in his own church by Scott Roeder who claimed he acted out of “necessity” and felt no remorse for killing Tiller (much like James Adkisson expressed no remorse for killing a Unitarian-Universalist church member after targeting them in Knoxville, Tennessee because they were liberals).
As one of the characters in Roth’s book says at a particularly poignant moment: “It can’t happen here? My friends, it is happening here.” It’s more than a little disturbing to feel that I am living in a reality that I thought was relegated to writers of alternate history fiction not so long ago.
A reality in which any major right wing politician or nationally known conservative media pundit can say anything – and I do mean anything – to demonize minorities, liberals, Democrats, non-Christians, LGBT people, etc. and suffer no consequences for their words and actions. A reality where police will taser anyone who looks cross-wise at them and then arrest that person for resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. A reality where the “free speech” of anonymous corporations is more significant than that of real live human beings. A reality where political office is a commodity that the wealthy control.
Don’t think elections matter? Think again, folks.