All I'm saying

Okay, I'm definitely not saying America is fascist. Author Naomi Wolf has written a sort of history of fascism called End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Democracy. She lays out a historical pattern of ten steps in which democracies have been usurped by fascism. Here they are, without comment, from her Guardian article, which I encourage you to read in its entirety

here.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

2. Create a gulag

3. Develop a thug caste

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

5. Harass citizens' groups

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

7. Target key individuals

8. Control the press

9. Dissent equals treason

10. Suspend the rule of law

It's easy to see that we are experiencing a troubling number of these characteristics. The Bush administration is clearly guilty of numbers 1, 2, 9, and 10. To number 3 it is only necessary to know that the first entity to respond to Hurricane Katrina was Blackwater, and it was Blackwater that was accused of "shooting looters." Key individuals have been targeted as well: there are university professors who have been denied tenure or had tenure stripped for their political views. What of author Judith Miller and diplomat Joseph C. Wilson?

This easily leads to number 8, control of the press. As I see it this happens through self-censorship in ways large and small.

Bush's use of signing statements alone show his contempt for the rule of law, satisfying number 10.

I'm just saying America COULD be fascist. The good news is that people are starting to stand up for 
themselves. Thanks primarily to the internet people are able to communicate. I truly believe that in the 
final scheme of things that the "truth will out."

After all...

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

That's all I'm saying.