Tim Wise works up a high froth of ancient hatred in this amusing and inadvertently revealing piece of leftist boilerplate. The small grain of truth in it is that Americans need better education; however, it is leftists like Mr. Wise who helped dumb down the schools in order to make Americans more pliable. Sorry Mr. Wise, we are not going to accept responsibility for the dumbing down of America. That’s been the project of you and your predecessors, and we won’t forget it. — EAU Correspondent
by Tim Wise
For those who have seen the ugliness and heard the vitriol emanatingfrom the mouths of persons attending McCain/Palin rallies this pastweek–what with their demands to kill Barack Obama, slurs that he is aterrorist and a traitor, and paranoid delusions about his crypto-Muslimdesigns on America–please know this: This is how fascism comes to anostensible democracy.
If it comes–and if those whose poisonous, unhinged verbiage hasbeen so ubiquitous this week have any say over it, it surely will–thisis how it will happen: not with tanks and jackbooted storm troopers,but carried in the hearts of men and women dressed in comfortableshoes, with baseball caps, and What Would Jesus Do? wristbands. It willbe heralded by up-dos, designer glasses, you-betcha folksiness and adisdain for big words or hard consonants.
If fascism comes, it will spring from the soil of middle America,from people known as values voters but whose values are toxic, fromsimple folk whose simplicity, far from being admirable, is betterlabeled ignorance, from “all-American” types whose patriotism is adagger pointed at the very heart of the national interest, for it soforsakes all the best principles upon which the republic was founded,choosing instead to elevate and ratify the narrow-mindedness, thebigotry, and the intolerance that also marked our country’s origins.
If fascism comes, it will be ushered in by tailgaters at the bigfootball game, by Joe Six Pack, who, upon finishing his sixth beer andbelching forth the stench of a mediocre life lived, will gladlyannounce its arrival, so long as it comes with a steady supply of PabstBlue Ribbon and hot dogs on the grill, and giant foam hands with a”We’re Number 1″ finger, some Mardi Gras beads and a good titty bar.
If fascism comes it will dress like a hockey mom, or a NASCAR dad.It will believe Toby Keith to be an artist, Larry the Cable Guy to be acomic, and that the world was made in six literal days less than 6000years ago.
If fascism comes it will come from the small towns; the ones SarahPalin, quoting a famous racist and Jew-hater, said “grow good people,”and which occasionally do, but which, just as often grow provincial,isolated, fearful and superstitious ones.
If fascism comes it will come from faux populism, fromanti-immigrant hysteria, from persons who have more guns in their homesthan books, or whose books, when they have them, are principallyvolumes of the Left Behind series, several different copies of theBible, and a plethora of romance novels.
If fascism comes it will be welcomed, lock stock and barrel bypersons who pray at every meal to a God they visualize as white, whoseson they also think was white, and who they believe is going to rapturethem all into the sky upon the blowing of some heavenly trumpet, afterwhich point all those who don’t think as they think will be burned inan eternal lake of fire. Their vision and version of God is itselffascistic–to love a God who would do such a thing is to love anabusive, sadistic and evil deity after all–so it should come as littlesurprise that their conception of the state would be equallyauthoritarian or worse.
If fascism comes it will be at the behest of those who hold acontempt for what they call “book learnin,” who prefer Presidents whomispronounce basic words because they make them feel smarter, and whoare looking for nothing so much as a commander-in-chief with whom theywould enjoy having a beer, or two, or twelve at some backyard barbecue.
If fascism comes it will be interviewed, lovingly, on talk radio, byhosts whose cerebral inadequacies are more than made up for by theirbellicosity, their bombast, their willingness to shout down those withwhom they cannot argue, for argument requires knowledge, and this is acommodity with which they have not even a passing familiarity.
If fascism comes it will come wrapped in red,white and blue,carrying a crucifix and a shotgun, projecting its own sexual confusionand insecurity onto others, substituting volume for veracity and ragefor reason, and landing on the New York Times best-seller list as aresult.
If fascism comes it will have a pajama party at Ann Coulter’s house,pop pills with Rush Limbaugh, and go gay-bashing with Michael Savage,all in the same weekend. And it will refuse to learn another languageor get a passport, because doing either of those would make onecosmopolitan–which is just another word for “faggot.”
If fascism comes it will come because a lot of people who aren’tlike the folks I’m talking about here, won’t stand up to the ones whoare. Because we’re too busy, don’t want to make waves, don’t want tolose friends, or alienate family. It will come, in other words, becausethose who know better are cowards, more concerned with getting along,making nice, and being liked than with telling the truth, calling outevil and saving their country.
The preceding paragraph sounds similar to those “on the right” who have allowed the likes of Mr. Wise to have sway as they marched through the institutions, thus bringing down the the Old America that once worked so well. Mr. Wise, in total, is simply pounding sand in the hopes that the one party system will go his way once and for all. — Ed.
If fascism comes it will come because of the silence, and thus,collaboration of those who think themselves good, and certainlysuperior to the knuckle-draggers they can see on YouTube at the McCainrallies, but who in the end are no better and in some ways worse thanthey: after all, at least fascists stand up for what they believe in.They are telling us, in no uncertain terms what kind of United Statesthey want and are willing to fight for, and maybe even to kill for. Butmany “progressives,” many liberals, many of the so-called enlightenedare doing nothing at all.
If fascism comes it will come because those liberals thought votingfor Barack Obama was all they needed to do; it will come because theyallowed themselves to believe that politics is what a person does everyfour years, but not at work, and not in the neighborhood, and not atthe dinner table. Meanwhile, know-nothings filled with hate, nurturedon racial and religious bigotry and who have overdosed on the kind ofhypernationalism that has always proved fatal to those places foolishor craven enough to allow it a foothold, talk of their visions forAmerica at every opportunity. They raise their kids on that sickness,they build churches whose very foundation is rooted in that cancerousrot, and they will think nothing of steamrolling those who get in theirway.
So when, exactly, do we fight back? When do we say enough? When dowe stand up to our relative or friend who sends us the e-mail aboutObama being a Manchurian Candidate or al-Qaeda sympathizer, or the oneabout the decency of Midwestern flood victims as opposed to thosestranded after Katrina, or about how God was punishing New Orleansbecause of its tolerance of homosexuality, and tell them what we think:namely, that they are a bunch of racist, heterosexist loons, whosefriendship or familial connection we neither want nor intend to pursueunless they get help. When do we decide that we love our country andhumanity too much to allow these people one more day of decent sleep,one more day of self-assured confidence in their craziness and thewillingness of the rest of us to just take it? When do we decide thatevery irrational, Jeezoid, racist thing that comes from their mouthswill be attacked, will be rebutted, until they can no longer take forgranted the ability to say any of it in mixed company without beingcalled out?
Why, in the face of the fascism they would surely introduce if giventhe chance, are we intent on being so nice? Why are we not moreoffended? Offended not merely at what such persons say aboutothers–like Obama, or Latino immigrants, or whatever–but even aboutwe who look like them? After all, their open exhortations of racismpresuppose that they are speaking for us, and that this kind ofbrain-dead ventilation is something to which all white folks shouldaspire as though it were virtually the essence of enlightenment.
If fascism comes it will come because we did not see in theiractions a sufficient threat, or because we allowed ourselves to believethat it couldn’t come, that our institutions were too strong, ourpeople too good, for that to happen. If it comes it will come becausewe allowed ourselves to believe the rosy and optimistic version ofAmerica spun by Obama, without tempering that optimism with aclear-headed appraisal of the way that (sadly) a still huge number ofAmericans actually think: because we allowed the vehicle of our hopesto outrun the headlights of truth; because we convinced ourselves thatwe actually lived in the country of our aspirations, rather than thenation we have at present.
And if fascism doesn’t come–if, rather, democracy does–it willcome because good people said no. It will come because we saw in thismoment the opportunity to demand the full measure of our humanity andto pour it forth upon the national soil. It will be because weunderstood that democracy isn’t what you have, it’s what you do. But ifwe are to issue that demand, if we are to stand straight and fulfillthe potential we possess to do justice, we had best exercise the optionquickly, for the opponents of justice are on the move. They arepreparing to enter on the winds of our silence and indifference, andcomplacency. Let them find no quarter here.
hXXp://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/this-how-fascism-comes-reflections-cost-silence