Reading notes

I emphatically say that in crucial ways, the answer to the title question is yes. It’s something I had hoped never to experience first hand, but now I am. As Andrew points out in the article, it’s not yet quantitatively so, but it definitely is true qualititatively. Every fiber of my body, spirit, and intuition knows this.

I think that even for those who still support the Bush “strong leadership” myth against all incriminating evidence, those who are in deep denial about what we have become, even for these brothers and sisters the awareness of our guilt skitters over their awareness like the barely conscious but uncomfortable perception of having walked through spiderwebs in the dark.

Andrew writes:

Can this [1930s Germany] model be useful to understand how contemporary America is engaged in a criminally unjust war that has turned much of the world against it, a war in which torture and murder have become routine? Has the combination of the World Trade Center attack and a president who believes his instructions come from God unleashed the dark side of the American heritage? …

Today many Americans celebrate a “strong” leader who, like Woodrow Wilson, never wavers, never apologizes, never admits a mistake, never changes his mind, a leader with a firm “Christian” faith in his own righteousness. These Americans are delighted that he ignores the rest of the world and punishes the World Trade Center terrorism in Iraq. Mr. Bush is our kind of guy.

He is not another Hitler. Yet there is a certain parallelism. They have in common a demagogic appeal to the worst side of a country’s heritage in a crisis. Bush is doubtless sincere in his vision of what is best for America. So too was Hitler. The crew around the president — Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Karl Rove, the “neo-cons” like Paul Wolfowitz — are not as crazy perhaps as Himmler and Goering and Goebbels. Yet like them, they are practitioners of the Big Lie — weapons of mass destruction, Iraq democracy, only a few “bad apples.” …

This is a time of great peril in American history because a phony patriotism and an America-worshipping religion threaten the authentic American genius of tolerance and respect for other people.

I now have a bumper sticker that says

God bless the whole world. No exceptions.

Yes.

[via Atrios]