is the US sliding into Fascism? Evidence for and against

I think you are absolutely right.The average American labors under the illusion they live in a democracy, when they really live in a fascist state ruled by wealthy industrialists who manipulate puppet politicians into, and out of, power by controlling the purse strings of their support networks. The votes of the ignorant unwashed are apparently easily manipulated with smear tactics, scare tactics, and character assasinations that are all bought and paid for by wealth and influence.Is the current regime fascist? They are trying to undo every form of social saftey net this country has (and it doesn't have many) from Social Security to Medicade etc., while their supporters are raking in
profits from the high price of oil, and the exhorbitantly bloated and over-priced health insurance industry, among other sources of revenue paid for by the common man.Is the current regime fascist? Does this sound at all familiar."Of course the common people don't want war,
but they can always be brought to the bidding of their leaders.
Tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists
for lack of patriotism and endangering the country.
It works the same in every country."- happens to be a quote from nazi ReichMarshall Hermann Goering at the Nuremburg trials, but could easily have been said by Karl Rove.This message has been edited by EZscience, 04-29-2005 02:03 PM

If you're simply unsupportive of our current regime, you can be quickly labelled a radical leftist in today's 'neo-con' climate.Forget that one might espouse certain conservative values oneself
(e.g. fiscal responsibility, something so sorely lacking in this supposedly conservative administration)
it seems that if you are not totally on-board ideologically with this administration you are on the hit list for being unpatriotic.Not a new strategy though.Consider the following."Of course the common people don't want war,
but they can be brought to the bidding of their leaders.
Tell them they are under attack and denounce the pacificists for lack of patriotism and endangering the country.
It works the same in every country."ReichMarshal Hermann Goering at the Nuremburg trials.

You don't see this pattern already !?Fascism is still alive and well and it is still sold with the same kind of snake oil to the uneducated plebes.The only difference is the class of beneficiaries.
Now it is the business elite as opposed to the aristocracy.I particularly like the analysis in Frank's book, "What's the Matter with Kansas."
So much of America, living poor and voting rich.(edited to correct book title - EZ)This message has been edited by EZscience, 05-09-2005 11:16 PMThis message has been edited by EZscience, 05-10-2005 09:25 AM

I don't disagree that you obviously need some economic opportunity for jobs to be created by business.
Unfortunately, most current job growth is largely off-shore because of outsourcing.I am all in favor of wealth (within limits - the greed of the really wealthy appears to be limitless) - that was not my beef.I am opposed to the degree to which wealth can apparently buy political favors and influence the outcomes of elections in this country by devious means such as these '527 organizations'.We can't get campaign finance reform because it would reduce the power big money interests wield over politics.
We can't get a decent health care system because too many wealthy interests are sucking at the tit of the existing one that, incidentally, spends more money trying to challenge and deny claims than it does actually paying for health care.Do we really have a democracy, or is it just a sham where we are manipulated into voting for puppets of wealth and privelidge (i.e. fascists) under the false assumption that they actually care about the interests of the general populace?This message has been edited by EZscience, 05-10-2005 09:45 AM

Well, I am glad for your sake you are so sure about it.
You must sleep a lot better than I do.

Ahhh.... The peace and certitude of religious conviction.
A luxury we atheists will never know...

The apparent religious convictions OF the government are one of the MANY reasons I have NO faith in it. Firstly, Congress was fed a load of malarky about non-existant WMD that was all produced / synthesized or otherwise endorsed by the administration that had a responsability to ensure its veracity.I wonder if Congress would have voted on military action for the sole purpose of spreading Democracy in Iraq? I doubt it. It just amazes me that the transition from one justification to the other has been so smooth and so quickly accepted by so many.So does democracy still 'work' if the adminstration deceives the people and their Congress ? ( I assume you will contest this particular example, but just consider the question hypothetically).

Pretty cool Schraf.
I am going to order some cheese...

Now how could you possibly construe that from what I said?
To clarify, I am suspicious and mistrustful of any and all politicians who try to use religious posturing/convicitons/morality or anything derived from religion for their own political purposes.
That would include Democrats, were the shoe to fit, but it fits a lot better on the other foot right now. I wouldn't call it a 'faith', but neither would I rule it out as a possibility.
I guess I prefer to contemplate problems for which it is possible to obtain some tangible evidence for or against.
No one has yet obtained any tangible evidence for OR against life after death, and no one is likely to, so I won't worry about it until I get there.I certainly don't feel the need to use 'faith' in some mythology as a crutch for my uncertainty about what I might face at that point. Not all questions will be answerable in our lifetime, and some may be truly unanswerable. The useful thing is to ask questions that are answerable. That is what science tries to do. Two or three quotes would be enough.
We get the idea.
Saddam was a bad guy, and Democrats also believed he had weapons.However, the flawed intelligence presented as justification for war in 2003 was still the responsibility of the adminstration in power to verify. They produced it and convinced Congress to act on it.

Nothing at all. I mistrust those who would *use* religion as a political tool to pander to a perceived voting block, not the intentions of theists relative to atheists.I like to see politicians stand on real issues of process and government, not 'values' derived from a religiously dictated morality. Could it be we are actually going to end this thread on some chord of agreement ?

Actually the second largest after Saudi Arabia.
But we already have the leadership there pretty much in line It was obvious that an invasion of Iraq would cause oil prices to spike.
What never seems to get any coverage is how Bush and all the American oil industries that supported him are raking in millions in extra profit from their domestic production as a result of this effort to 'spread democracy'.

Did you hear about the islamic Canadian who was intercepted by American security forces on some international flight a couple months ago?They shipped him off to Syria where he was held captive, beaten and tortured, only to be finally released as innocent after Canadian consular officials got involved?Made quite a stir in Canada. This administration will do anything to deny its perceived enemies the rights and respect it affords its own citizens. And as we both know, it would dearly love to reduce those rights for its own citizens as well !

Actually, it would be libel. Slander is spoken, libel is written.I think it is obvious.
Given a fixed domestic production capacity, any increase in price of the commodity benefits the producers. (although Alexander is right that there is greater producer benefit from gradual, rather than rapid, price increases).
Domestic oil companies didn't experience any increase in costs of production (domestically) to justify increasing their prices, and yet they captured the higher price returns on their commodity.This happens because oil is a relatively 'inelastic' commodity in economic terms.
We can't just use less when it gets more expensive, and we don't necessarily buy any more of it when it gets cheaper.
This makes a commodity somewhat less responsive to the 'law of supply and demand' than something like beef.
If beef gets too expensive, people start eating more pork, chicken etc.
Your car can't just switch to another fuel source, so they have you.

Now Faith, let's be fair.
I made no inferences about motivations, only about consequences.
What I said was: Nowhere did I imply that this was the purpose of the war.
But it certainly yielded a windfall for domestic oil interests,
and this is Bush's biggest financial support base. Correct. Good question. It relates to my comments about the 'inelasticity' of oil as a commodity.
It doesn't exactly obey the law of supply and demand like other commodities.
First of all, producers almost never benefit from a price war - usually only consumers benefit, and only temporarily.
The price war gets started by some producer (usually a large and powerful one) trying to capture a larger share of the market by undercutting competitors.
How could a consortium of domestic producers benefit from a price war aimed at capturing larger market share when they cannot supply the existing demand as it is?
If they lowered their prices, they would just be shooting themselves in the foot and missing an opportunity to capitalize on a hefty profit margin.
They would never be able to increase their market share above what it already is.Does that make sense ?

Well I'm not really looking for collusion on this, or some sort of conspiracy theory.
But I was trying to identify some obvious conflicts of interest in our current administration. Yes, unfortunate, but true.
Still, that won't stop domestic oil interests from capitalizing on the high prices. Ah yes. But there is no shortage of places to look for malfeasance in tax breaks with the current administration, is there?The medicare drug benefit essentially creates a multi-billion dollar pipeline of cash from public funds into the large pharmaceutical corporation bank accounts, while at the same time abdicating Medicare's rights to bargain for lower prices.
And on top of that, the same companies are going to be able to repatriate billions of $$$ in foreign profits almost tax free.See here in case you don;t subscribe:Drug Makers Reap Benefits of Tax BreakBy ALEX BERENSON
Published: May 8, 2005A new tax break for corporations is allowing the biggest American drug makers to return as much as $75 billion in profits from international havens to the United States while paying a fraction of the normal tax rate.
Jonathan Drake/Bloomberg News{ Merck produces drugs in Singapore, where tax rates are lower }The break is part of the American Jobs Creation Act, signed into law by President Bush in October, which allows companies a one-year window to return foreign profits to the United States at a 5.25 percent tax rate, compared with the standard 35 percent rate.