American Fascists

In previous attempts at writing for this blog, I felt I’m over thinking the words I write and thus needlessly complicating shit. Given this, it is now my objective to just type and pretty much leave be what results. In a less “forced” fashion…

So with that said, in what might seem like a step or two backwards, I’m going to proceed with what I set out to do regardless. I just finished Chris Hedges latest book “American Fascists.” Feeling somewhat obligated to tell whoever might stumble upon these words, you need to read this! Everyone needs to read this book.

I wouldn’t know where to begin to start explaining my impressions. Believe me. I have nothing productive to add. So I thought what better way to convey discussed ideas than by highlighting certain aspects of the book I found ridiculously thought provoking?

Without further ado…

“Hypermasculinity becomes a way to compensate, especially since the unspoken truth is that Christian men are required to have a personal loving relationship with a male deity and surrender their will to a male-dominated authoritarian church. Submission to a church authority, after all is a potent form of emasculation.”

“In 1999, Texas Governor George W. Bush addressed the group [the Council for National Policy] as he launched his bid for the presidency. The media were barred from the event. But those who wrote about the event afterward said that Bush, who refused to release a public transcript of his speech, promised to only appoint antiabortion judges if he was elected.”

“When it is faith alone that will determine your well-being, when faith alone cures illness, overcomes emotional distress and ensures financial and physical security, there is no need for outside, secular institutions, for social-service and regulatory agencies, to exist. There is no need for fiscal or social responsibility.”

“Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global Christian empire. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the baffoonish quality of leaders in the Christian Right who expounded it. But Adams [Dr. James Luther Adams] warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazi’s, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors in America had found a mask for fascism in patriotism and the pages of the Bible.”

“Debate with the radical Christian Right is useless. We cannot reach this movement. It does not want dialogue. It is a movement based on emotion and cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. It is not mollified because John Kerry prays or Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday school. Naive attempts to reach out to the movement, to assure them that we, too are Christian or we, too care about moral values, are doomed. This movement is bent on our destruction.”

And here I thought being more cynical on a subject as mundane as American politics was hardly possible. God help us all…