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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (40167)	8/1/2007 1:43:42 PM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 541763

Today there is so much diversity and dissent that the would-be authoritarians can preach an ethic of control, but their actual ability will get weaker and weaker in the next few years. I hope you're right but my fear is that the big difference between the 50s and now is the infrastructure of a movement, the items I mentioned in my post. They are all mobilizable. And, while the presence of a technology which responds to diversity is certainly there, it's also one that can be used, efficiently, for authoritarian purposes as well. We know there's a least as much fear in the public these days as in the 50s, even though we won WWII. Couple that with a variety of communication tools to mobilize that fear (the usual suspects), the self interest to do so (at a minimum, the political class that will have a great stake in redefining an Iraq "loss" as not the fault of the right wing), and the mobilizable "patriotism", uncritical pro military content of a widened band width. And you've got a widespread movement. Hopefully, my worries won't be realized. But they are there. And, of course, reading Novak's hyper McCarthyism that persists and grows just makes it worse. Wonderful story from Novak. In the early 70s, William Safire, at Nixon and Haldeman's behest, leaked a large set of files to Novak which contained charges that the anti-war movement was run by Trotskyites. Novak bought it; published a column. And, as his critics at the time said, there might have been four Trotskyites left in the US at that point. Yet influential people like Novak continue to believe stuff that is patently nonsensical. Because of fear of the night.