Downtown Georgetown
When Fascism Comes, It Will Be Draped in a Flag
RECEIVED Wed., Dec. 31, 2008
Dear Editor,
Fascism is defined as the tenets of a centralized, totalitarian, and nationalistic government that strictly controls finance, industry, and commerce; practices rigid censorship and racism; and eliminates opposition through secret police. The Republican Party screamed about “unrevealed small donors” who paid Barack Obama nearly $1 billion during the election. I am a donor, retired military, and currently a cop in Central Texas. Someone once stated that when fascism comes to America, it is coming draped in a flag carrying a cross. In all of history, most people never realize that they are at a historical turning point. Any semi-informed person knows that President Bush has broken the laws with torture, wiretapping, obstruction of justice, and on and on. This is the stuff a complacent media very reluctantly made a passing comment on. We have been in an economic recession for 11 months, and John McCain adviser Phil Gramm had the temerity to call us a nation of whiners. For the last eight years we have had a new national low point, seemingly weekly, and can you imagine what is going to be discovered when Bush and Cheney no longer hold the levers of power and what newly undiscovered national shame awaits us? I sent Obama my $500 because I wanted to see if we are a nation of laws or a nation of men. Some questions are, of course, too terrible to be asked, so people live out their lives trying to pretend that the obvious question is oblivious to see. But here on Jan. 20, 2009, at the steps of the Capitol, at around noon, we will have this question answered as our nation, if not the world, wonders if the tarnished shining city on the hill still exists or if it has been destroyed forever.
Fascism is defined as the tenets of a centralized, totalitarian, and nationalistic government that strictly controls finance, industry, and commerce; practices rigid censorship and racism; and eliminates opposition through secret police. The Republican Party screamed about “unrevealed small donors” who paid Barack Obama nearly $1 billion during the election. I am a donor, retired military, and currently a cop in Central Texas. Someone once stated that when fascism comes to America, it is coming draped in a flag carrying a cross. In all of history, most people never realize that they are at a historical turning point. Any semi-informed person knows that President Bush has broken the laws with torture, wiretapping, obstruction of justice, and on and on. This is the stuff a complacent media very reluctantly made a passing comment on. We have been in an economic recession for 11 months, and John McCain adviser Phil Gramm had the temerity to call us a nation of whiners. For the last eight years we have had a new national low point, seemingly weekly, and can you imagine what is going to be discovered when Bush and Cheney no longer hold the levers of power and what newly undiscovered national shame awaits us? I sent Obama my $500 because I wanted to see if we are a nation of laws or a nation of men. Some questions are, of course, too terrible to be asked, so people live out their lives trying to pretend that the obvious question is oblivious to see. But here on Jan. 20, 2009, at the steps of the Capitol, at around noon, we will have this question answered as our nation, if not the world, wonders if the tarnished shining city on the hill still exists or if it has been destroyed forever.
Ron Ruiz
