Thing is, we brace ourselves for the wrong kind of totalitarianism. The American flavor doesn't do razor wire and cattle cars. Even when Uncle Sam does overreact in a spasm of jackbootery, it is usually followed by hair-shirted self-loathing, investigatory committees, show trials, and damage awards to the survivors: More often than not, American jackboots are cartoonishly over-sized and have great big red, white, and blue pompons on the toes.
American fascism is of the smiley-faced, good for you, eat-your-vegetables, low-fat, mandatory fun variety. In the USA, it's already a borderline crime to do unhealthy things and not like people. This is a country where you can get a ticket for not wearing a seat belt on the way to watch the X-games and it is only a matter of time before, bereft of a national sense of irony, a SWAT team is dispatched to put a stop to a report of bullying.
Therefore, when zampolits come to the American broadcasting industry, they're not going to be Sam Brown-wearing extras from a documentary about the RMVP:
See, when The Censor shows up, she'll have nothing so crude as a red grease-pencil or a razor blade. She'll be wearing a nice business suit, not a brass-buttoned black uniform and shiny jackboots -- and she may well have no idea what she's really there to do. It's the soft fascism of dim expectations.The thing is, the American national media is so in the tank already that the only way they'd make noise about something like this would be if it happened while the dastardly Republicans were at the helm. (Can you imagine the howls that would have gone up from Rockefeller Center if this had happened under the previous administration? Much like Gitmo, drone strikes, and the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, this stuff is apparently only bad when the other team does it.)
But jackbooted care bears are so cute! See, I have one posted on my Facebook page.
ReplyDeleteThey will never come after us in jackboots, they know the disaster it would be. It will be, as you say, an iron fist in a care bear puppet
"It's the suede denim secret police, they have come for your uncool niece"
ReplyDeleteYeah, Jello nailed it.
Wounded Knee, the Battle of Blair Mountain, the Bonus March, and Waco are just some examples of what happens when they get their jackboots on here. It has happened many times, and it will happen again.
ReplyDeleteThe care-bear, "Oopsie, was that me? So sorry..." side of the fascist state is exactly why no one lost a job after these evil things in our country. Overseas somewhere when such things happen it is usually a precursor to a regime change. Here when it happens - as it does happen - it is business as usual.
We have perfected passive, benevolent, let's-all-share fascism.
What the FCC proposes here is a "gatekeeper study."
ReplyDeleteGraduate students have been doing them since middle of the last century. Then difference is, of course, that the grad student didn't have the 82nd Airborne and a couple of MEUs to make us talk.
Every time I see "Demotion Man" I think of where we are gong.
ReplyDeleteEdgar Friendly: That's right. You see, according to *Cacteau's* plan. *I'm* the enemy. Because I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech, freedom of choice. I'm the kind if guy who would sit in the greasy spoon and think "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the big rack of Barbecued spare ribs with the side order of gravy fries?" I *want* high cholesterol. I want to eat bacon, butter and buckets of cheese alright? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinatti in a non-smoking section. I wanna run around naked with green jell-o all over my body reading a Playboy magazine. Why? Because maybe I feel the need to okay pal? I've *seen* the future, you know what it is. It's made by a 47 year-old virgin in gray pajamas soaking in a bubble bath, drinking a broccoli milkshake and thinking "I'm an Oscar-Meyer Wiener".
I assume you've probably read the online short story "The Day The Dollar Died".
ReplyDeleteI personally think that may be the closest crystal ball to how things look in our future.
I really hope I'm wrong about that though.
I should add I think he overstates the level of resistance though.
ReplyDeleteMistress of Snark, I bow before thee...
ReplyDelete(And quoted you and linked to you)
Just because...
gfa
Goldberg had a similar view that the US's totalitarian views were more Huxlian than Orwellian.
ReplyDeleteI'm reminded of the "trial" Ezra Levant had up in Canada.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iMNM1tef7g
Been there.
ReplyDeleteSaid that.
http://blog.robballen.com/Post/2114/tyranny-in-red-tights
>The thing is, the American national media is so in the tank already that the only way they'd make noise about something like this would be if it happened while the dastardly Republicans were at the helm.
ReplyDeleteCut off their cell phone service while they're at a protest inside the subway station. That will make them howl "fascist!"
Robb,
ReplyDeleteYeah, me too. I don't plan on stopping saying it, either. I don't think it can be said enough. :)
Is NSA monitoring the equivalent of the Care Bear Stare?
ReplyDeleteSooner or later, the suits come off to show their true colors and the velvet gloves get set aside. Usually of course only when the despots think that they have the upper hand............
ReplyDeleteOTB MCPO sends