I see a possibly very scary scenario with a parallel in history. You see, I saw a Palin rally on television and this is what crossed my mind.
I had a vivid mental picture of that piece of film that we have all seen in which Hitler stands on a dias, raises his arm, shouts "heil Hitler", and thousands of followers shout like thunder. A scary scene from all our shared experience. The fear of facists.
Flash forward to Sarah Palin on her dias. She's coaxing violence from her slathering followers by denouncing her political opponent as a terrorist. And in so many words, proclaiming his inferiority because " he is different, he doesn't see the world the way that we do. I mean, we wouldn't pal around with terrorists." At this, we hear shouts of "terrorist" - "kill him" - "off with his head!" All that is missing are the fancy armbands.
How was a monster like Hitler able to take over the German government? How is Palin able to incite otherwise "normal" americans to clamor for lawlessness? Let's look at the similarities.
Germany had just lost a war. You can argue that the U.S. at least is not winning. These wars were both very costly to each government.
Germany was in an economic depression. One can argue that we are also.
The general public was fearful, insecure and very used to hearing their leaders lie and steal. Another similarity.
The nation was divided. Hitler used that divide to pit one group against another. Our nation is divided worse than I can remember. When republicans are demanding the death of their opponent, that may be as bad as it can get. Karl Rove used the divide for his advantage. To grab power.
In Germany the aristocracy had all the power and there was a very small middle class. We are moving that direction. Middle class incomes continue to fall while our wealth is concentrated among fewer and fewer.
As happened in Germany, an insecure, frightened populace is vulnerable to a demagogue. Inevitably one comes along. This radical need not be extremely intelligent. Or particularly well connected. But he or she must be a sociopath with no concept or right or wrong. Usually they have been connected to some far right wing group in their past. Palin gave a key address to the Party that exists to advocate the succession of Alaska from the union. To break away to form their own independent nation. This could be argued to be advocating the overthrow of the government. That is treason and Palin gave that address in 2006. Her husband was a member of that party. Hitler was also well known to believe in the occult. I saw a video of Palin in her church being exorcised of the witchcraft she feared.
Now, I am not predicting the future. But I do see so, so many parallels between now and then. And both Sarah Palin and to a somewhat lesser extent John McCain seem to have the loose moral compass required for the role. And I can't deny that when I hear their campaign rhetoric it makes me very uneasy. And I realize that the majority of folks make their decisions based on emotion rather than logic. And we are all hearing how high emotions are running. Beware. We have already seen the loss of our most basic civil liberties. Our government took away our right to a fair trial. (One must only be declared an enemy combatant.) There is no more illegal search and seizure. We have no privacy. For God sakes, we torture people! This is not the America I grew up to love. I fear we're becoming more like Nazi Germany each passing day. And wouldn't it be a shame for our ancestors to have toiled to preserve our freedom and ideals, only to have us just piss them away. It's time to take back our country.