Reply #79: Take a lesson from the opposition [View All]

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The first and best thing the Republicans learned how to do on their long road back was to own the language, redefine its terms and snatch it from anyone who wanted to use it for their own reasons.

I can't buy into caving into the party that gave us 'compassionate conservative' or 'pro-life' deciding if the */Hitler comparison is legit. I also understand that some from the Jewish community have declared that somehow the comparison trivializes their experience in the Holocaust. They will need to be educated that the comparison puts front and center one of the most serious matters to be raised about the Holocaust and its construction.

When I was a kid, WWII had just ended. The magnitude of the horror that was Nazi Germany was just beginning to sink in and I asked my mother, What did all that stuff in Germany mean? She took one long look at me (I suppose appraising if I was quite ready for the news) and then said, I don't ever want you to forget this. What it means is that everything that has happened in Germany, all the killing and brutality and horror was carried out or allowed by otherwise very good people. Don't you ever forget, she said, it can happen here.

Bush is not Hitler. However, there are policies eminating from the office and practices of the man who, no matter how otherwise 'good' he might be, are showing the edges of that truth I was taught so long ago.

The Justice Dept. is now considering the possibility of applying the Patriot Act to indict as terrorists members of the AIM movement for their actions at Pine Ridge, 30 years ago! The Patriot Act imposes no statute of limitations on prosecutors and serves as a perfect excuse to extend the reach of police into areas that weren't even contemplated at that time. The 3-strikes law has been used to obtain life-sentences for ex-felons guilty of nothing more than petty theft (stealing a pizza, in one case). The Rico Statute is getting tested on everything from environmental protests to a couple of crack dealers on a street corner.

Everytime I hear the police pushing the envelope on some statute they lobbied to get and swore was only for the limited purpose of a very narrow crime category, I get the jitters and recall what I was told to never forget. When I observe the Justice dept. feeling for a get-around for some inconvenient constitutional obstacle to a prosecution, I think of otherwise 'good people'. When I hear the a
current Administration slip so easily through a series of justifications for bombing the shit out of someplace 'out there' -- from immediate danger to WMDs to premptive strike to well, uhm, he's a tyrant and we need a "Regime" change, I am reminded of just how easy it is to test out a few nouns, find a term accepted by 'good people' and permit It to happen here.

There are legitimate comparisons to be made Between Hitler & Bush. More so as we begin to enter the era of a perpetual state of terrorism and the exigencies of war by redefinition of our common language. I don't see handing the matter of terms, dictionaries and references over to those who are dangerously close to making it happen here (even if well-intentioned themselves). If we have comparisons to make and history to recall, then we need to do so and stand behind our indictments. To do otherwise is to join those who would also let it happen here.

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