Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] facism gaining ground in US

[John Seifarth]

At 10:48 -0700 19/7/04, Pierce T.Wetter III wrote:
>  A month later, 3,000 people are dead, our stock market is in a 
> shambles, and wherever you go, you see pissed off Americans waving 
> flags.
>
>  That was the moment that the US was closest to facism. We're a 
> little calmer now, but at the same time, when I think about 9/11 I 
> get pissed off all over again. One thing most Europeans don't 
> realize so much is that Bush took a very measured response given the 
> feeling in the country at the time. We would have been perfectly 
> accepting if he'd nuked someone.

And this is precisely what has always scared the shit out of me. I 
grew up in the 60s in suburban America near Philadelphia, with "Duck 
and Cover", regular air raid drills at my elementary school where we 
hid under the desks and waited to hear radio say that "This has been 
a test of the Emergency Broadcast System...". I saw the movie 
Fail-safe and the high-pitched squeal of the phones melting in Moscow 
and New York are still strong in my mind.

In 1970, my family moved to Belgium. The Soviets were deploying SS-20 
intermediate range missiles in Eastern Europe, so the US located some 
Pershing II missiles in southern Belgium to maintain the balance of 
terror. I always had the feeling that the average US citizen, feeling 
safe back in America, would prefer Europe reduced to radioactive 
ashes rather than seeing the USSR gain a strategic advantage.

When I read Pierce say that "We would have been perfectly accepting 
if he'd nuked someone", and not perceive the enormity of the 
disproportionate reaction between receiving  an assuredly painful 
terrorist blow and a riposte involving nuking somebody (who? anybody 
who might have been involved? men, women, children, babies?) because 
you're so "pissed off", I can only sigh.

This impenetrable, self-centered, borderline crazy attitude Americans 
have toward the use of deadly force is what sometimes scares their 
friends even more than their enemies.

John
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John Seifarth                               http://www.waw.be/waw/
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