We marginalize ourselves with rhetoric that sounds extreme to most people. We can't make them deny it. They are free to ignore us. In addition, I don't think it is true that the average US supporter of GITMO is a fascist, or that we live in a fascist state (although there are scary tendencies), or that there is anything constructive to be brought in by dragging in 300 years of US history and saying America is an evil country.
Regardless of whether this is true, it doesn't help if you want to stop the abuses at Gitmo and in fact hurts, because ordinary people where I live (Chicago) figure you're a fruitcake.) You have to decide whether in the end you want to say what may or may not be true about all of US history and Gitmo's embelamtic role it it, and be ineffective, or organize in the normal way to stop the abuses in alliance with liberals (like me, and I'm a very left liberal -- Doug doesn't think I'm a liberal at all).
I'd leave the USSR out of it. The last thing you want is people thinking you are making individious comparisons between the US and the USSR. "Worse than Russia," you've lost everyone. Starting with me. If you lose _me_, and I am 99% sympathetic, way far more radical than almost anyone you meet who calls himself a liberal, you've lost everyone but the 5000 true believers, who are irrelevant.
jks
--- Leigh Meyers <leighcmeyers at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, June 21, 2005 9:57 AM [PDT],
> andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Note: forwarded message attached.
> >
>
> I think the 25 million # is surpassed on all counts
> just by atrocities
> commited against the natives and blacks of America.
> Forced labor,
> "camps", random murder, focused killing, and all
> else that "gulag"
> implies, the whole enchilada... It's just not
> happening in Siberia,
> and GWB isn't Josef Stalin... So?
>
> The problem? I think as long as we insist on playing
> down the nature of what's happening at GITMO and
> other, non-US territory facilities by not making
> that
> strongly worded comparison, the longer they will
> continue to operate as "business as usual".
>
> If we REALLY want to shut it down we have to
> *insist* that GITMO
> *absolutely* equals GULAG, and make the bastards
> deny it.
>
> Why should a hack like Chuck Hagel be able to do
> that... and not you and I?
>
> Leigh
> http://www.leighm.net
>
>
>
>
> --
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