If you read Bill Kristol's piece in the NY Times today, you got a hint of what American fascism would sound like - and look like. And you even know the name it will take: Maverickism.
Bull-headedness, daring and "independence" are higly valued by Americans - whether they end in disaster or not. We Americans are the progent of idiot pioneers who dashed into the wilderness on a whim of inspiration. Or, rather, we are the progeny of those who took their land, belongings and even dined on their flesh on the shores of Donner Lake when these haphazard idiots failed, starved and died. We are the land of people who lead their fellow citizens off the well-traveled trail and into the wilderness with a story of inspiration, then leave them behind and go back to civilization, the aspirants money safely in pocket.
With more people in jail than China and India combined, it is safe to say that America is a criminal country. A "maverick" is a sad sort of symbolic pawn of a criminal culture - a cultural "stalking horse" - but more on that later.
Now we have three "mavericks" in or aspiring to the highest places in government - McCain, Palin and Petraeus. McCain is a third-generation insider who has taken a story of getting shot down, doing what the North Vietnamese bid of him to embarrass America and then bravely following regulations and waiting his turn like everyone else into an epic of victimhood and heroism. Palin is a stalking horse for the most-corrupt Republican arty organization in America - the Alaska Republicans, and Petraeus is a smart general who has shown a capacity as a ruthless charlatan - effectively giving himself a combat valor medal without combat valor (bronze star w/ V device) that his many of his own soldiers who died while actually in combat did not get; changing the regulations to redefine participation on combat so the fact that he war a combat infantryman's badge he never earned would not be noticed; arming Iraqis who then killed American soldiers with those arms just to meet his numbers quota on "standing up" the Iraqi army; and obviously paying the Sunni "Awakening" not to kill Shiites so he could secure the former allies of Saddam some of their lost power and make the war seem won until the election.
All three of them, of course, are perfect, complete and even proud tools of the Republican machine but they have crowned themselves with the new American title: Maverick.
Again, this is what American fascism will sound like.
The maverick is a great symbol for them too. The maverick - or feral horse - is the sad symbol of tragic and cruel irresponsibility coming out of the American land grab in its West. These storied symbols of the western U.S., hailed for their majesticiness, are actually smallish horses who are over-populated, sickly and disgusting to see and would be rounded up and dispatched humanely but for the self-important, idiot protests of exactly same kind of American women who fall for the Palin ploy, interestingly.
-- peace,
boddi
http://financialroadtosocialism.blogspot.com/