Amused Cynic

Well, the “F” word sure has been flying around lately, and no, I don’t mean my angry locker-room language, sorry about that.  I mean “fascism,” which usually, like Hitler comparisons, is just a nasty epithet tossed by angry leftists who have run out of argument ideas.  I tend to agree with Orwell, who noted that the word had really lost its meaning as early as 1944, when the armies of the West were strugging to defeat it:

The word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else… almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’.

But there is a basic, useable dictionary definition, one that any of us who grew up back in the days when history was a course of study rather than a form of indoctrination will recall:

A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

Well. I don’t think you have to be a wild-eyed face-pierced purple-haired anarchist at a G-7 summit riot to think to yourself that it sounds all too familiar right about now. Except for the “belligerent nationalism,” I’d say the Obama/Pelosi/Reid putsch has those bases covered.

Think that’s too strong? The One was elected, fair and square, you say. I’m not sure how fair and square it really was, but OK….Do you think they’re not going to continue to try and manipulate the census? Do you think they’re going to stop expanding ACORN, or tell them to cut the shenanigans? Do you think they’re not going to try everything in the book, legal, extra-legal, or even illegal to ensure that what happened to the Republicans last November never, ever happens to them?

How can it be that we truly have control, as the electorate should, when the man in charge of writing tax law (Rangel) is himself a demonstrable, serial tax cheat….as is the man (Geithner) in charge of the most fearsome enforcement mechanism in our entire government. Hello “suppression of the opposition through terror…”

Have you noticed there’s a little bit of scapegoating going on, some public humiliation? I mean, if someone’s committed a crime, go get’em, (unless they’re your criminals), but to call a bunch of private citizens in and tell them they’d better do as you say because the government is all that’s protecting them from the pitchforks?

What do you call it when people who are fulfilling fiduciary responsibilities according to established contracts find themselves demonized as “speculators” and threatened with a government-organized libeling by “the full force of the White House Press Corps” if they don’t allow the president to give control of their company over to his union cronies?

In just the latest incidence of White House scapegoating tactics, American citizens following the law and participating in the Global Economy are accused by the president as “tax scammers”:

The U.S. has “a broken tax system” that is “full of corporate loopholes that makes it perfectly legal for companies to avoid paying their fair share,” Obama said as he outlined his plan with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at the White House. Obama called most of the breaks “unjustifiable” and likened some company practices to a “tax scam.”

That rhetoric stung some executives: Carl Guardino, chief executive of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, told Treasury officials on a conference call after the speech that Obama’s “word choices were a bit troubling” because chief executives in his organization are “proud Americans.”
[...]
In an interview after the call, Guardino said he and 52 other top executives of companies such as Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp., and Oracle Corp., meeting in Washington this week found it “surprising to be construed in the same way as tax cheats.”

This is the sort of thing they did to the Jews in Germany. These are brown-shirt tactics. And some dare call it fascism.

RELATED: Charles Winecoff has a depressingly thoughtful piece on the coercion tactics used by the young Obama generation, or “Gen-Oers”, as he calls them.

The Anchoress has a depressingly thorough look at unholy MSM/Obama alliance….yes, the fawning”14-year-old girls” who inhabit the White House Press Corps make excellent brown-shirts.

Neo-neocon has a depressingly thorough wrap-up of the UAW/Chrysler takeover.

….yes, the operative word today seems to be “depressingly.”