I'm glad I started my vacation today...

C-SPAN has been airing various radio talk shows from battleground states this week --- although none from Florida --- and one of those shows was hosted by Montpelier, Vermont based talker and author Thom Hartmann. It's always great to hear alternative voices on the radio to counter the diatribes of right wing idealogues such as Rush Limbaugh and WTWB Auburndale's Lynne Breidenbach.

He made a point during his programme this afternoon that rang loud, reading from an article he wrote in July for the web site commondreams.org which notes that one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's vice presidents, Henry A. Wallace, warned of the "American facists among us." I include selected portions of it here, as Wallace's words from the World War II era (his words are from a New York Times op-ed piece that ran April 9, 1944) ring strangely similar when compared to current events:

"The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."
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"If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. ... They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead."
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"Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after 'the present unpleasantness' ceases."
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Mr. Hartmann also mentions the 1935 Sinclar Lewis novel "It Can't Happen Here", as the story is so very similar to what is happening right now before our eyes. Read the entire article, and you will likely come away ready to work your ass off during the next few days to put this to a stop!