re: #3 celticdragon

I honestly think this massive, focused attack on culture war issues by the Right is symptomatic of the fear that this country is in rapid decline with respect to other nations as a Great Power. Hence, the bizarre insistence that we “return to our Godly roots” and the constant shouting on Fox News that the USA is always “Number One!” in whatever category is being discussed.

They are running on high octane fear:

Fear of people with brown skins, fear of the “other”, fear that we have been coasting on our laurels from WW II and that we coasted too damned long, fear that the world is going to start ignoring us, fear that those dreams were sold where hard work and perseverance leads to wealth were all lies…

And what to focus the fear upon?

Attack unions, uppity women, gays, “Young bucks with t-bone steaks” teachers, atheists, Muslims, you name it…

They are never going to stop until this country has been ground into near poverty and they are forced out.

I always wind up posting this essay:
14 Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt

6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.

That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old “proletarians” are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.

7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.

This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the United States, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson’s The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.