"It is time for us to stop talking about right and left,"

Now finally a more realistic and literalistic presentation on what the "F" word stands for.

Is America Yearning for Fascism?

"The Democrats and their liberal apologists are so oblivious to the profound personal and economic despair sweeping through this country that they think offering unemployed people the right to keep their unemployed children on their nonexistent health care policies is a step forward." - Chris Hedges http://tinyurl.com/ygecyah

Alone … in the dark … in a powder room … when and by whom will the match be lit?

When someone like Palin posts a map with cross hairs on the districts of Democrats, when she says "Don't Retreat, Instead-RELOAD!" there are desperate people cleaning their weapons who listen.

When Christian fascists stand in the pulpits of megachurches and denounce Barack Obama as the Antichrist, there are messianic believers who listen.

When a Republican lawmaker shouts "baby killer" at Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak, there are violent extremists who see the mission of saving the unborn as a sacred duty.

They have little left to lose. We made sure of that. And the violence they inflict is an expression of the violence they endure.

These movements are not yet full-blown fascist movements. They do not openly call for the extermination of ethnic or religious groups. They do not openly advocate violence.

But, as I was told by Fritz Stern, a scholar of fascism who has written about the origins of Nazism,

"In Germany there was a yearning for fascism before fascism was invented."

It is the yearning that we now see, and it is dangerous.

If we do not immediately reincorporate the unemployed and the poor back into the economy, giving them jobs and relief from crippling debt, then the nascent racism and violence that are leaping up around the edges of American society will become a full-blown conflagration.

Left unchecked, the hatred for radical Islam will transform itself into a hatred for Muslims.

The hatred for undocumented workers will become a hatred for Mexicans and Central Americans.

The hatred for those not defined by this largely white movement as American patriots will become a hatred for African-Americans.

The hatred for liberals will morph into a hatred for all democratic institutions, from universities to government agencies to the press.

Our continued impotence and cowardice, our refusal to articulate this anger and stand up in open defiance to the Democrats and the Republicans, will see us swept aside for an age of terror and blood.