Wag the Dog II?

Sunday, November 26, 2000 by Dave Winer.

Is it fascism? 

The political mess in the US gets deeper and thicker.

On the morning news shows I heard talk about fascism and Gestapo tactics.

Please, learn about the Nazis and fascism. Understand the power of words and use them carefully. This conversation has skipped out of the groove and is headed in the direction of disaster unless people take responsibility for thinking and communicating clearly.

Stop and evalutate. Only say things you know to be true. Every adult has this responsibility.

Do you care? 

How much do you care if the president is Gore or Bush? I voted for Gore, but it doesn't matter to me now. I would change my vote as a way to protest the dangerous discourse that's going on in the US.

Courting the military? 

People are concerned about the demonstrations at the Miami-Dade election office, but they're missing a more dangerous thread. Yesterday the Republicans hosted a press conference with three Congressional Medal of Honor recipients. I had a paranoid thought. "They're trying to get the support of the military." Certainly the Gore strategists are working on a plan to get the military involved on their side. Perhaps the talk of fascism is part of that plan?

On a slippery slope 

It won't take much more talk of brownshirts and the Gestapo before there *are* tanks in the streets. With the limited reach of this column, I beg people to back off. Let's solve our problems with the ballot box, next time, let's take control of our country, truly, but please let's not degrade the situation any further. Even if the actors on TV use inflammatory language, let's not repeat it. This is bad.

Wag the Dog? 

Thinking about all this, in all seriousness, I wonder if the election is a cover for some deeper trauma that we don't know much about. Is it Seven Days in May? Or Wag the Dog, part II?

The coming week 

What if the US Supreme Court soils itself, if people question their legitimacy as they question the authority of elected officials and the Florida Supreme Court? Who will we turn to then to make sense of the election and to have a clean transition of power?

It's time to think.

Dave Winer