I'll offer up a really short diary tonight, mainly because I'm fighting the flu and have to return to work tomorrow anyway, but also because this is the last hour before we dance the jig.
I lost $5.00 and I'm glad. What could have happened, what I predicted might really happen, didn't. And I'm as giggly happy about it as a guy with a 11 degree fever can be.
About eighteen months ago I read Upton Sinclair's "It Can Happen Here," his prophetic warning that even America, in times of crisis and fear, is not immune from turning to the facist promise of a strong protector, an Il Deuce, who will make us all safe and cause the trains to run on time.
I had believe for quite a while that the 2000 election looked a lot like a ham-handed hitlerian putsch to place our frat boy in office and free the dark one (Cheney) to wreak his havoc upon the land.
As the fumbling of Bush administration during Katrina(which look an awful lot like a planned apocalypse capitalizing on natural disaster), the wars, the contempt of congress, the warrantless searches, the arrests, etc compounded themselves, I became convinced that we were drifting toward a real facist power grab which would abolish constitutional rule under "Emergency Measures." Particularly when I heard that American civilians were being swept up off the street and held in military brigs with charge, counsel or outside contact for years, my blood froze. This was it. This was the slide to dictatorship my Father had always worried about (we're decendants of Germans, we take these things quite seriously).
So I put out the word. I wanted people to know how I felt, what I thought, and to take it seriously. Since I don't ordniarily gamble, I thought I would get everyone's attention with a wager; but it had to be something I could pay off, because some part of me knew our country had the resilience to fight this off, if we just paid attention. I offered to everyone around me $5, in a bet that GWB and the Dark Lord were here to stay, and that after the 2004 election, there would be no more new presidents.
Well, the proto-facists are in their eleventh hour, and I can say we are safe.
BUT, please let's all remember that we have to pay attention, we have to participate, we have to exercise our rights. Democracy is really good for only one generation at a time. It has to be renewed. And thank God we've done it.
