There was a time, not so long ago, when an informed individual could feel relatively content in the knowledge that fascism had been safely discarded in the dust bin of history. Like the malignant virus it is however, such a sense turns out to have been unfortunately optimistic. A vial of the pestilent germ having been preserved in some cold and dangerous place only to be reanimated at a time and place where it was most likely to do the greatest harm -- the public having grown complacent, the vaccines decayed and impotent.

In his article "Fascism Anyone?", Laurence Britt analyzes seven modern fascist regimes to arrive at a rather startling list of fourteen "common threads that link them in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power." Sitting here at the beginning of President George W. Bush's final four years in office, it is a list worth reviewing.

• Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism
• Disdain for the importance of human rights
• Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause
• The supremacy of the military/avid militarism
• Rampant sexism
• A controlled mass media
• Obsession with national security
• Religion and ruling elite tied together
• Power of corporations protected
• Power of labor suppressed or eliminated
• Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
• Obsession with crime and punishment
• Rampant cronyism and corruption
• Fraudulent elections

Now the question of whether our nation has utterly and inescapably given itself over to fascism is hardly certain. It is not however, a question that is as far beyond debate as we might all like. Where our government's loyalties lie is a question that is none too easily dismissed or resolved.

In the particular case of the Bush Administration and the Republican Party by which it rules, the preference for the protection of investment and corporate power over the welfare of the electorate and the long-term stability of society, is readily apparent. Whether in their arrogant dismantling of America's moral standing in the world, their systematic destruction of our environmental protections, or their fleecing of the nation's Treasury, it is awfully hard to ascribe to this President any desire to further the causes of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" among the citizenry.

As he begins his second term, I can only hope that the last four years have left him a better a man, a stronger leader. I can only hope that they have tempered his arrogance, increased his understanding, and humbled his certitude. But I doubt it.

Buckle your seat belts. He's got 1,461 days left.

Instead, I prefer to reflect for a moment, on a lesson I fear we have failed to learn: the importance of the printed word. Not the written word, not the spoked word, not the Web-enabled-easily-searchable-quickly-scannable-readily-repeatable-online-word: the printed word.

Somewhere in the middle of the past twelve months, just as the blogosphere was crowding its way into the public debate, I quietly re-discovered books. And owing to that re-discovery I can tell you this: you're not going to learn anything reading the blogosphere -- or at least you're not going to learn very much.

Now I realize that's a rather incongruous statement coming as it is from the keeper of a blog, but the simple reality is this: books are to the blogosphere as a five-course meal is to a can of Pringles. And while that's not to say that some great harm will attend the occasional can of Pringles, even the most nutritionally ignorant must be aware of the deleterious consequences of eating too many fried, potato-chip-like things.

And so, as I exit the year that was 2004, I am happy to have consumed, along with a few dozen magazines and a few thousand Web pages, the following real-live, nothing but words, hardbound books -- some of which, obviously merit further commentary. Roughly clustered by subject, they are:

American Sucker

-- David Denby

Bobby Fischer Goes to War : How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time

-- David Edmonds, John Eidinow

Bushwhacked : Life in George W. Bush's America

-- Molly Ivins, Lou Dubose

The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century

-- Paul Krugman

The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad

-- Fareed Zakaria

Reason : Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America

-- Robert Reich

Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It

-- Peter G. Peterson

The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy

-- T.R. Reid

Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy

-- Lewis Lapham

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, And the Future of Reason

-- Sam Harris

The Heat Is on: The Climate Crisis, the Cover-Up, the Prescription

-- Ross Gelbspan

Crimes Against Nature : How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy

-- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The central sickness of human history is the notion that the ends justify the means, and it has disastrously gripped political movements from left to right and from the secular to the religious. It is axiomatic that immoral means will inevitably corrupt the noblest of ends, as has been displayed from the fatal hubris of the Roman Empire down through the genocidal policies of the last century's nationalists, communists and colonialists and on through the suicide bombers of today.

Yet this profoundly immoral posture has been embraced by President Bush in justifying his preemptive war against Iraq, even when the much-touted Iraqi threat proved at best to be based on inexcusable ignorance and at worst to be impeachable fraud. The undemocratic means employed by Bush -- misinforming the public, Congress and the United Nations -- are now somehow to be justified by the ends of "building democracy" in Iraq. This is a daunting challenge that the American people never signed on for and which seems as elusive a goal today as a year ago.

Robert Scheer
The lies that bind
Salon.com :: Feb 4, 2004

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle...Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

Frederick Douglas
Letter to an abolitionist, 1853

Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative one: confidence-building and grief management. Politics, the politics of a democracy -- which entails disagreement, which promotes candor -- has been replaced by psychotherapy. Let's by all means grieve together. But let's not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen. "Our country is strong," we are told again and again. I for one don't find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that's not all America has to be.

Susan Sontag
The New Yorker, Sept 24, 2001

The failure of Democratic politicians and public thinkers to respond to popular discontents...allowed a resurgent conservatism to convert public concern and hostility into a crusade to resurrect social Darwinism as a moral philosophy, multinational corporations as a governing class, and the theology of markets as a transcendental belief system....Their stated and open aim is to change how America is governed – to strip from government all its functions except those that reward the rich and privileged benefactors....It is the most radical assault on the notion of one nation, indivisible, that has occurred in our lifetime. I’ll be frank with you: I simply don’t understand it – or the malice in which it is steeped....And I don’t know how to reconfigure democratic politics to fit into an age of sound bites and polling dominated by a media oligarchy whose corporate journalists are neutered and whose right-wing publicists have no shame.

Bill Moyers
speaking at the Take Back America Conference
Washington D.C. June 4, 2003

...the larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, the first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide...the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre... The presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people... On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a moron.

H.L. Mencken, writing in
The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

Many things for which to be thankful: friends, family, and fine weather to name but a few. Even aside from all that however, for those of us tasked with the unenviable task of entertaining the conflicting culinary demands of small children and aging parents, part of what makes Thanksgiving so special is the simple relief that comes from knowing that on this one day, for at least this one meal, we can all finally agree on what's for dinner.

Eat up folks. The bird's a wastin'.

Happy Thanksgiving Y2K+4.

This is what you need to remember about the events of last week -- our self-proclaimed War President was reelected with the smallest majority of any incumbent since Woodrow Wilson. And despite the towering advantages of being a war-time incumbent, his victory largely resulted from two pathetic, detestable, and cowardly strategies -- (1) the exploitation of a wedge issue effecting a tiny minority of the population and almost wholly divorced from the real life, death, and economic issues facing our country, and (2) expunging the character of a bona-fide war hero who voluntarily served in a failed war of choice over 30 years ago.

Clearly the President won and electoral victory in what could have been a very fraudulent and illegitimate election. In that regard, we have to consider the Presidential election of 2004 a great victory for democracy. To claim however that a 51% majority is decisive, is to stretch the language in a way that is somewhere between irresponsible and reprehensible.

For those looking for a ray of hope in light of it all, I hope you'll keep in mind these few points:

As he has done in other theaters, the President's reaction to the second narrowest Electoral College victory in 80 years, is likely to inspire him to overreach his power, his authority, and ultimately his capabilities.

The election results are not nearly as binary as the typical red state/blue state maps. A more sophisticated analysis, such as those shown below, offer a very different perspective from what our mandate-happy Vice President said last week.

• The election by population density
• Results by strength of support, aka the Purple States map
• The United State of Texas
• The Confederacy Lives

For myself, I'd say this: don't allow your disappointment to give way to dispair.

The arc of history is long. And while this election has shown us the ugly, intolerant, and blind underbelly of American society, it has also shown that the causes of justice, truth, and activism are alive, well, and still quite capable of putting up one hell of a fight.

...

David Orr writing in Grist Magazine's Main Dish:

First, let's get the name of the thing right. The election of 2004 confirms James Madison's worst nightmare: the takeover of all branches of the federal government not just by a single party, but by an extreme faction of that party.

Second, let's be clear about where we are headed. We the people are about to get more corruption, more division, more lies, more terrorism, more pollution, more breaks for the wealthy, more religious fanaticism, more corporate subsidies, more kids left behind, more struggling families, more debt piled on the backs of our children, more urban neglect, more nutty ideology, and further procrastination on the issue of potentially catastrophic climate change looming just ahead.

Third, the long-term objectives are clear: restore democracy to the United States by eliminating money from politics, reassert public control of the airwaves, restore a free, locally owned press, repair the frayed separation between church and state, and educate the people once again to be discerning citizens. How can we do such things? The same way all great and noble things are accomplished -- with patience, courage, energy, certainty, and a mastery of the art of strategy. The soft underbelly of the Bush-Cheney-Rove empire includes all thoughtful conservatives disturbed by recklessness; all honest persons offended by mendacity; and all true Christians sufficiently alert to notice the discrepancy between the words and life of the "Prince of Peace" and our foreign and domestic policies.

And we have no energy for despair!

:: David Orr is chair of the environmental studies program at Oberlin College and author of The Last Refuge, The Nature of Design, and Earth in Mind.