Really just a "right on!" for your posting about the cult-like qualities of today's rightwing hate machine. I think that may be the single most important observation anyone has made about the VRC. I said something like this myself a number of years ago, but I never followed up on my thinking, and then I simply forgot I'd made that connection. But it really goes to the most profoundly frightening things about the way our nation has changed, and the emergence of the rightwing revolution.

As you know, I long ago decided that what the United States faces today is nothing less than neo-Nazism. Period. I've thought it would be great, actually, to write a book entitled, "The New American Fascists." I can already see the hardbound edition, maybe in coffee-table size, with bright, glossy, full-color photos lined up top and bottom on the slipjacket -- front and back -- with shots of Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michele Malkin, Michael Savage, Karl Rove ... the whole lot of 'em. The contents would be a series of essays on each of these sleazeballs, and the way they so perfectly conform to the spirit of either Italian or late German fascism. I'd certainly include all of the Bush sycophants.

But what of the opening and closing essays -- the opening one particularly, the key essay tying all the others together? I'd wondered about it, but now I know I'd make the full-on argument about how today's rightwing cult bears such resemblance to the Hitler Cult of Germany in the 1930s. I'd point out all the similarities, most particularly the incessant paranoia, the incessant claims to victimhood, the utter disregard for long-cherished American political values, the calculated use of super patriotism, the relentless cronyism and corruption that typified the Nazis, the cynical embrace of the church, the peculiar need for a "Father Figure" they consider above criticism and whom they fawn over, and above all how they've demonized their enemies -- liberals such as you and me! Millions of Americans in the Red States and Red Counties (and, yes, I've actually encountered some of these folks) really do believe that any person who's a liberal is some kind of defective, an insane person bordering on monstrosity. Dehumanization is the first step, as any good Nazi will tell you, if you eventually want to launch purges. I don't know how likely it is that they could successfully begin the kind of broad-brush totalitarian sweeps that Hitler pulled off, but I am absolutely convinced that there are a lot of top rightwing figures who privately wholeheartedly dream of it, death camps and all.

(And the recent disclosure that Halliburton's subsidiary, Brown and Root, were granted a huge contract to build "detention centers" to be kept on some sort of standby status -- the excuse given is that they might be needed if ever the nation faced a sudden wave of illegal immigration -- just makes me all the more frightened. What do these criminals have in mind, really, for all of this?)

What gives me pause is the extent to which the Bush Machine is going about doing things, in this, his second and final term in office, in exactly the same manner they were in the first term, when, of course, they had the election in 2004 to be concerned about. What, though, are they so geared up for now? Why is Rove twisting arms in the Senate now with the same fervor as four years ago?

You can't convince me that the Bushies are really concerned about getting their legislative program passed -- if they were, the State of the Union wouldn't have been so full of filler and folderol. And while it's certainly easier for the President to go about his business with a high approval rating then with a low one, so that they have a vested interest in stopping it from plummeting any lower, and that means stopping any potential revelations from any open Senate investigation of the administration's various sordid doings, they've never shown any particular compunction against acting in a premptory and authoritarian manner whenever it suits them, whatever his approval ratings. In fact, they have shown such contempt for the Federal Legislature as an equal partner in governance with the Executive, and the Senate's "advice and consent" role in particular, that it buggers the imagination to think that they're really concerned about counting votes just on general principles.

No, I think there's an ulterior motive involved for keeping the Continuous Campaign going at full strength, and I don't believe it's to help the Republican nominee in 2008. Sometimes I wonder if they're holding the reigns of power so tightly because they're aiming to repeal the 22nd Amendment, in order to keep Bush in power indefinitely.

Related: Atrios.