To show due reverence for the horror foretold by the great pogrom of Nov. 8, 1938, I should in fact say
Kristallnacht writ small. But the death of a great democracy is no small thing either; and let us not give short shrift to events of
Nov. 22, 2000 -- the day of the so called
bourgeois riot -- when a platoon of Republican thugs invaded the canvassing board of Dade County, Florida, and by violence halted the ballot re-count then going forward -- thereby effectively squelching the chance that Al Gore's Florida vote tally would ever surpass George Bush's.
My point is this: those of us who take seriously the possibility of our beloved America slipping in Fascism, must search out a signal event, and make of it a rallying cry -- a meme if you will -- with which to help resist the onset of the single party corporatist state. And I must here re-assure my readers that however Green my rhetoric, I am neither Green, nor Socialist, but loyal Democrat, and in fact, a well functioning cog in the wheel of Capitalist free enterprise. But, as noted elsewhere, the presidency of
Ronald Reagan was for me the first real indicator of the fragility American democracy, and the first real warning that it could -- under the influence of skillful enough demagoguery -- be supplanted by a homegrown totalitarianism which I have come to call "Apple Pie Fascism."
Let this date then -- Nov. 22, the day on which, four years ago, Florida tipped irrevocably -- be one of remembrance, but also of hope, and of re-dedication to the long and difficult fight which awaits us.