A leftist worries aloud that America may be falling into fascism.
If only we had those 'little platoons' -- whatever happened to them?This problem goes far deeper than better techniques for getting out the vote. It reflects a massive decay of civil society, a deep disinterest and contempt for government and politics, one that often seems richly earned.
This is also the soil in which fascism grows. As political scientists have demonstrated for more than a century, it is mass society, in which people are disconnected from the "little platoons" beloved of Edmund Burke and the local associations celebrated by Tocqueville, where a strongman can suddenly seem the solution to people's inchoate frustrations with their own lives and the irrelevance of politics.
The irony of this remark is biting until you get just a little deeper into the piece, and he explains his version of this idea.
There was a time in America when poor and working class people did have representative institutions that connected them to civic and political life. They were called labor unions.
Oh, I see. If only we could assign all these people to a labor union that would help organize them 'in their own interest' and align them with correct politics. Mao did that. It wasn't exactly Burke's idea, though.
2 comments:
These zombies are already helping to execute American civic units like the biker clubs at Waco 2. They just want to replace the independent packs with their union necros.
We've had a little outbreak of burglaries in our quiet community. It's got us pretty stirred up; a neighborhood watch is forming. The sheriff's department (which can't afford to patrol us) is encouraging us to snap pictures of the license plate of any car we don't recognize, and call it in for them to run the number. The image I have is of kicking an anthill.
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