Foreword: using the f-word

[pynchonoid]

<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/01/magazine/01WWLN.html?pagewanted=print&position=>

[...] And this is really the fundamental point:
fascist states arise not simply because a mesmerizing
leader seizes state power in unsettled times but
because the democratic institutions that might oppose
him have rotted away, as they did in Weimar Germany.
Has that really happened here? It's true that today's
Republican Party is, by all historical standards,
fervently doctrinal, if not necessarily ruthless or
antidemocratic. Left to its own devices, the Bush
administration, and especially Attorney General John
Ashcroft, might be perfectly willing to expand
government powers to fight terrorism no matter the
cost to individual liberties. But the administration
has not been left to its own devices. Opposition from
both liberals and libertarian conservatives -- i.e.,
Republicans -- killed the TIPS program and may already
be hindering next-generation Patriot II legislation;
organs of the ''corporate-controlled media,'' like
''60 Minutes,'' have reported on the growing threat to
civil liberties. 

Much of the left seems to feel that the greatest
threat to emerge from 9/11 is an untrammeled Bush
administration -- as if the destruction of the twin
towers was the functional equivalent of the Reichstag
fire, as I have heard one of my friends say. And yet
even the most devout civil libertarians recognize that
the terrorist threat compels rethinking. Norman
Siegel, the former head of the New York Civil
Liberties Union and a famous First Amendment purist,
says, ''The security interests are real, they're
legitimate and you have to balance freedom and
security in a different way post-9/11.'' Siegel says
that he has been hard put to explain to skeptical
audiences that the Patriot Act, for all its problems,
does not preclude traditional forms of peaceful
protest. 

Why, then, the hysteria? I have several explanations.
First of all, you cannot miss the element of
wish-fulfillment in these prophecies of doom. Those of
Bush's critics who loathe him as an overprivileged
lout and corporate cats' paw regard the new moral and
political stature he has gained as a result of the war
on terror as an intolerable twist of fate; and so the
terrible events they predict will prove the ultimate
unmasking. We will see ''Bush as Fuhrer,'' to cite one
recent Internet posting. But we will also, of course,
see America as Germany, a society so ''demobilized''
that it will stay glued to reality TV as Karl Rove
cancels the presidential elections. It is this
contemptuous dismissal, I realize, that makes my blood
boil every time I hear the 1933 analogy. When will the
left learn that this is not simply a nation of
dimwitted yahoos? [...] 

<http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=41179&section=SHOW&subsection=TELEVISION&year=2003&month=5&day=29>

Thursday, May 29, 2003 

Prime-Time Nielsen ratings 

Here are the prime-time ratings as compiled by Nielsen
Media Research for May 19-25. Top 20 listings include
the week's ranking, season-to-date rankings in
parentheses (an X in parentheses indicates a one-time
showing) and rating for the week. Shows with the same
number indicate a tie. The rating is the percentage of
the nation's estimated 106.7 million TV homes. Each
ratings point represents 1,067,000 households.


1. (6) American Idol (Wednesday, 9 p.m.), Fox, 38.1
million viewers. 

2. (X) American Idol (Wednesday, 8 p.m.), Fox, 30.4
million viewers. 

3. (5) American Idol (Tuesday), Fox, 25.7 million
viewers. 

4. (8) Everybody Loves Raymond, CBS, 22.7 million
viewers. 

5. (12) CSI: Miami, CBS, 19.3 million viewers. 

6. (9) Law & Order, NBC, 19 million viewers. 

7. (1) CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CBS, 17.3
million viewers. 

8. (X) American Idol: Final Two (Monday), Fox, 16.9
million viewers. 

9. (X) Law & Order (special), NBC, 16 million viewers.


10. (16) Without a Trace, CBS, 15 million viewers. 

11. (45) 24, Fox, 14.2 million viewers. 

12. (X) NBC Movie of the Week: Martha Inc.: Story of
Martha Stewart, NBC, 14 million viewers. 

13. (25) JAG, CBS, 13.3 million viewers. 

14. (16) Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, NBC, 12.8
million viewers. 

15. (34) NYPD Blue, ABC, 12.5 million viewers. 

16. (2) Friends, NBC, 12.2 million viewers. 

17. (X) CBS Tuesday Movie: Hitler, the Rise of Evil,
Part 2, CBS, 12.2 million viewers. 

18. (X) 38th Annual American Country Music Awards,
CBS, 12.1 million viewers. 

19. (27) Yes, Dear, CBS, 12 million viewers. 

20. (X) CSI: Miami (special), CBS, 12 million viewers.

"What is perhaps more important, indeed necessary, to
a working prophet, is to be able to see deeper than
most of us into the human soul. Orwell in 1948
understood that despite the Axis defeat, the will to
fascism had not gone away, that far from having seen
its day it had perhaps not yet even come into its own
- the corruption of spirit, the irresistible human
addiction to power were already long in place, all
well-known aspects of the Third Reich and Stalin's
USSR, even the British Labour party - like first
drafts of a terrible future. What could prevent the
same thing from happening to Britain and the United
States? Moral superiority? Good intentions? Clean
living? "
--Thomas Pynchon, Foreword to _1984_


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