To listen to the Republicans, Syrian hordes are knocking on the gates of Vienna like zombies in the trailer of World War Z, while Mexican rapists threaten pure white maidens in Everytown, USA. “Crooked Hillary” is their enabler.
To listen to Democrats, our greatest fear is the Republican Party. To be more precise, Trump is the greatest threat to Western Democracy since Hitler.
Just as Mexicans are a convenient distraction from the failures of Republican free-market fundamentalism and deregulation, Trump is a convenient distraction from Clinton’s neo-liberalism and militarism. If you’re a Progressive still in the Democratic party this week, you are nevertheless admonished not to break with the “lesser evil” candidate because of the dangers of electing Trump.
But those of us around in 1964 remember the last Democratic Nazi scare. His name was Barry Goldwater.
Lyndon Johnson ran a famous ad warning Americans of the militaristic recklessness of Goldwater. In the commercial a three year old girl counting daisies is consumed by a nuclear blast caused by, presumably, Barry Goldwater.
But it was Johnson, and not the “Nazi,” who sent almost 50,000 American servicemen to their deaths in Viet Nam, and it was Johnson who napalmed, carpet-bombed, and defoliated to death and disfigurement some one million Vietnamese.
Going further back in time, it was a Democrat who incinerated two Japanese cities with nuclear weapons, a Democrat who threw Japanese-Americans into concentration camps, and Democrats who have destroyed an additional two Middle Eastern nations since Republicans were voted out of office.
This is a party with a record as horrific as the Republicans.
So while Republicans this year are certainly frightening, Progressives just aren’t buying Democratic Party fear-mongering anymore.
They’ve just lied too many times.
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