We need more comments and critiques -- indeed, we need a mass-education movement -- aimed at first deconstructing and then formulating an effective counter-attack upon the endemic corporate crypto-fascism that has seized and wrecked America from the reactionary regime of Ronald Reagan though the Dick Cheney Shogunate Regency. "Crime in the Suites," Ralph Nader correctly calls it.

Classic fascism does, as you point out, consist in an incestuous bonding of right-wing government and monolithic business enterprises. But it also manifests a belligerent militaristic foreign policy combined with domestic labor-busting and the political-social scapegoating of any domestic opposition. All interlocking facets of this contemporary American crypto-fascism require study, exposure, and countervailing action to reverse its deadly hold on our country.

You have taken note of the self-interested class of apologists for revolving-door military/industrial fascism in the upper ranks of the military officer corps. President (and former General) Eisenhower, of course, both predicted and warned against their rise to "unwarranted influence" in what he then-quaintly called "the military-industrial complex" -- which has now grown so hideously huge and complex that almost no one can account for its activities and/or corrupt consumption of massive resources -- in many cases unrelated to any legitimate defense or foreign policy objectives.

Senator Obama's recent comments on the beaten-down working-class of small-town Pennsylvania (if not much of urban America as well) did not even come close to touching upon the Orwellian fascism that has in fact devastated so many American communities. Orwell's dystopian 1984 only got started picking up steam in 1984. It has come nearly to full fruition in 2008. Yet, until Americans directly confront this home-grown fascism in all its vicious ugliness, it and its marketing minions will continue their depredations upon us and our descendants.

Just on the miliary aspect of American fascism, though: As a Vietnam Veteran of the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent (1970-1972), I remember watching in disbelief one of these retired military generals "analysing" America's George-Custer-like charge into the sand-trap shooting gallery of Iraq in March of 2003. Someone on CNN asked him what would happen if the Iraqi army simply dispersed ahead of the invasion only to regroup and entrap American military forces later in urban guerrilla warfare. The "expert" General ridiculed the idea and said that American forces would never fall for such an obvious ploy. So, yesterday, five years later, I read on the Internet about our bitter and frustrated soldiers hunkered down in comandeered Iraqi houses (with no water, electricity, or functioning toilets) taking fire from Shiites in the Iraqi army from one side and Shiites from Al Sadr's militia on the other side. Some "expert," that general. I've seen this same shameless charlatan on television for years, and I've never known him to get anything correctly regarding Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan.

Now, like thirty-five years ago in Southeast Asia, our generals can do nothing but make endless excuses for why they can't ever FINISH anything. As I like to put the situation in algebraic formula:

PARKINSON'S LAW + THE PETER PRINCIPLE = LUNATIC LEVIATHAN. The work will expand to fill the endless time alloted for its (non)completion while in any hierarchy people tend to rise to their level of incompetence. The result: mass hysteria among the people coupled with wooden-headed folly on a grand scale in America's bloated political/military bureaucracy.

At any rate, America doesn't have a small enough military. The various service branches have formed an anti-competitive cartel such that each branch must receive as much useless and hyper-expensive funding as every other branch, regardless of real national security needs or affordable economic resources. The American military stays in Iraq because America has too many "expert" generals who simply crave career advancement in America's crypto-fascist empire. They want to "play a role." They need "something to do" with themselves and all that platinum plated miliary hardware we lavish upon their loser asses. They need Ordnance Expenditure Expeditions to satisfy their career Commendation Accumulation Syndrome. A President Lincoln or an FDR would have demoted and fired them by the dozens for their world-class incompetence.

But these formally-"retired" (but still "retained") former bureaucratic generals, like the still active-duty General David Postpone-Us (now on his third fuck-up-and-move-up ticket-punching rotation through Iraq), continue to shill shamelessly for ever more Warfare Welfare and Makework Militarism -- because they still benefit personally and financially from the fascist snake-oil selling. And America hasn't even begun to wake up to what will happen if we don't put the brakes on this crony corporate crypto-fascism in one damn big hurry.

This is a pretty big article, but come on, is this really news to anyone? Lets face it, the military are supposed to take marching orders from the Pentagon, thats pretty much a "known known" so to speak (heh heh), but what IS big news is the indictment of the news channels like CNN who do absolutely nothing to vet the connections these commentators have, and attach reverence to it as some sort of "gospel" from some higher plane. Hell, we even saw it with Colin Powell who has obstensibly been out of the army since 93. Yellow-cake? Anthrax powder?

Which is why you have to admire folks like General Wesley Clark who take a stand against the Pentagon and the currently military complex, because in a sense they are going against their calling.

Does anyone think that this administration will not make a military move before the election? It will be their last chance to go cowboy again, and also stack the deck for McCain in the general.

Call them fascists. Whatever you want to call them, the constitution has been ignored with the silent blessings of far too many politicians and journalists.

It's old Ike's words again. Beware///