Is that the sound of jack boots I hear?

I am leaving for Pennsylvania Dutch Country tomorrow--home of our first national experiment to abolish science in favor of mysticism. And the combination of the proposed budget and the HR 418 have me feeling actually genuinely frightened today. I am too busy to elaborate right now, but perhaps I will try to articulate my fears about the rise of fascism better from the ground in PA. For now, I'll just note a few things.

First, the budget. Andrea says it best:

The new budget guts social spending at a level that is revolutionary. It's a junta. It changes the nation from a republic with any sense of social responsibility to a military power with a subject population from which to draw. No shit, no exaggeration.

The budget both outrages me (how can a person even suggest cutting military benefits right now, really) and frightens me. I lived through the Reagan era and am hardly shocked by the widening gap between rich and poor (which continued to widen through Clinton's administration), but the naked savagery with which this administration steals from the poor to give to the rich feels like something new to me. This budget is vampiric.

Then, there is HR 418, endorsed by 137 Congresspeople, reported on in the "mainstream media" solely under the headline "House Moving to Make Asylum Policy Harsher." The reality is, the headlines could just as easily read "House Moving to Institute National ID System and Close National Borders" or "Bill Grants Homeland Security Secretary Unprecedented Level of Power." As is so often the case, one must hunt for real reporting on the issue. I read the bill last night and am happy to see the Raw Story reporting on it today. It's really quite chilling Fourth Reich stuff.

We can look forward to more stories like this one. (Or this one.)

Yes, we are all talking about Fascism these days. It seems almost every blog I read is posting things about "the f-word" with lines like "maybe I'm wrong" or "perhaps I'm an alarmist." There's an old expression, if one person tells you that you have a tail, you can call him crazy; if two people tell you, you might start to worry; if three people tell you, then you'd better turn around and look.

What is to be done?