5 Ways to Build a Fascist-Proof America

August, die she must. The town hall freak show is winding down, the media circus is packing the cameras and satellite dishes and hairspray back into the vans, and Congress is soon heading back to the relative safety of Washington.

Yet, after all the fuss and bother, they're probably no more or less resolved to pass health care reform than they were back in June, when those first delirious fevers rose like clouds of infectious mosquito nymphs hatched from a thick, overheated carpet of soggy Astroturf.

Let's hope they succeed at getting it done. But, win or lose, we're crazy to think that the goon squads formed and trained to instigate this summer's health care wars will pack it in just because the silly season is over.

Those folks have tasted power, graduated from their introductory courses in Political Bullying 101, shared some camaraderie and beer and felt the heft of their own political muscle. That was fun. Now, what do we do next? Paralyze the school board over evolution in the textbooks? Intimidate the city council into shutting down the immigrants' services center -- or beat up some immigrants, so they'll just stop using it? Vandalize the cars and houses of known liberals? Get one of our own elected sheriff, so he can deputize the rest of us and make our posse official?

Nothin' but good times ahead. Now that they're organized up and had a little practice, the possibilities for further mayhem are limited only by the boundless paranoia and unfettered fantasies of the right-wing mind.

Out at our local county fair this past weekend, the GOP booth was festooned with a wide array of buttons, T-shirts and bumper stickers proclaiming the owner's status as a "Proud Member of the Right-Wing Mob," and other similarly, um, assertively empowered sentiments.

Judging from the general belligerence of the collection on offer, that seems to be the GOP's whole political identity now. It's determined to move boldly into 2010 as the party of America's union-, immigrant-, democracy- and (if necessary) head-busting squadristi -- and it's damn proud of it all, you betcha.

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How in the hell did we get here? And more to the point: How do we get back out?

The first question is depressingly easy. This is precisely where 40 years wandering in the right-wing moral, cultural and economic wilderness has left us -- and, in fact, where it was always intended to lead us.

A liberal democratic society is a complex system that's designed to be very resilient and self-correcting in the face of all kinds of extremism. But the health of that system -- especially its natural immunity to would-be attackers -- ultimately depends on just one factor: It cannot survive without people's ongoing confidence in a functioning political contract.

When it's working right, this contract guarantees the upper classes predictable, reliable wealth in return for their investments. It promises the middle class mobility, comfort and security. It ensures the working classes fair reward for fair work, chances to move ahead and protection against very real risk that they'll be forced into poverty if they can't work any more.

Generally, as long as everybody gets their piece of this constantly renegotiated deal, everybody stays invested in keeping the system going -- and a democratic society will remain upright, healthy and moving mostly forward.

For the past four decades, conservatives have done everything in their power to dismantle that essential contract, and thus destroy our mutual confidence in the fundamental agreements that allow any democratic system to function. (None dare call it treason -- but a solid case could be made.)

This isn't news: by now, most of us can recite the litany, chapter and verse, of the all the many ways they hacked away at America's essential ability to function as the Constitution intended.