The Bush administration is indeed a form of Christian fascism.

>>Casually throwing around terms like "fascism" or "Naziism" demeans the people who have suffered and died under such regimes.<<

Perhaps this is true and that is why I never throw such words around lightly. George Bush and his administration and much of the GOP IS INDEED FASCIST.

There is this drive for race and nation as embodied in the anti-immigrant stance. The demand that only English can be the language of America. That when this is lost, the nation is lost. The nation is bigger than the individual who is but a cog in the machinery of the State.

There is the concentration of economic power and the formation of policy strictly held and wielded by the political arm of the administration. In fact, there is no other arm to this administration.

There is the corporatizing of nation and society. In fact, when we talk about the machinery of the state, we talk as much of corporatizing as of bureaucracy. Society has been chopped up into small bodies or corporations. Each of these, in turn, is subservient to the State and the State is the Leader and the Leader is the State. Under the leaders throne, the corporations squat like deformed cats (let's call them little kitlers) that fight and claw at one another ruthlessly but are always subservient to the ruler/State. There is room for each kitler to maneuver to reach number 1 but the State/Ruler is beyond that--the TRUE #1, the Transcendent #1, irreplaceable, the very soul of the State, the Master, the Protector, the Messiah.

There is the need for fear-mongering and for war. Convince the people that their State is under attack and they will do anything to defend it and this is far better than having them sit around content and fed--that causes them to become spoiled children expecting privilege, to start thinking, to start observing, to start learning, to start criticizing, to start organizing into an unauthorized body that may threaten the State.

There is the belief that without the Ruler/State there is only gang rule, complete anarchy, a Mad Max multiple warlords sort of non-society in need of a strong unifying leader. This is extended to the entire world. All nations are merely gangs under a leader and they must all answer to one leader and Bush has decided that leader is him.

Like Calvinism, Bushian fascism is only comfortable making war. As long as good and evil battle, then the struggle of God goes on. And the struggle of God is no different than the struggle of the State/ruler. The story his reign and path to power is what he would call "my struggle."

This struggle consists of guiding the nation to accept his vision. To proclaim him Leader. To see him as the embodiment of the glorious State--of America the Beautiful. His struggle is to dismantle the previous government as a nation of conquerors dismantles the conquered's temples and august institutions just as he tore down Iraq's governmental infrastructure. There is that new vision, the struggle for Transformation, the setting up of a New Order. For Bush, the message to make the vision reality was 9-11, his personal Apocalypse.

Israel and oil are the same thing to Bush. One without the other is unthinkable--literally. Oil is the source of American power, the blood of the American Century. So it only makes sense that America's future lies under the sands of Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran--any enemies we can personally attack. For those we can't, there's Israel. Israel must survive because its existence is proof of biblical prophecy and that is where the final battle is--the Middle East--all roads lead to Israel. In order to fight this battle, we must have oil and it must be nearby and plentiful and only for us so that we may finish this glorious mission.

The Invasion of Iraq was not a response to 9-11 but something preordained.