Prequel

I just finished Rachel Maddow's book Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. It covers the same ground, in more detail, as the podcast "Ultra," which I wrote about a couple of times last year. So depending on whether you like to read or listen, get your pre-World War II fascism facts, because they surely are applicable today.

One thing I learned from the book that I don't remember hearing in the podcast is that Philip Johnson (yes, the architect Philip Johnson) was a major Nazi fanboy in the 1930s, and pretty much only stopped after Pearl Harbor, when he realized it would wreck his career. Also, that he was a born with a gold spoon in his mouth. 

I also learned more about Huey Long than I knew before, mostly because I have studiously ignored him, which is probably a mistake. I've never read All the King's Men. I know, I know.

The more I hear these days of what the Right appears to have in mind as a way to run a country, the more these words from Hitler, quoted by Maddow, sound familiar. He was speaking about his propaganda goals:

We have to paralyze the will and national unity of [these] and other countries. The great issue was to liberate the world from the poison of democracy, with its degenerating doctrine of liberty and equality (p. 287).

By coincidence, LK Hanson's quote cartoon in the Monday Star Tribune was an appropriate accompaniment: