> Lots of friendly, smiling faces waving flags, not so different from the ones I wave to each July 4th. Societies can go down dark roads much more easily than we'd like to think.
The difference is in level of violence that went on openly on the streets at exact same time. That propagandist camera did not caught that does not change it.
At the time people smoke and wave flags, considerable oppression is going on.
Right, but the point is not "are we brutalizing people on a scale comparable to Nazi Germany?"
No, obviously not, by orders of magnitude! But we are doing it and that should be a warning to us. Also the consider that mass incarceration and poverty in America, which disproportionately affect minorities, are brutalization of a different sort.
Again, this is not me or anybody claiming that America is bad, or directly comparable to Nazi Germany.
But, it's our duty to rigorously analyze ourselves and think about which parts of America are good and which parts resemble fascist or otherwise evil regimes. I honestly cannot think of anything more fundamentally good and patriotic!
Just as we hopefully think about ourselves as individuals and think about which parts of us are good and which parts are bad, or perhaps represent the seeds of something bad.
The difference is in level of violence that went on openly on the streets at exact same time. That propagandist camera did not caught that does not change it.
At the time people smoke and wave flags, considerable oppression is going on.