Fascist.

Editor,

I read Bernard Malamud's 1966 Pulitzer Prize winning novel "The Fixer" a couple of weeks ago. It is about the imprisonment and persecution of a Jewish man in Tsarist Russia in 1911.

As I read the book I realized that the story could just as well as have been written about a Mexican immigrant in the U.S.A. in 2010 or a Muslim man imprisoned for 5, 7, 9 years for a crime he didn't commit in Guantanamo.

In every case, wild theories about the perverse nature of the accused -- by virtue of his race, religion, or ethnicity -- is presented as "proof" that he has committed the crime of which he is absurdly accused.

Right-wing demagogues have been repeating for a long time the entirely specious charge that the U.S.A. is becoming a "socialist" state. I am sorry to inform them that the U.S.A. is well on the road to becoming a fascist state, and I haven't heard any convincing ideas yet what the American people who are still able to think clearly can do about it.

Re: "Xenophobia: Fear-Mongering for American Votes" (8/6/2010)