In his brilliantly understated account of ten “average” German men and families in the aftermath of WWII They Thought They Were Free Milton Mayer chronicles the chilling downward trajectory of Germany that began in the economic chaos of post WWI and that increased in momentum with each step of state empowerment on the fuels of bigotry, fear and most importantly surrender of individual perspective and authority. Mayer’s portrayal is poignantly disturbing in the fascist leaning climate of the United States today, not original to the Cheney/Bush era but certainly the model to which they and their cohorts have been and are devoted.

The elections of 2002 were the low water mark of our participatory republic when the screeds of fear based violence promoted by our executive and congressional branches of government were confirmed by mid term elections. The misguided confirmation of pre-emptive war, homeland security, massive conversion of wealth to a privileged few under a patriotic ruse, the following invasion of Iraq and astronomical rise in national debt, all were the free will choices of a population in the throes of a collective lock step much like late 30’s Nazi Germany in which the intelligent were too often silent and the confused, indoctrinated mass held sway.

If the trajectory calculated by those who drove this distortion of our nation into an empire of brute force, prejudice and greed were to have succeeded the sorry images of recent times – our president embodying his adolescent fantasies in a top gun pilot costume, our vice president addressing the Senate with the F word to portray his esteem of our system of government, the promotion of torture, rendition, secret prisons and military occupation as foreign policy and patriotic alignment, the draining of our treasury into cronyism – all these and more would be on the ascendancy.

But for all who have a progressive and to whatever degree enlightened expectation or hope for our nation, there is strong and vibrant reason to be encouraged. If Mayer’s analysis be accurate, it was the failure to check the imbalance of power in the successive “small issues,” the willingness to succumb time after time by those who lived through those awful events that led to the previously unthinkable barbarity of the “final solution.”

However distorted our present national climate and international condition including but not limited to the devastating devaluation of our currency, that forbidding downward spiral of forces that would enslave and destroy has been checked. The architects of our national disgrace: Rove, DeLay, Hastert, Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz, Gonzales, Libby, et al, have met disgraced exits from their vaunted positions, Bush & Cheney with popularity at viral levels, and only Condoleeza Rice retaining her post with little or no support or respect except in the celebrity oriented main stream media.

There was a correct fear in November of 2002 that we were crossing our 21^st century Rubicon into a collective hell, and that horror has been imposed on many foreign countries, either directly in Iraq and Afghanistan, or indirectly in Palestine, Lebanon, Pakistan, north and west Africa, etc. However, despite the seeming comatose nature of our citizenry an awakening began in the election of 2004 through the inspired voices of many, and is continuing today both in a stalwart few of the U.S. Congress and many action oriented citizen groups. We haven’t descended into the engulfing nightmare that was the fate of Nazi Germany, and although the repair work required from the Bush legacy in government and culture may seem daunting if not impossible, the work has begun and it will gain momentum.

Many countries in Latin America have thrown off the shackles of “shock doctrine” economics and initiated new beginnings in social justice and environmental respect. There are many movements and voices tending toward these same directions internationally and in the United States, and to these, especially to the power of our own individual decisions and actions, we can celebrate and rededicate ourselves in the coming year.

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