Even the usually unflappable Brits are of the view that America is deep in the throes of some sinister, maniacal takeover by aliens (and I'm not referring to the Mexican kind):
Matthew Norman: From the US comes a nasty whiff
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
The misfortunes of others being the greatest solace in gloomy, scary times, God bless the United States of America! However alarming the fiscal situation over here, however nerve-jangling the anticipation of the forthcoming Spending Review and its impact of industrial relations, however wretched the prospect of the low level civil unrest that follows the scapegoating of the deprived by the wealthy, glancing across the Atlantic cannot fail to raise the spirits.
Exactly what is unfolding there remains hard to identify even for those better placed by geography, experience and intellect than your columnist. But even at this remove it is apparent that America is suffering some kind of paranoid psychotic episode.....
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.....Watching the Tea Party crush centrist Republicans in race after race regardless of the damage this will do the GOP in November, noting the fanaticism at the rallies headlined by Palin and Beck, and recalling from his own childhood the power of crazed but charismatic rhetoric over a middle class grown poor and confused in Wehrmacht Germany, Noam Chomsky sniffs fascism on the breeze.
If that sounds hysterical, please God that it is. But something dark and hateful is stirring in America, and it seems certain to grow as long as unemployment and poverty persist. On Inauguration Day some 20 months ago it felt almost like a curse not to be American. Today it feels quite a blessing to be British.
If the Brits are starting to get queasy about what's going on here in the states, you just know that there's something both extraordinary and unsettling taking place.
----k
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