I have been saying it for years, but I claim no purity. Too many of my columns have helped to inflate those with fascistic tendencies.
   It’s a lesson that works left or right, and often I think it’s the whole reason why pols and talking heads, partisans and trolls, talk at us, poke us, insult us and hate us. They each have their own personal grievance butcher’s knife they wish to carve society up with so they can fashion the fascistic nightmare they desire. Rarely, if ever, good. And “nightmare” for everyone else, until it becomes a nightmare for them. No one can stay in power forever.
   And carve us up they will, unless we deflate them.
   Otherwise what follows will be, and was, some version of the Brown and Blackshirts, the Klan, insurrectionists like those who wanted to take down Roosevelt. They had their own names back then: The Brooklyn Boys and Senator Ernest Lundeen. Also inspired by Father Coughlin. This led to The Christian Front.
   A path too often trod by the worst elements of humanity, that lead to the worst governments humanity has had to suffer.
   A few nights ago there were several interviews of a well know personality who has podcasts on this. I won’t say who because my goal here is NOT to set you, dear reader, against what I am typing. The covers are from a pamphlet printed in the 30’s on how to deflate fascists.
   Seems these days when we hear a name: left, right, religious, atheist, agnostic, we are automatically against them. They are to blame for EVERYTHING. (Right.) When we do this it’s like treating every form of food that doesn’t fit our fancy as arsenic. These days we are constantly caught up in labelling, sales, marketing that serves hate mongers.
   Ask any fascistic partisan and most likely they will claim everyone who agrees is of like mind. Get specific and, no, they aren’t. The more specific we get the more we find out each of us thinks in different, unique, ways. When we work together, despite our differences, that’s a good thing. When we goosestep generally NOT.
   Few want another Hitler or Mussolini-like ruler to lead our country. However there is an immense attraction to that kind of king or dictator when it comes to authoritarians and fundamentalists. If you hear, or read, the phrase “chosen by God” I suggest you run the other way. More than just “likely” anyone telling us what God wants is telling us what THEY want. This goes back to Constantine and supposedly backed up by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. For some reason “the Holy Spirit” seems to tell us what we want to hear or, worse, agent(s) of evil: real or religion-related. Think Hitler, Goebbels, Stalin, talking heads motivated by insanity, greed or desire for power. Sometimes all three at the same time and more.
   To be clear I have never been for banning anyone, or telling you who to hate. I claim no purity here, I rant like most folks. But I am for pointing out historical problems and how to solve them when they return in some form.
   Let us find ways not to inflate the worst of humanity. Until the camps start exterminating, perhaps deflating them with silence might serve us better?

                                 -30-

   Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 50 years. First published in fall of 1972. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks, and into the unseen cracks and crevasses, that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
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