Paulson Rescue Plan Elicits Cries of Bush Fascist State

Larisa Alexandrovna has a really provocative essay up at Huffington Post, "Welcome to the Final Stages of the Coup..."

She's seriously arguing that President Bush, amid the current economic crisis, has consolidated complete executive power over the federal state, and the Wall Street financial establisment has been fully molded into a corporatist appendage to the alleged fascist program of the administration's so-called wars of imperial aggression.

Alexandrovna offers two amusing bits of history as evidence: The contested 2000 Florida recount culminating in the the Bush v. Gore ruling and the election of George W. Bush, and the purported "Wall Street coup" against the Franklin D. Roosevelt government in the 1930s, with Prescott Bush (G.W. Bush's grandfather) argued to be a central player in the pusch. (Interestingly, Alexandrovna's Wikipedia source on the Wall Street coup cites Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who was a foremost expert on the New Deal, and later an adivsor to President Kennedy, who dismisses the plot as largely hare-brained, concluding "it can hardly be supposed that the Republic was in much danger.")

But it's Alexandrovna's remedies that truly reveal much about the current left-wing zeitgeist (this is the Huffington Post, after all, which is often worse than Daily Kos in its anti-Republican demonology).

First, she suggests that Congress should "immediately begin impeachment proceedings against the members of this latest Business Plot," a plan long proposed by BDS sufferers. But her second suggestion is what's really eye-epening:

The other option, the one I have long prayed we would never need to even consider, is a total revolution. But, If Congress won't act in its own self-defense, in the defense of democracy, in defense of us - the people who have elected them to protect us from this very danger - then what is left for us to do? I don't want to see it come down to this, but I fear that it will. Put your party politics aside right now. We are in a crisis so dangerous that should these people succeed in their coup, your party affiliation will no longer matter, your American flag will be a nice collectible item of something that once was, and your version of God will be worshiped in secrecy because your freedoms will be owned by the few.

You are no longer Republicans, Democrats, or any shade of voter. You do not live in a swing state or a solid colored state. You are simply this: an American. That is the only side that matters. So call your members of Congress and demand, no, declare that unless they do their duty to the Constitution and to us, we will move to the streets - not because we want to, but because our founding fathers demanded this duty of each and every citizen in the face of such a domestic enemy. Demand - as is your right - that this bill be voted against and demand - as is your right - that the people plotting this treachery be held to account. We are either a nation of laws or we are no longer a democracy. Pick a side, because there won't be another time, another moment, another chance to be a patriot.

There's a bit of a blog buzz developing around this already (this is a formal call to insurrection, according to Confederate Yankee and Protein Wisdom), but what strikes me as eminently interesting is Alexandrovna's linking of the left's longstanding claims of Bush adiministration fascism to this week's Wall Street bailout.

While there's considerable political concern over Washington's rescue plan (and especially the $700 billion dollar price tag), there's an emerging consensus not only that federal efforts so far have been successful in preventing an even deeper collapse in the finanical sector, and that the Bush administration's leadership under Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has worked as a "masterstroke" that has sparked a rally in the stock market, easing larger fears on the health of the American economy.

Newsweek's new cover story is calling Paulson "The Captain of the Street," the Bush administration's superhero who "may be the right man at the right time."

As things calm down in the weeks ahead, John McCain may in fact benefit by rolling out more specifics of his comprehensive economic plan for the economy, something like a "first 100-day economic agenda."

This will, of course, rob the Democrats of any political gain they're hoping to score from the crisis, so what's the left to do but argue that the Bush administration's finally consolidated fascism in America? And it's not just Alexandrovna: Ian Welsh at Firedoglake is decrying "Hank Paulson’s Raid on the Treasury."

We still have about six weeks left until the November 4 election. After John McCain annoucement as president-elect, extreme left-wing partisans (amid all the cries of "Rovian" fraud and "racist" disenfranchisment), will be lamenting that the Wall Street collapse came too early,: "If only the market would have crashed on Halloween..."