national socialism and the GOP

So, I know I'm not the only one seeing an increase in similarities between Post-Weimar Germany and contemporary America, but the sytematic planned "observation" (read: confrontation) at the polls in states that are key swing states seems, well, brownshirts. Seriously, these are Republican states (meaning the state political machine is run predominantly by Republicans) so didn't the GOP have 4 years (at least) to change the voter registration requirements in such a way that their concerns about the legitimacy of "questionable" (read: questioning) voters would be addressed? The only reason I can see them not acting via legitimate means (read, according to standard process and procedure) is that it would weaken their claims for the less than standard (well, in America at least) process and procedure.

My friend Marina pointed it out very well I think when she said:

"it's one thing to criticize germans for sitting by when it happened there, but as it happens here it's very difficult to see what possible action against it is."

And herein lies the problem. What to do? Politicians are clearly to scared to call a spade a spade because the term is so loaded so it falls, says I, to the entertainers (jews and commies the lot), funny that things go in cycles no? Jews and commies were equally despised by the Nazis and America's last great brush with facism, Sen. Joe Macarthy.

So here's my call: We need to make more explicit the exact parallel. It needs to be digestable by the everyman. Intimidation at the polls has happened all over the place in the past 100 years, we should just appropriate the images and draw the parallels for contemporary society. Sure Afghanistan comes to mind, but so do Burmingham and Berlin.

I dunno, maybe I'm inspired by last night's screening of Gentleman's Agreement (not ironically by Elia Kazan) but something really needs to be done.