Fortelling the future

Hi Keith and Rachel,

First off I would like to thank you both for the great service you provide every day with your shows, giving much needed analysis in these crazy and turbulent times (nothing like starting with an ego stroke to help get an email read).
I want to bring to your attention and hopefully encourage one of you or someone from your station to do a story on the possible current state of the country and the very real possibility that we might be halfway there.
Although Keith’s segment on the Dangers that Ex-governor Sarah Palin, others like her pose, and Rachel’s analysis on the birther and now “Grassroots” town hall mobs which she called hooligans, have been great, I think you are underestimating how much they have influenced the nature of our democracy to the point where were now headed to a fascist state and might possibly be halfway there.
I understand that the word Fascist has become the new black and has been overused so much, being associated with conspiracy theorist and wing nuts (left or right), that it makes it difficult to have a reasonable and intelligent discussion on the subject.
I want to assure you that I’m not using the word fascist because of it’s shock value (little that it has nowadays) or because I don’t agree with certain politician’s views which then makes me view them as Fascists, but because of the process in which a mature democracy changes into a fascist state as shown by Historian Robert Paxton, Emeritus professor of history of Columbia University in New York. His work, in particular a 1998 paper published in The Journal of Modern History (http://www.salemstate.edu/~cmauriello/pdfEuropean/Paxton_Five%20Stages%20of%20Fascism.pdf) was brought to my attention by an article in www.alternet.org (http://www.alternet.org/rights/141819/is_the_u.s._on_the_brink_of_fascism/) aptly titled “Is the U.S. on the Brink of Fascism?”
Paxton Defines Fascism as “a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline” and “"a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
The article makes a extremely compelling case on how were might already in the third stage of the process which is characterized by an alliance of those in the government minority (GOP) with those that believe themselves disenfranchised and resort to force and intimidation to delegitimize legally elected officials (Birthers) and impede civil discourse and democratic policy making (Tea baggers, Healthcare mobs).
I didn’t mean this email to become so long but I wanted to ensure all my arguments were sound and persuasive enough to at least have you ponder this topic. I believe this is something that should be taken seriously and hope you see some merit to this.

Thank you for your time,

Victor R.