Read this...I mean Really...Go Read This and think about it...

This is an NPR interview with Chris Hedges. He's one of those intellectuals you've been warned about. He learns and thinks about stuff...

if you go back and look at all of the writers on totalitarianism, whether it's Hannah Arendt, Fritz Stern, Karl Popper, they all talk about that despair as essentially driving you into a non-reality-based belief system. And the despair is only growing. I think we have powerful proto-fascist movements in this country, and I look at the Tea Party, the militia, the Christian right, where they celebrate the language of violence, they celebrate the gun culture. And they channel what I would describe as a very legitimate rage and a legitimate sense of betrayal towards the vulnerable, towards Muslims, towards undocumented workers, towards homosexuals, intellectuals, feminists, liberals. They have a long list of people they don't like. And I think that is a very - remains a very frightening and powerful undercurrent within American society.

The whole interview is here.