Brian suggests in an email that drawing parallels between the rise of the Nazis and the current US government might do more harm than good in alarming people about the erosion of their civil liberties. What would it take to properly alarm people? Do they even know what's in Patriot II, or the current efforts to make it permanent?

I can't help thinking, though, while doing my daily ten minute Fox propaganda check, that the relation of art to power on that network is the same as it is in Triumph of the Will, though with less talent.

I think it's appropriate that the Fox computer animation of a American fighter jet morphing into an eagle is shooting its missiles at the viewer, since the war is being fought on two fronts, in Iraq and in the American imagination.