Godwin's Law is no longer useful

Godwin's Law, when suggested, served the purpose of signaling that an Internet political discussion had ceased to have any connection to reality and should be terminated by rational persons. Those days are over.

Now, when we have a regime in which

1. the theory of the Presidency (as is being acted on by the White House) is that he is all-powerful and subject to no checks and balances (and especially does not have to respond to Congressional subpoenas for hearings,

2. The invasion of a nation that was no threat to America was considered justified.

3. Extraordinary rendition is an accepted practice.

4. The discussion of torture has been reduced from "never acceptable" to "Just how much torture can we get away with." and "Is water-boarding really torture or just simulated drowning?" The Bush administration even uses the Nazi description for the torture procedures it authorizes. They are "alternative procedures", a term used by the Nazi SS.

5. The Republican Party elects its operatives as much by repressing the vote of opponents as by presenting an acceptable reason to vote for Republicans.

6. Habeas corpus has been effectively eliminated. If you are declared an Enemy Combatant by someone in the Executive Department you have no right to see an attorney, no Right to habeas corpus, and you can in fact be literally "disappeared." If anyone inquires where you are, no one will tell the inquirers. Don't believe it? Here is a list of 39 individuals known to have been disappeared by the Bush administration.

7. The existing courts were not adequate for convicting people without evidence, jst on mere government accusations, so an entirely new set of courts was established. A JAG officer who was to testify to Congress on how bad those courts are was not allowed by the Pentagon to testify.

8. The idea that an individual had a right to privacy unless the courts applied due process has been scrapped and the Telecom companies who violated the law on the orders of the government are working for immunity for law

9. The Rule of Law is being reduced to the arbitrary rule of a dry drunk and his paranoid side-kick.

10. The mass news media has been reduced to little more than right-wing propaganda (yes, Goebbels-type propaganda) surrounded by amusing fillers describing the antics of O.J.Simpson, Lindsay Lohan, Brittany Spears, Paris Hilton and others who are famous for being famous.

and so on. The nearest government models for the behavior of the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress are found in Argentina under the Generals, Pinochet's Chile, Franco's Spain, Communist China, the USSR, Musollini's Italy, and HItler's Germany. In fact, Rudy Giuliani seems to be trying to win the Presidency by creating a cult of personality like that of Kim Il-sung or Stalin.

It is no longer irrational to have a discussion that compares the workings of our government to that of the Nazi Party. Godwin's Law no longer signals that the discussion has moved away from reality. Instead, reality has moved to the horror story that is the current Republican Party and the Bush administration.

We need to recognize that Godwin's Law has no remaining purpose except as a "gotcha" by right-wingers who want to disrupt discussion of the miserable anti-democratic state of our current government.

Face it. Godwin's Law is just soooo twentieth century.