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Managing Editor + Contributor
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Steven Jonas,
MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY)
and author/co-author/editor of over 30 books. In his book The New
Americanism: How the Democratic Party Can Win the Presidency (1992,
available at http://www.amazon.com and
barnesandnoble.com), Dr. Jonas presented his proposal for that “new vision and
mission” for the Democratic Party that so many, for so many years, have been
urging it to find, and still are. A new vision and mission were obviously
needed then. They are needed with increasing urgency, as with
increasing speed and determination the Republican/Tea Party is driving our
nation towards economic and social collapse with the then very likely emergence
of frank theocratic fascism. In this book Dr. Jonas found that vision and
mission in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. As of
the end of 2011, under the leadership of President Barack Obama, Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and the successors to
the Democratic Leadership Council which still influence the Party leadership, the Democratic Party is still looking for it.
Dr. Jonas' occasional Commentaries
on this subject and related ones can be found at Truthout and Buzzflash. In
addition to being Managing Editor and a Contributing Author for TPJmagazine, Dr. Jonas
is also a Contributor to The
Planetary Movement, a Contributing Editor for The
Greanville Post (http://www.greanvillepost.com/; a Featured
Writer for Dandelion
Salad; a Contributor to Op-Ed News.com (http://www.opednews.com/), and a
Contributor to TheHarderStuff
newsletter (all of which periodically republish his BuzzFlash/Truthout
Commentaries).
Dr. Jonas is
also the author of The 15% Solution: A Political History of American
Fascism, 2001-2022. Under the pseudonym "Jonathan Westminster"
this book was originally published in 1996. It was republished with a New
Introduction in 2004 (both versions are available on Amazon and the 2004
version is available on Barnes and Noble.com). It is currently being serialized on TPJ Magazine.
Under Georgite rule, major elements of the “fictional non-fiction” scenario of
this work of “future history,” most unfortunately, became all too real. Although
the projected historical scenario departs from what actually happened in 2008,
many of the policies of the current Republican/Tea Party appear in the
book. This is so precisely because
in the mid-1990s, the Republican Party, under the leadership of such men as
Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, were telling us very clearly what they would do
if they ever took clear power in Washington and elsewhere around the country.
The
similarities between those policies, which will hardly be disappearing from the
national political scene anytime soon regardless of what happens in the 2012
elections, and those of the book’s fictional first fascist President, Jefferson
Davis Hague, are all too real. With continuing Republican efforts to make
things as bad as they can for the Obama Administration, led by Dick Cheney,
“Beckoning Savagely Le-vinitating O’RHannibaugh,” Newt Gingrich, the GOP
Congressional leadership, the collective "Tea Parties" and their
mostly anonymous Citizens United creators/-backers, the threat of a fascist
future for our nation has hardly disappeared. Certainly, the results of
the 2010 election have strengthened their hand, while the response of the Obama
Administration has been at best weak.
The 2004
edition of “The 15%” is available at http://www.barnesandnoble.com (search with the book title) and http://www.xlibris.com/ (click
on “Bookstore,” then “Search” with the title). Both versions are
available at http://www.amazon.com (go
to "Books;" search with the title).
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