I recently received a copy of the Patriotism volume of the Educational Archives DVD series. The first short on the disc contains a stunning short called Despotism that contains a fascinating look at how democracies become dictatorships. Although they’re clearly referencing Nazi Germany (the film was made in 1945), the parallels to modern-day America are shocking. I’m not going to try to make the argument that we’re close to being a dictatorship or anything, but there are very clear similarities between the warnings in this film and current societal trends.

What follows are a few screengrabs from the film as well as a partial transcript. If you’d like to see the full film for yourself, you can download it at the Prelinger Archives.

When a competent observer looks for signs of despotism in a community, he looks beyond fine words and noble phrases.

“. . . for which it stands, one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.”

Many observers have found that two workable yardsticks help in discovering how near a community is to despotism. The respect scale and the power scale.

A careful observer can use a respect scale to find how many citizens get an even break. As a community moves towards despotism, respect is restricted to fewer people. A community is low on a respect scale if common courtesy is withheld from large groups of people on account of their political attitudes; if people are rude to others because they think their wealth and position gives them that right, or because they don’t like a man’s race or his religion.

Equal opportunity for all citizens to develop useful skills is one basis for rating a community on a respect scale. The opportunity to develop useful skills is important but not enough. The equally important opportunity to put skills to use is a further test on a respect scale.

A power scale is another important yardstick of despotism. It gauges the citizen’s share in making the community’s decisions. Communities which concentrate decision making in a few hands rate low on a power scale and are moving towards despotism. Like France under the Bourbon kings, one of whom said, “The state? I am the state.”

The test of despotic power is that it can disregard the will of the people. It rules without the consent of the governed.Look beyond the legal formalities of an election in measuring a community on the power scale to see if the ballot is really free.

If the citizens can vote only the way they are told, a community approaches despotism. When legislatures become ceremonial assemblies only, and have no real control over lawmaking, their community rates low on a power scale.

The spread of respect and power in a community is influenced by certain conditions which many observers measure by means of the economic distribution and information scales.

If a community’s economic distribution becomes slanted, its middle income groups grow smaller and despotism stands a better chance to gain a foothold.

Where land is privately owned, one sign of a poorly balanced economy is the concentration of land ownership in the hands of a very small number of people.

When farmers lose their farms they lose their independence. This one can stay on, but not as his own boss any more. To the extent that this condition exists throughout a nation, the likelihood of despotism is increased.

In communities which depend almost entirely on a single industry, such as a factory or mine, maintaining economic balance is a challenging problem.

If this condition exists over the nation as a whole, so that the control of jobs and business opportunities is in a few hands, despotism stands a good chance. Another sign of a poorly balanced economy is a taxation system that presses heaviest on those least able to pay.

A larger part of a small income is spent on necessities such as food. Sales taxes on such necessities hit the small income harder.

A community rates low on an information scale when the press, radio, and other channels of communication are controlled by only a few people and when citizens have to accept what they are told. In communities of this kind, despotism stands a good chance.

What sort of community do you live in? Where would you place it on a democracy/despotism scale? To find out, you can rate it on a respect scale and a power scale. And to find out what way it is likely to go in the future, you can rate it on economic distribution and information scales.

The lower your community rates on economic distribution and information scales, the lower it is likely to rate on respect and power scales and thus to approach despotism. What happens in a single community is the problem of its own citizens, but it is also the problem of us all because as communities go, so goes the nation.

So how do you think we rate on the four scales? The screenshots I chose roughly represent where I think we are, although my answers would probably jump all over the scale based on what kind of mood I’m in.

Respect - Of all the measures, I think we probably do best in this one (which isn’t saying much). It’s kinda hard to gauge this one, since either pendulum of conventional wisdom tends to swing widely from left to right. In some ways, our society is becoming more polarized, but overall it doesn’t seem to have caused a total breakdown in civility (yet).

Power - Have we ever scored high on this one?? Since day one, our country has been run to rich, white males. Sure, we’ve come a long way in the last hundred years or so, but we’re still at a point where the only woman running for president is viewed as a gimmicky candidate who has no chance of winning.

Economic Distribution - While I was cooking my turkey yesterday morning, I saw a show on VH1 where Lil’ Kim was bragging about the $20,000 “bling bling” she bought for her dog. When I left to go to my friend’s house, I drove by supermarket picketers who have been standing in the cold for six weeks fighting to keep the right to take their families to the doctor. The Republicans are doing everything in their power to force this scale all the way to the bottom. When 17% of the children in the richest country on Earth are living in poverty, you know that this is getting worse.

Information - How many media companies control the news now?? Isn’t it only like four or five? The number one news network is in the pocket of the party that runs this country while most of the news that we receive about the war we’re stuck in comes from “embedded” reporters. As long as there are at least two news sources, the illusion of “competition” will be enough to fight off any monopoly claims. Of course, the big irony here is that you’re reading these words from the most senate information source in human history. Unfortunately, most people are too goddamn lazy to seek out the news that isn’t prepackaged into soundbytes.

Now I don’t think we’re gonna wake up tomorrow morning and be in a dictatorship, nor do I think that Bush and the GOP are entertaining Napoleonic visions of world domination. But I do think that the corrupting influence of power and money, inbred xenophobia, and the general public’s ignorance and apathy are working together to slowly destroy all the rights that Americans take for granted.