What's that smell?

"Hey," said Bob, the graphics guy at work, yesterday. "I'm headed to the trucks for lunch. Want to join me?"

"Sure," I replied. Bob and I share interesting political conversations. In ways, he is more of a realist than I am. From the left, this is no simple feat. Eternally the optimist, I fancy liberals regaining recently lost political mindshare in short order. It is only a matter of time, I tell myself. Reason will prevail. It surely will.

"We live in a fascist state, Brent," said Bob as we neared the Chinese food vans parked adjacent to the new buildings at MIT that resemble the kinds we all used to see in Dr. Seuss books. "It's already happening."

Bob is right. The air is thick in America, thick with a stench familiar to generations past and present. The odor has waxed and waned for millennia, wafting here and there, only to settle in the very fabric of human existence. Once the foul smell of fascism sets in, it's tough to wash out, a task replete with abject misery and epic struggle.

As I sat in the park and shared an interesting political conversation with Bob yesterday, I took care to be more cautious than usual about what I was saying. I smelled something.