Every generation gets the Naomi Wolf it deserves. I'm 33, so I first became aware of the feminist author in 1999, when reading media clips about her work for Al Goreand (less famously) Bill Clinton. \"She coached each to emphasize his manly strengths, relying on hoary, tired gender stereotypes,\" reported Jodi Kantor at the time. Wolf didn't play a huge role in post-Gore Democratic politics, but to my surprise, I met her in 2008 when she spoke ata shambolic, mid-July, brutally hot Ron Paul march in Washington. Wolf had published a treatise called The End of America, which argued that the United States was becoming a fascist state. <\/p>\n
No exaggeration there. Wolf opened the book by running through some recent actions of the Bush administration, comparing them to what the Nazis did. <\/p>\n
\"When the United States invaded Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney promised that we would be 'greeted as liberators.' (When the Germany army occupied the Rhineland, Nazi propaganda asserted that the troops would be welcomed as liberators.) <\/p>\n
... The Bush administration unloads coffins of dead American soldiers from planes at night and has forgobidden photographers to take pictures of the coffins. (National Socialists unloaded the coffins of the German war dead at night.) <\/p>\n
It takes five people to stage an event like this. <\/p>\n
Naomi Wolf <\/p>\n
And so on. Wolf's book felt like the most feverish tremor of the Bush backlash, before optimism about the Barack Obama campaign calmed down the left. As the 2008 campaign ended, even Wolf sounded more optimistic, telling HuffPost readers that she would vote for Obama because Gitmo lawyers were endorsing him. But Wolf, like a lot of people whose primary political obsession was personal liberty, cooled on Obama. Earlier this year, she seemed to be back in the Paul camp. <\/p>\n