Naomi Wolf started with saying America is fascist by predicting a lot of horrible, horrible things Bush will do. When he did none of those things, naturally her defenders claim became not that America is fascist, but that America is "stating to become fascist".
But America (like most other countries) is ALWAYS "starting to become fascist" AND "starting to become socialist" AND "starting to become antisemitic" AND "starting to become anti-Muslim" and "starting to become" a zillion other things. That's because every event that is not 100% exactly in the absolute middle of the political spectrum can be seen as "evidence" that America is "starting to become" something: when a Republican is elected America is "on its way to fascism", when a democrat, it's "on its way to socialism" (or communism).
It's just an attempt to make Naomi Wolf look less than 100% wrong. She was. But then again, most pundits are wrong most of the time. Ah, if only they were ALWAYS wrong! We could then use them as a sort of true north to discover what's going to happen, by simply taking the opposite view.
The problem is that they are sometimes right -- if only by chance -- and thus listening to their predictions is useless, since you gain no knowlege about what will happen. When they say X will happen, you cannot conclude that X will happen -- obviously -- but you cannot conlcude X will not happen, either. So after listening to a pundit go on for two hours about how X is an absolute certainty, the bottom line is, "X will either happen, or it will not".
So why listen to them?
