The BBC has uncovered a set of documents that put the Bush family in a yet another awkward light.

PrisonPlanet reports:

In 1933, Marine Corps Maj.-Gen. Smedley Butler was approached by a wealthy and secretive group of industrialists and bankers, including Prescott Bush the current President’s grandfather, who asked him to command a 500,000 strong rogue army of veterans that would help stage a coup to topple then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

According to the BBC, the plotters intended to impose a fascist takeover and “Adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.”

The powerful and rich businessmen apparently thought there was no need for Democracy, especially since it could interfere with plans for a “better” economy. The article suggests plans were perhaps foiled by Butler who uncovered and tried to warn the President. PrisonPlanet does not explain how his warning was largely dismissed by Congress and the media and yet the plot failed.

The US Ambassador to Germany gave his own chilling prediction in 1936:

When industrialists ignore laws designed for social and economic progress they will seek recourse to a fascist state when the institutions of our government compel them to comply with the provisions.

Or, in modern security terms, when executives believe there should be no liability from using their fortunes to transfer all risk to those less fortunate they will do everything in their power to create a state that enables their warped vision.

While it may be tempting to say the grandson of a clearly fascist Bush family man is succeeding where his predecessors failed, I think it is actually more complex. The younger Bush apparently has been a failure at everything in his life except avoiding responsibilities and gaining control. His work has led to a substantial undermining of Democracy through foolhardy and careless time in office, but the sloppy nature of his work may mean the overall decline in fortune could still be linked back to him by popular circles.

Some suggest the economy is dragging, security is as bad if not worse than the year prior to 9/11, innovation is failing, infrastructure is showing signs of neglect…all of which raises the stakes for any group that intends to spend resources to keep a larger and increasingly critical population at bay. Industry is perhaps most likely to join a coalition to back fascism if they think the arrangement has some kind of low-cost guarantee of safety from popular rule. It is unlikely the Bush administration can provide any such credible promise going forward given his hugely bumbling past. The path to fascism would thus be either staged for later or postponed again. The sign to watch for is Bush attempting to destroy as much of the system of rule as possible in order to plunge the country into further decline and force a period of “necessary” intervention by industry leaders to save the country from itself.

So is the direction of American politics inevitable, bad luck, or a carefully executed conspiracy (evil genius syndrome)? Regardless of the cause(s), the consequences of this recently uncovered Bush plan for America is not hard to describe. In risk terms, it would be called a predictable disaster.