Tuesday, June 20, 2023:  I'm Sorry, But What the Fuck Is The Real Issue?
Frank Bruni, a NYT contributing opinion writer, recently wrote the following:

"There is profound discontent in this country, and for all Trump's lawlessness and ludicrousness, he has a real and enduring knack for articulating, channeling and exploiting it. "I am your retribution," he told Republicans at the Conservative Political Action Conference this year. Those words were chilling not only for their bluntness but also for their keenness. Trump understands that in the MAGA milieu, a fist raised for him is a middle finger flipped at his critics. DeSantis, Scott, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley — none of them offer their supporters the same magnitude of wicked rebellion, the same amplitude of vengeful payback, the same red-hot fury."

Here are my thoughts. First, the Republican Party has systematically and intentionally cultivated the "profound discontent". They have done so by creating fictional social bogey men. Right now there are two – Trans and Woke. Neither of their current bogey men have any real political relevance. They simply insure the MAGA milieu ignores their real Republican agenda – which is to royally screw all of us.

In terms of the "red hot fury", that again is manufactured. I live in "Trump Country". The locals here frequent restaurants with entrees that run $25 - $30 and drinks that cost $8 a pop. They show up in their grubby cutoffs and wife beaters, but clearly they are well enough off to pay for a pretty hefty tab at the end of the night. So what really is their beef? Employment and wages are better than they have ever been. The economy is strong and has weathered one of the most trying periods in our history. Nobody has taken away their glocks or AR-15s. They pretty much ignore any of the common rules of the road – they speed, run red lights, and tailgate. So why are they are so warped out of shape? And finally, "I am your retribution", retribution is simply Trump's modus operandi. Don't do as he wishes or cross him in any way, and "vengeance is mine" sayeth the Donald. But bottom line, he doesn't give a shit about whatever is on the MAGA milieu's list of wrongs and you're only as good as your unquestioning loyalty.

Then there are the attacks by Trump and his loyalists on the justice system. Apparently "back the blue" doesn't apply to the Donald unless "the blue" act as his personal Gestapo.

In July and regularly through the next election cycle I hope to focus on political fascism which is at the heart of the Republican strategy to undermine our American democracy. See the post below for an overview.


Friday, June 2, 2023:  The American Fascist Party
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

There is a book out by Jason Stanley on how fascism works. Here are some excerpts from a Sean Illing interview with Jason Stanley that was published on vox.com (a link the vox.com article follows the excerpt).

Sean Illing – Why is the destruction of truth, as a shared ideal, so critical to the fascist project?

Jason Stanley – It's important because truth is the heart of liberal democracy. The two ideals of liberal democracy are liberty and equality. If your belief system is shot through with lies, you're not free. Nobody thinks of the citizens of North Korea as free, because their actions are controlled by lies.

Truth is required to act freely. Freedom requires knowledge, and in order to act freely in the world, you need to know what the world is and know what you're doing. You only know what you're doing if you have access to the truth. So freedom requires truth, and so to smash freedom you must smash truth.

Sean Illing – There's a great line from the philosopher Hannah Arendt, I think in her book about totalitarianism, where she says that fascists are never content to merely lie; they must transform their lie into a new reality, and they must persuade people to believe in the unreality they've created. And if you get people to do that, you can convince them to do anything.

Jason Stanley – I think that's right. Part of what fascist politics does is get people to disassociate from reality. You get them to sign on to this fantasy version of reality, usually a nationalist narrative about the decline of the country and the need for a strong leader to return it to greatness, and from then on their anchor isn't the world around them — it's the leader.

Sean Illing – What does your book have to say about the way forward? If we are indeed threatened by fascist movements, both here and abroad, what can citizens and governments do about it?

Jason Stanley – We should heed the warning of the poem on the side of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which says, "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not Jewish. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me." At a certain point it's too late.

We learned first from that poem who the targets are. The targets are leftists, minorities, labor unions, and anyone or any institution that isn't glorified in the fascist narrative. And even if you're not in any of those groups, you have to protect those who are, and you have to protect them from the very beginning. Simple acts of courage early on will save you impossible acts of courage later.

To be clear, this isn't alarmist. We're not on the brink of some fascist takeover. But there are reasons to be concerned, and we should always be on guard — that's the lesson of history. Our weapons are our high ideals of liberty and equality, and we have to fight to keep those American ideals.

We're fortunate enough to have liberty and equality baked into our founding ideals. We have a long history of people appealing to those ideals and saying, "We might disagree on a number of things but we agree that truth, liberty, equality are things we stand up for." So whatever happens, we have to continually double down on those ideals — that's what will save us.

Sean Illing – In the book, you imply that there's something inherently fascist about American politics, or at the very least that fascism has always been a latent force in America. Can you elaborate on that?

Jason Stanley – Well, the Ku Klux Klan deeply affected Adolf Hitler. He explicitly praised the 1924 Immigration Act, which severely limited the number of immigrants allowed to enter the US, as a useful model.

The 1920s and the 1930s was a very fascist time in the United States. You've got very patriarchal family values and a politics of resentment aimed at black Americans and other groups as internal threats, and this gets exported to Europe.

So we have a long history of genocide against native peoples and anti-black racism and anti-immigration hysteria, and at the same time there's a strain of American exceptionalism, which manifests as a kind of mythological history and
encourages Americans to think of their own country as a unique force for good.

This doesn't make America a fascist country, but all of these ingredients are easily channeled into a fascist politics.

From: How fascism works
A Yale philosopher on fascism, truth, and Donald Trump.
By Sean Illing | @seanilling | sean.illing@vox.com | Updated Dec 15, 2018, 11:06am EST

When the Republican Party relinquished control to the right wing crazies, they opened the door for the wannabe fascists. We defeated the last fascist uprising in World War II. But fascism is like a virus. It will lie dormant in the fringe for a period of time of and then attempt to re-infect the broader community with a new and potentially more virulent strain.

Right now America democracy is threatened by the current Republican iteration of fascism. Whether it is Trump, DiSantis, Ramaswamy, or any of the other potential Republican nominees, the one thing they all seek is total and absolute domination of America by the rich and powerful. If that were to happen, American Democracy would perish.