Hedges on Trump

Some part of me resists saying outright that America IS a fascist country. I admit it is moving that way, but I can’t quite call it totally fascist.

Yet I can’t think of a counterargument to pit against the proposal that it is now fascist.

Trump has completely filled his cabinet with corporations. Is there any aspect of the government now that is NOT controlled by corporations? The only things we have going for us that I can see is a kind of hollow electoral system – elections haven’t been completely dispensed with, but they are constructed in such a way that they border up against meaninglessness – and a judicial system that still has pockets of sanity. But I’m not sure any of that amounts to anything because the outcomes are almost entirely fascist. There is just enough of a heartbeat left to give people hope, but not enough to actually work with.

I don’t see an equitable society anywhere on the horizon. I don’t see any way to stop the onslaught of Loot and Pollute until we’re all dead. I mean…I love all these demonstrations…they’re heartening in a way, but what do they do, really? They ONLY thing they do is give dissenters a feeling of belonging. They don’t change anything. The women’s march was allegedly the largest march ever, and a few days later, Trump nominates a regressive justice to the Supreme Court that is drawing early cheers from the anti-abortion crowd. That’s how much a billion women marching all over the country affected the government. None.

And as Hedges says, democrats aren’t doing anything of any substance at all. Hell, Sanders and Warren are the only ones saying anything. Maybe Franken. But seems to me corporations are running roughshod over the government, and are going to manipulate the rules to give themselves even more latitude to fuck us all over, and we’re losing this game 49 – 3 and we have Austin Davis at QB.

I think this is fascism. Fascism that’s play Good Cop for the present.

Coupla important links for fascism, but the first, obviously, can apply to several other ideologies:

http://www.evcforum.net/DataDropsite/TheAuthoritarians.pdf

Trump Is an Eerily Perfect Match With a Famous 14-Point Guide to Identify Fascist Leaders Celebrated novelist Umberto Eco’s guide has breathtaking parallels to Donald Trump.

A well-known expert on fascism, Robert Paxton defines it as (from his Anatomy of Fascism):

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion. (p. 218)

Well, I’ll say it.

America is currently ruled by a fascist regime.

Slice it how you like. Nascent fascism? That seems about right….

But I’d take issue with things like “compassionate fascism” or “fascism lite”…

The rights of individuals recede by the day while the rights of pseudo-religious organizations and corporations are significantly elevated. (you will note that SOME religious organizations will NOT be able to share in the “religious freedoms” that are being sought by the Trump Administration)

The slide is on. I’m just not willing to pretend that we’re not headed on a purposeful slide toward fascism.

I’M SAYING IT NOW IN BOLD PRINT. I THINK THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS ARE IN DOUBT. MEANING THAT I HAVE SERIOUS CONCERNS THAT THEY WILL BE HELD.

Is that enough of an indication that we live in a fascist regime? Can anyone else guarantee we will have Presidential elections in 2020?

Even under Reagan and Bush, I don’t think any reasonable person doubted that elections would be held.

I have SERIOUS doubts. I think if the Republicans lose the Senate in 2018, and/or if there’s a terrorist attack after that (and no, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Trump Administration collaborated with a terrorist organization to allow one on US soil after substantial losses in 2018), that the Trump Administration would SUSPEND elections “until such time as America is safe…”

Reagan committed treason and collaborated not only with Iranians holding US hostages (while a private citizen), but with the Nicaraguan Contra death squads as well as a host of other terrorists (as sitting President). Nixon committed treason (also while a private citizen) by helping to scuttle the Paris Peace accords of 1968.

So…there’s precedent.

I don’t think it’s a question of IF we live in a fascist state. I think we do. It’s just nascent.

Think Germany in 1933. Hitler was appointed Chancellor after losing the Presidential election of 1932 in January of 1933 and it wasn’t until late February on ’33 with the Reichstag Fire Decrees that civil liberties were essentially annulled and Hitler elevated himself to the newly created position of Fuhrer once Hindenburg died in ’34.

So…now is like Germany in ’33.

Our civil liberties are about to go. That’s not a surprise. I’m pretty sure any one on this board could make that call. And with Dems in such disarray due to their abandonment of populism and embrace of corrupt corporatocracy, it would be all too easy to paint that corruption as… get this… treason.

And…viola… One. Party. State.

So…nascent fascist state.

Did I miss anything?

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Mackeyser.

Just a slight tangent here. Can the leftists who thought Trump would be less likely to start wars finally admit they were wrong?

It would be a nice start to more fruitful dialogue.

We now know that Trump said he might have to send troops into Mexico, if the president there doesn’t do what he wants him to do. This, while he bragged about his electoral win and crowd size. He seems bound and determined to go to war against all of Islam, with Iran being an especial focus at the moment. Flynn and Eric Prince, among others, are well-known Islamophobes and Christian warriors. And Bannon has suggested a war between East and West is imminent, and that he might just want to spark one. This includes China.

See this article about one of his favorite books, The Fourth Turning. Apparently, Bannon’s deductions from that book are even too radical for the authors.

Steve Bannon’s obsession with one book should worry every single American.

This is where Bannon’s obsession with this book should cause concern. He believes that, for the new world order to rise, there must be a massive reckoning. That we will soon reach our climax conflict. In the White House, he has shown that he is willing to advise Trump to enact policies that will disrupt our current order to bring about what he perceives as a necessary new one. He encourages breaking down political and economic alliances and turning away from traditional American principles to cause chaos.

In that way, Bannon seems to be trying to bring about the Fourth Turning.
The book in Bannon

Bannon has never been secretive about his desire to use Trump to bring about his vision of America. He told Vanity Fair last summer that Trump was a “blunt instrument for us … I don’t know whether he really gets it or not.”

Perhaps not, but putting a Fourth Turning lens on Trump’s policies certainly give them a great deal of context. Bannon believes that the catalyst for the Fourth Turning has already happened: the financial crisis.

So now we are in the regeneracy. Howe and Strauss describe this period as one of isolationism, one of infrastructure building and of strong, centralized government power, and a reimagination of the economy.

Of course it’s important not to lose sight of the end here. Bannon believes in authoritarian politics as preparation for a massive conflict between East and West, whether East means the Middle East or China.

Well, I said I was wrong.

I still think Trump’s instincts are to be isolationist, but Bannon is clearly calling the shots.

Bannon is so like Goebbels that it’s scary. Legit scary.

And that Fourth Turning stuff is essentially astrology…fake patterns as justification for…burning down the house. /shudder

So, yeah. With Bannon calling the shots, lots of takes on Trump will have to be rethought, cuz it’s not really Trump, but Bannon. He’s clearly more in Trump’s head than Rove was in Bush’s.

Now…I’m NOT letting this go. This all happened because the corrupt DNC just HAD to fix the primaries including limiting debates, shenanigans with independents not getting ballots, etc so that Clinton would win.

BERNIE would have kicked Trumps ass. That was unequivocally clear all along.

So… I’m just NOT gonna hear any talk of “Clinton would have been better” than Trump because that rewards outright cheating. Fuck. That.

We could have had Bernie. AND his progressive energy…

And to entertain ANY wistfulness about a Clinton victory is to dismiss all HER bullshit…and I’m not especially wanting to march and advocate and do all I can…only to keep the light on for the David Brocks of the world to further their neoliberal cabals. Not interested in fighting a war on two fronts.

Absolutely, the country and by extension the world is going to hell in a handbasket and lickety split by the looks of it.

But also…look at the engagement.

When 85 innocent people killed in Syria under Obama’s watch in July ’16…nary a whisper. No “my bads”…no condolences…nothing about the sanctity of human life and how we try to not do that in our efforts to go after terrorists… Nope. We just smoked 85 Syrians and nobody said a fuckin’ thing. Cuz…well, just cuz, I guess. American foreign policy somnambulation. Killing brown people abroad isn’t enough to wake us up.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

While I know *I* would be making this same level of ruckus, I KNOW most others…wouldn’t if Clinton were elected. Granted, she wouldn’t be endangering alliances or threatening to invade Mexico…but it’s early…and all humor aside, I’m not willing to romanticize her nonsense just because we have an orange Cliff Claven in the Oval Office with The Clown from Spawn whispering in his ear.

Had she cared about democracy, she would have lost…and Bernie would be President. Had she faith in the people and the process…she would have lost and we would have Bernie. Before the Russians could get involved if they did (I still say the evidence supports a sneaker.net xfer of data to Wikileaks from a Clinton Staffer), it was Clinton who planned to elevate Trump because SHE thought Trump was the weakest candidate.

Clinton was never a choice because you can’t reward malfeasance. It was Bernie…or Jill Stein…or someone else…because principles MATTER.

Otherwise, what’s the damn point? Without principles, all this ends up being is a zero sum game of WHICH group of people gets the shit end of the stick and occasionally, the groups are slightly redefined. Oh, and the rich don’t have to play, cuz they NEVER get the shit end of the stick. Very rarely do they get the pointy end…but not the shit end. It’s the same neoliberal 3 card monte that would have Republicans getting enough State Houses so that after Clinton, if they won the White House, they’d be able to pass and immediately ratify Constitutional Amendments (they’re perilously close now).

Now, though, we’re seeing ordinary people re-engage in actual democracy like we’ve not seen since Vietnam and the Women’s March was the largest single protest in our nation’s history. 1% of our citizens were marching. I’m so out of the loop, I hadn’t even heard about it or I’d have been there, too (I really don’t like Facebook).

It’s a terrible question to ask if we needed a Trump to reclaim our democracy. I certainly haven’t advocated for that. I didn’t vote for Trump and have said from day 1 that he’d be nothing, but a disaster. And…so far, he’s holding up his end.

But if at the end of this we actually get our democracy back? I’ll just have to hope it isn’t a pyrrhic victory.

There would have been no victory with a Clinton win. Progressives would have been shut down like under Obama (you ‘member…), Climate Catastrophe would continue to accelerate with little to no progress and people taking no notice and on issue after issue…citizen disengagement.

I told my child after Trump won in November that the one thing Trump would bring…was…clarity. I think I posted that before. And he’s bringing that in spades. And I think it’s valuable in ways we as people, citizens, consumers, employees and in all sorts of relationships are starting to realize.

We have citizen engagement on an unprecedented level AND the return of actual journalism (nascent return, I’m not holding my breath for the reincarnation of Edward R Murrow…or even Gary Webb), but stories are getting broken. It matters.

Sorry, streamofconsciousness there for a bit…

Mackeyser wrote:

So… I’m just NOT gonna hear any talk of “Clinton would have been better” than Trump because that rewards outright cheating. Fuck. That.

Well, I personally don’t care. Trump is so much worse than any alternative that that particular caveat means nothing to me. That’s just how bad Trump is, and I was saying it before the election (plus I never saw anything isolationist in him…he was always about taking it to China and Iran etc.) And it’s not like the party of Mayor Daley just woke up and became an unacceptable machine overnight. So anyway when I say Trump is worse, it has not even bottomed out yet. The only issue for me is to ask once we get rid of him, how much of what he will do can be repaired in my lifetime.

But that was the election.

This is true too: BERNIE would have kicked Trumps ass.

Either way as of now I am dropping this as an issue, personally. It’s bad enough to live under both LePage and Trump. Just for the record I am personally never going to qualify or hedge or “nuance” how bad that is. If my foot is being eaten by gangrene I am not going to care if my shirt and pants match. That’s just my own personal vote on all this. Take it as a vote and don’t nobody try n talk me out of that.

We’ll see.

I’m having this weird feeling right now of being extremely pessimistic AND optimistic at the same time…

There’s probably a terribly difficult to pronounce German word that encapsulates such a feeling…

so…yeah.

I dunno. I get that lil phrase from you, by the by. Thanks. (hope you don’t mind…) It’s proven most helpful. I often wished more people would use it.

We could be screwed. We might have already been screwed.

I dunno…

I just know that as Yoda said after Luke Skywalker left Dagobah with his training unfinished…

“…there is another…”

Tulsi Gabbard nee Tamayo

Rams fan on Washington?

What will the few hundred of us do?

wv wrote:

Still, the Hellmouth has opened, the blood-demons and vampire-squids
are upon us, and there is no hope. Have a nice day.

w
v

How will that change the Rams draft this year, I wonder.

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