¡Calmate, hombre!

 

A Facebook post and its responses.

https://www.salon.com/2021/05/26/historian-of-fascism-wonders-is-joe-biden-a-speed-bump-on-the-fascists-march-to-power/

Me:  A most interesting in-depth analysis of our current situation. It is good to hear that people are finally recognizing the danger that the Republican Party presents to democracy in America because by recognizing the danger we can deal with it. It’s like getting a very frightening diagnosis from your doctor. It is disturbing, but it’s better to know and take action to treat the condition that it is to remain in ignorance and be destroyed by something you didn’t even know existed.

I agree with most of what the article has to say and have excerpted one paragraph and added a comment to the last sentence of that paragraph:

> As I see it, Trump's coup attempt was a great success for the far right. Too many professional smart people and hope peddlers want to claim that it was a failure because many of Trump's followers were arrested. Anyone who argues such a thing does not understand storytelling and the political imagination. The Trumpists and other neofascists won the presidency and were in power for four years. They left an indelible stain on American society. They now have the imagery of overrunning the Capitol to draw strength from. It was an impossible dream come true, and it happened in a very short amount of time.<

My criticism of this quote is its last sentence. It happened in a short amount of time? No. I was calling the Republican Party the American Hezbollah, the American Party of God, when Ronald Reagan was sitting in the oval office.  My friends, although generally respecting my opinions, deeply felt I was overreacting. Now it is 40 years later. And it turns out that I was correct all along.

I know I keep saying that but I spent 40 years of being told I was overreacting. Please indulge me a little bit of, “Told you so! Told you so!”

M:  I agree with you, Jim.  The brain-washing techniques have been visible for quite a long time and continue to this day.  Trump has total control and there is no Republican party any more.  The more we try to control him, he cries "victim" and his minions rush to his defense.  I have to wonder how this is all going to end.

Me:  It’s a battle and struggle and there’s no way to tell who’s going to win. Oh, eventually the Republican Party will lose. I stand by a statement I’ve been making over those decades that the insanity of the new conservative movement as founded by William F. Buckley will inevitably lose because it’s a minority movement and that demographics are against it. I said, and I will still say, it’s just a question of how much damage they can do before they lose. Where I was completely and utterly wrong was in not realizing how much damage they could accomplish. We may yet go through a period of religious fascist dictatorship before the end of the nightmare.

I simply could not see that it could ever have gotten this bad. And it may get even worse!

M:   Yes, I used to say, "how much damage can one man do in four years", thinking that the next election would turn things around.  Well, I never expected a "Trump" and for people, that I thought were thinkers, would fall for him.

The Religious FreedomTo Persecute

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/mississippi-wedding-venue-refuses-to-rent-to-engaged-interracial-couple-because-the-owners-say-its-against-our-christian-beliefs-to-do-mixed-race-and-gay-weddings/ar-AAGEPUL

ME:  We knew this was coming. Conservative Christianity is an now an excuse to break the law and deny people their human rights. Thank you Republican Party.  Back when Ronald Reagan was president I referred to Republican Party as the New World Hezbollah, the American Party of God.

     I was predicting the future more than describing the current reality at that time. And I was right.

S:  Uh oh. Shades of Hitler.  Many of Germany’s 30,000 Roma (Gypsies) were eventually sterilized and prohibited, along with Blacks, from intermarrying with Germans. About 500 children of mixed African-German backgrounds were also sterilized. New laws combined traditional prejudices with the racism of the Nazis.

ME:  We must remember that from the very beginning many have pointed out it’s not make America great again, it’s make America white again.

S:  True, true, true.

S:  Another consequence of Hitler’s ruthless dictatorship in the 1930s was the arrest of political opponents and trade unionists and others whom the Nazis labeled “undesirables” and “enemies of the state.” The mere denunciation of a man as “homosexual” could result in arrest, trial, and conviction. Jehovah’s Witnesses, who numbered at least 25,000 in Germany, were banned as an organization as early as April 1933, because the beliefs of this religious group prohibited them from swearing any oath to the state or serving in the German military.

ME:  Auschwitz was started as a camp for political prisoners, including journalists, who, of course, were enemies of the people.

S:  Could it happen here?

ME:  Not by that incompetent dolt, Trump. 

     Just as back in the days of Ronald Reagan I was seeing where the Republican Party was headed and was deeply worried about it, I can see that as Reagan laid the groundwork for what’s happening today, what Trump is doing today is laying the groundwork for what could very well be the turning of the United States into a fascist-theocratic dictatorship.  Back then I was saying the danger was of these fundamentalists turning America into a Third World country, just as they did to China, just as they did to the great Islamic empire. These once technological and cultural leaders of the world degenerated once they turned inward and began believing in their own superiority and purity and the fundamentalist beliefs of their religions.  Science is not at war with religion, with the exception of a few fundamentalist evangelical atheists. Neither is religion at war with science, except for a few fundamentalist evangelical Christians.  

     In spite of the minority status,they are a very powerful group in the United States.  Courts are being packed all across the country up to the Supreme Court with ultra conservative judges who believe in their theology. Elections are being rigged in favor of the ultra conservative and religious fanatics. And behind it all, of course, are the ultra wealthy. Those who wish to turn us into Mexico — a tiny ruling class of the Dons  and all the rest of us their peons, barely more than an other herd of cattle or sheep for them to exploit.

     I knew then that I was regarded back then by many as being foolish and extreme in making this prediction, but time has borne me out.

     There are times you really don’t want to be right. Even when you are certain that you are.

Trump Card

Years ago, I read an interesting article in the LA Times. It observed that while the Communist Party was beginning to show signs of turning away from communist doctrine, Chairman Mao was still an adored and even idolized figure throughout the country. Dictatorships always seem to have at their core a cult of personality. The idea that the great leader is a miraculous superhero (what the Greeks would have simply called a hero) is used by these countries the way high schools use sports teams to encourage "school spirit".

However, once the repressive government falls, there is often a concerted effort to degrade the former great leader into a despised monster. Khrushchev's deStalinization is an example of this effect. It isn't always entirely successful. It is not unusual in Russia today to see some individuals during street disturbances raising signs expressing their wish for a return of Stalin. This may say a great deal about the popularity of Vladimir Putin.

In contrast, Chairman Mao remained popular in China. While even to this day it is difficult to get an accurate or open response from the Chinese people, outsiders can tell the difference between genuine affection and a terrorized pretense. We only need to look at North Korea's spontaneous expressions of love for Kim Jong Un to see how obvious it is that the people are turning out in response to terror rather than adoration.

The Times article, remember this was several years ago, made an attempt to discover why the Chinese people seemed to acquiesce to their government's insistence on the continued adulation of Mao. The response seem to be the same almost whoever was asked. It came down to the belief that Mao had certainly done terrible things and the people being asked the question had often lost family members to his purges and excesses, but Mao was seen to have done something which could not be denied and which was a such supreme importance that it made him a hero, a great man, in spite of his obvious failures and flaws.

What he had done was to make China great again.

The Chinese people were well aware that their country had once been one of the greatest civilizations in history. They were also well aware that the country has been reduced to state of desperate poverty and Third World status. Whatever atrocities and sufferings he had created, Mao made China great again. The whole world once again respected Chinese power.
Sound familiar?

Not all of Donald Trump's followers are racists or fascists. Many of them genuinely believe that America has ceased to be as powerful and respected as she once was. The fact that, unlike China's position, this is a fantasy is irrelevant. They believe it. They act accordingly. They vote accordingly.
Decades of Republican propaganda, of right wing media's disinformation and agitprop, of changing demographics, and failed economic polices have had their effect. There are those whom Donald Trump insults, and who intensely dislike many of his policies and behaviors, who nevertheless support him. His flaws seem minor compared to the promise of America becoming great again.

We Are The Fascisti, We Fight The Liberali

Note:  One of the marching songs of the Black Shirts declared, "We are the fascisti, we fight the communisti!"

A post circulating on the Internet displays Fox news commentator Judge Jeanine Pirro making a series of points.  One individual posted it with the comment "This is exactly what I have been telling you! Now get off your fuckin knees and man up to defend our way of life!"

My friend Bobby reposted it with his own series of comments which I have included here:

Okay, I am starting to get nervous that this kind of fascist lunacy actually gets national coverage and enjoys viewer support. The righteous indignation, fearing all Muslims, and mocking liberals, and Obama is common, but the intensity makes me worry about the risk of political and civil overreaction.

"They're here...We are fighting for the very survival of this country and our way of life. You need to make a plan, how you will protect yourself, your family and your kids."

The plan includes:
1) Everyone get a gun any way possible. For your very survival and 2nd amendment. Apparently, if you don't have a gun, you are more likely to get attacked by Islamic terrorists.
2) Weaponize local police. As if the police were somehow ill-equipped to handle recent mass shootings.
3) Close all borders. "Pure and simple." "These people [muslims] do not have a right to be here. End of story."
4) Stop all/any refugee settlement. "We are a nation founded on the Judeo-Christian ethic." Do not let Muslims in. THE enemy is Islamic terrorists, and that we should assume all Muslims are like this (3:45). Muslims now get special privileges that 'we' don't. "The plan is to shut us up." Apparently the 2nd amendment is important, but the 1st amendment for 2.5 million Americans isn't.
5) "If we are stopped from saying something against Mohammed (we aren't) or Muslims in general, then Sharia Law is already here. We are living in dangerous times... The Jackals are at the door."

I can't even make this up. Apparently, if you disagree her, you are worse than unpatriotic; you yourself are dangerous to the nation.

My friend Nick added the following comment:

This is the best thing I've read on Trump and fascism:

"America, thanks to Trump, has now reached that fork in the road where it must choose down which path its future lies – with democracy and its often fumbling ministrations, or with the appealing rule of plutocratic authoritarianism, ushered in on a tide of fascistic populism. For myself, I remain confident that Americans will choose the former and demolish the latter – that Trump’s candidacy will founder, and the tide of right-wing populism will reach its high-water mark under him and then recede with him.

What is most troubling, though, is the momentum that Trump’s candidacy has given that tide. He may not himself lack any real ideological footing, but he has laid the groundwork for a fascist groundswell that could someday be ridden to power by a similarly charismatic successor who is himself more in the mold of an ideological fascist. And it doesn’t take a very long look down the roll of 2016 Republican candidates to find a couple of candidates who might fit that mold.

Trump may not be fascist, but he is empowering their existing elements in American society; even more dangerously, his Tea Party brand of right-wing populism is helping them grow their ranks, along with their potential to recruit, by leaps and bounds. Not only that, he is making all this thuggery and ugliness seem normal. And that IS a serious problem."

http://dneiwert.blogspot.ca/2015/11/donald-trump-may-not-be-fascist-but-he.html

My friend Susan made a different, but apropos, post which quoted a news report:

The Nevada Republican who sent out a Christmas card featuring armed toddlers has put her proverbial foot in her mouth once again – this time in a much more offensive fashion. Michele Fiore, Assemblywoman of the Fourth District, when asked by a Las Vegas radio show about why she refused to sign a statement by Republicans opposing the resettlement of Syrian refugees, indicated it didn’t go far enough for her:

“What–are you kidding me? I’m about to fly to Paris and shoot ‘em in the head myself! I am not OK with Syrian refugees. I’m not OK with terrorists. I’m OK with putting them down, blacking them out, just put a piece of brass in their ocular cavity and end their miserable life. I’m good with that.”

Remember, this is from an elected member of a United States legislative body!

My comment:
Some years back, my oldest grandson and I were having one of our philosophic/political discussions. As I pulled up to stop at the corner of Thunderbird and Dale Evans Parkway, I was making the point that when people get frightened they act in 

a totally irrational manner.  I told him that it hadn't happened in his lifetime, yet. But that something would happen sooner or later and he would see just how insane, self-destructive, and foolish his fellow humans could be.  I told him that as hard as it was to believe, he would will see millions of his fellow Americans acting like terrified chimpanzees; running screaming through the jungle, waving a big stick at anything that comes near them.

I told him that I didn't expect it anytime soon, but that it would come, because bad things happen and people's reactions are so very predictable. It wasn't too much later that 9/11 took place, and I was proven to be correct.

After 9/11, he and I were standing together in the Barstow DMV line. We were again discussing political issues, especially 9/11 and what was an appropriate response. I told him that, quite honestly, I was more afraid of the Bush administration than I was of the terrorists.  The worst the terrorists could  do was kill me. However, I added,  I thought the Bush administration was trying to enslave me, my family, and the rest of the country.  The Patriot Act, illegal spying on American citizens, waterboarding, special rendition, and a whole host of government policies seemed to me to be clearly taking America away from freedom and into a police state.

I got a lot of dirty looks from other people in line. I still hope that one or two of them thought about what I had to say and reconsidered their positions. But I doubt it.

I am very troubled by the levels of hate in America today, but I know that they are being promoted largely by Right Wing Conservatives who I do not think will actually succeed in electing a president. I believe the danger was greater under Bush than it is today. That is, the danger of America turning fascist. I do believe the danger of Right Wing terrorism is now higher than it has been in decades. It may become as dangerous and as deadly, possibly even more deadly, than left-wing terrorism in the late 60s and early 70s.

Just today on C-SPAN a caller whined and cried and complained about how Republicans are never listened to by the government. Somehow he forgot the fact that the Republican Party controls both houses of Congress, a large majority of the federal courts, the majority of state governorships, a majority of state legislatures…but poor pitiful Republicans! Nobody in government listens to them. What he actually means, of course, is that Republicans don't get their way every single time, no matter what. Republicans want a Republican dictatorship in America. A conservative, fundamentalist, evangelical, Christian Republican dictatorship. 

While I feared it might happen if the next president after Bush Junior was also dominated by the right wing, I do not fear that now. In spite of the large number of Americans who support Trump, FOXNews, and their fellow travelers, most Americans do not.

Just as I do not fear that ISIS will take over America, I do not fear that these homegrown radicals will take over America. But just as I fear that Lonewolf ISIS terrorists will attack, I fear that Lonewolf conservative terrorists will attack.

So, Bobby, Susan, and Nick; I agree that the danger is very real. I just see it as a danger not of the government going fascist, but of the fascist elements rising to a point where right-wing terrorism dominates our daily lives.

Sent from my iPhone