On Monday, June 3, 2019 at 8:13:44 AM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: > > On Sun, Jun 2, 2019 at 4:18 PM howardmarks <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > > > I think the labels "fascist" or "liberal" of A. and B. are distortions. >> > > I too am very confused about this entire left-wing right-wing business, > just a few years ago right wingers thought the CIA and FBI were the good > guys and the Kremlin the bad guys but Trump suporters thing the oposite, > the republican right wing were free traders but Trump is a self described > "tariff man", the right wing was for smaller less intrusive government but > Trump wants the government to tell women what they can and can't do with > their bodies. > > I don't use the word "fascist" lightly, I'm not in the habit, as some on > the left are, of calling anyone who's politics I disagree with a fascist, > but when it comes to Trump supporters I sincerely think the word is > justified; 53% of republicans say they would be OK with Trump canceling the > 2020 election. And Fascist dictators cancel elections, lead chants to > imprison their political opponents, try to change the law so they can sue > newspapers and close them down when they write articles against them, jail > reporters who don't cooperate, order TV networks to stop satirizing them, > put family members in positions of power, tell police not to be gentle > when they arrest somebody, say some Nazis are "very good people" and > develop a cult following that will believe anything they say, such as > vaccines cause autism or windmills cause cancer. > > Today it's foolish to claim there is a moral equivalence between the two > major political parties, at one time there was one (and I was a Republican > for most of my life) but there is no equivalence anymore. The Democrats > have done stuff that is very unwise and unfair but it would be going way > too far to call them fascist. A fascist political party is as bad as things > can get, the sort of thing you saw in Europe in the 1930s, and things are > not currently as bad as things can get but only because the American > Fascist Party (aka Republicans) still has some competition from a very > large but sometimes silly and often dysfunctional non-fascist party, the > democrats. > > John K Clark >
The equivalency between the two parties is often drawn with the fact they both take corporate campaign donations. Sure, from the perspective of any corporation the outcome of an election is uncertain and while their leadership may prefer the right winged candidate if they give money to the more liberal candidate who wins then they can still demand their influence. It might be said a big difference between a Republican and a Democrat elected to office is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when confronted by their corporate patrons. Also interestingly during times of financial distress, such as 2008, corporations will even favor funding Democrats because they know the liberals are more willing to pull the Keynesian levers to fix the economic mess the banks and corporations generated. However, since I first voted during the Reagan years my observation has been the Republicans are becoming more authoritarian; they talk freedom etc and then do everything they can to restrict democratic institutions, and now we have a president who recently said to the effect, "This is my damned country and I can do what ever the hell I want with it." That is the attitude of a dictator. The first inkling of this was after the 1994 election when there was this rise of extremism, militias and pundits such as M. Savage telling citizens to use "headshots" against any officer trying to confiscate a gun. I am sensing how a great number of people in this country are behind this attitude of totalitarianism as well. It may be the case that t'Rump will if he wins this election, or if he annuls the results because he loses, that we will see ever more curtailments against the press that fails to conform, more harassment against those identified as liberal and more laws designed to restrict the expression of various opinions or maybe even scientific facts. George Orwell wrote on how authoritarians do what they can to erase memory. In one decade they may be all for unrestricted flow of capital and the next decade they are all for tariffs. Of course we all know that tariffs are a terrible way to cure trade imbalances, but with t'Rump his 6th grade understanding of the world says otherwise, and average people who are about as bright think this has defined conservatism all along. Traditionally Republicans regarded Russia as a serious menace, and now for some reason Russia is great and t'Rump even seems disposed to Russia's program of dismantling the EU and fragmenting Europe into weak states. Ahh, they might say, "this is the new Russia." Yeah sure, the Communist commissars burned their party cards in 1991 and became mafia-style businessmen --- the sort Donald t'Rump likes. The term fascist is the only one we have, and it is the case this right winged movement is different from classic fascism of the early 20th century. We have no other word for what is developing, and maybe by the time a word is coined it will seal its power. It is similar to fascism in that it is a reactionary movement based on populist politics that is designed to offset what otherwise might be a more left winged rebellion or revolution. The wealth gaps and the exponential growth in the power of billionaires, while the average middle class or "petite bourgeoisie" person is falling into at best income stagnation or decline, are a recipe for future chaos. This besotted France in the late 18th century, and Russia in the early 20th, with the result of a radical left type of revolution. Fascism is a way of generating the appearance of a sort of revolution, but which maintains or even solidified the positions of those in elite positions and power. In the case of Nazi Germany it went pretty well for the corporations, and even after the war and some recovery it went well again. It was amusing when Mitsubishi put their name in big letters on their little trucks, when in 1942 in the US if you drove such a truck you would have been arrested by military police. Maybe we will turn around, but I am beginning to get cranky and pessimistic about that. Also environmental issues, in particular global warming, are issues the right wing has a huge denial industry over. Of course the real science is clear, but the few denialists, such as Fred Singer (who campaigned for the tobacco industry etc), are given a hugely amplified voice. That stuff will kill us. In 40 to 50 years the amount of biota and biomass and the number of species on Earth will be half what it is now. What people do not realize is these systems will only respond linearly up to a point, and then some highly nonlinear collapse may happen. We may in not too many decades find we can no longer perform large scale agriculture, and when that happens folks the human race game is over. Already the temperature gradient between the temperate zone and arctic is reduced, which lowers the kinetic energy in the atmosphere that bottles up arctic air. These strange fluctuations in weather may before long bring hot summers with intermittent winter snaps that kill crops. Interestingly the denial industry is using these cold snaps as "evidence" against global warming. More immediately another source of doom-sense, is that Democrats seem likely to put Biden in as their candidate in 2020. I would compare this to an action movie with two fighting roles, one played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and the other played by Don Knotts. Biden is a nice guy, he is mild mannered and a thinking man's gentleman, but we need somebody who is young, vital, who when it gets tough can eat f**kers for lunch and who can stare down this orange Godzilla demolishing the American Republic. The Democrats seem eager to lose another, and for all we know it might be the last, presidential election and bring disaster. The next few years could well be the twilight of the American Republic and the rise of a new totalitarian age. LC -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/082566c9-9868-4d23-a11c-8f2b2d2687ee%40googlegroups.com.
