Speaking of fascism…
I had a conversation with One-Of-Them who voted for You-Know-Who recently, and it quickly devolved into whether I had a job and paid taxes, the implication being if I’m not tired of carrying half the country around on my overburdened tax shoulders, I should be. My return was that I’ve worked for 40 years and Christians who ignore the love thy neighbor stuff in favor of a lower tax burden are missing the point. I mentioned my 80-something parents are both part of the fabled 47%. I was feeling around in the conversation for the racism, and it soon came out: “I’m talking about Muslim youth who want to come here on the dole while they study bomb making.”
Freddie Boom-Boom Washington DC?
You know, the story of angry brown people coming to kill your babies is running a little threadbare, of late. This idjit feels Taxed Enough Already because of a government demolitions work-study program for Muslim youths. Who knew? What do they call it? Fannie Mae Explode? Freddie Mac-10?
That’s apparently how we lost Pennsylvania: mouth breathers like this one frenzied into a lather by breathless bullshit pumped into their low-info bubble. And I’m coming to the conclusion that there’s nothing we’re going to be able to do about it. We can’t save these people from themselves. We have to save the rest of us from themselves, and hopefully the rising tide will lift all boats. If themselves drown, however, it will be by themselves’ own hands.
My parting shot was, “You can stand against the wall now, or be stood against it later, remember the Sinclair Lewis quote?”
Well, it turns out, neither did I, so well; it’s one of those quotes fostered on various people about a theme that’s been around for some time. The basic version is: “when fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.” Here is what Sinclair Lewis actually DID say on the subject in It Can’t Happen Here.
“But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word ‘Fascism’ and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty.”
I loves me some Bob Dylan, but the greatest American author not to have received the Nobel Prize for Literature many say is Philip Roth. He returned to Sinclair Lewis’ time and wrote The Plot Against America as if it DID happen here, and he said: “–nor had I understood til then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others”
That “shameless vanity of utter fools” is today called the “Dunning Kruger Effect.” There’s science and everything about it. Roth also said, quite presciently:
“To have enslaved America with this hocuspocus! To have captured the mind of the world’s greatest nation without uttering a single word of truth! Oh, the pleasure we must be affording the most malevolent man on earth!”
(In Roth’s book, Clueless Amerika Firster Celeb President = Charles Lindbergh. Malevolent man = Hitler.)
Perhaps borrowing from both Sinclair and CS Lewis, Yale School of Divinity Professor Halford Luccock also warned in a 1938 Sermon:
When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled “made in Germany”; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, “Americanism.” … The high-sounding phrase “the American way” will be used by interested groups intent on profit, to cover a multitude of sins against the American and Christian tradition, such sins as lawless violence, teargas and shotguns, denial of civil liberties …
He later continued:
For never, probably, has there been a time when there was a more vigorous effort to surround social and international questions with such a fog of distortion and prejudices and hysterical appeal to fear. We have touched a new low in a Congressional investigation this Summer, used by some participating in it to whip up fear and prejudice against many causes of human welfare, such as concern for peace and the rights of labor to bargain collectively.
Notice the repeated themes: a credulous, confused electorate; a fog of disinformation; a patina of patriotism; special interest groups subsuming American values and redefining the idea of America as mere profit.
It can’t happen here. And yet, now, it HAS happened here. So stand against his wall now. Or be stood against it later.
I agree that all these guys were prescient, but I find a bit of comfort in the words of Luccock. He was speaking in 1938 about the disaster that was then, although it fits amazingly with now. But the hope I see is that we survived it then, and if those of us who *haven’t* forgotten what we learned in kindergarten* keep our wits about us, surely we can survive it now.
I’m sure glad I have the WMDBS to keep me believing we’re not alone in this.
*Remember the piece by Robert Fulgham?
1“When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled “made in Germany”; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, “Americanism.” …”
The New! Improved! version is now called “Make America Great Again.”
It’s not marked with a swastika, or long banners of red and black. That was so 1930’s. This is 2017, and it’s covered in gold.
2The reason we survived the Nazis in the 1940’s was because the USA was led by a progressive socialist who was able to rally the country against fascism. No such luck this time.
3Give up trying to convince them. When the nukes start flying and everything is ash, Faux News will tell them everything is fine. And they will believe it.
4And that is what so disturbs so many of us about Trump – he is actually illiterate. He can write and spell only in dollar signs. No wonder there is such an attraction. His example gives others the liberation to behave likewise. There is no “country first”, only a tsunami of “Me-ism”. There is no dedication to service of others, only “to hell with them.” And since there is no saving these “non-thinkers” by their own decisions, its tempting to just plain give up on anything even molecularly altruistic. But lets not do that. Like Fanny Lou Hamer once said, “keep on keeping on.” Its worth it.
5In the realm of nuclear science, specifically bomb making, you can’t take a couple of grains of enriched uranium or plutonium and blow up a city. What’s required is called “critical mass”. It’s that certain volume of the radioactive substance that when ignited will initiate it’s own chain reaction whose result can be one hell of an explosion.
Insightful thinkers have also used the idea of “critical mass” in behavioral studies of societies. Discontent can be mapped and measured. The wise observer will pay attention and do what is necessary to “defuse” a situation before it reaches critical levels. The fool will not. The devious will try to employ the phenomenon for their own ends thinking they can control it’s power by sheer will. They, of course, never can.
The truly clever, try to harness that power and employ it usefully as in a power plant. In a way, they too are devious but also wise, because they respect the awesome power they are using and design in safeguards to ensure the critical mass does not destroy them and the surrounding countryside.
Currently, the Repiblicans have that critical mass. It will be up to all of us, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents to see they use it wisely. The alternative is too depressing to imagine. Chernobyl anyone?
6I have a couple of right-wing friends who are beyond hope. They will not accept any facts that don’t support what they’ve already decided to believe.
I have another friend who is not right-wing and is one of the nicest people I know in every way. She is not against ObamaCare, but she did make a comment about having to pay for other people’s healthcare.
First, that’s how insurance works.
Second, why aren’t people upset about tax cuts for multi-millionaires?
The whole country has been brainwashed.
7My endocrinologist is from Syria as is my mom’s cardiologist (and her architect brother). My son’s pediatrician was from Egypt. No not all immigrants from Muslim countries are doctors of course (or even Muslim for that matter, my electrical engineering prof from Syria was Christian). The middle eastern guy who runs the garage down the street works 16 hour days so I’m not sure he’s got any time left for bomb making.
8@djw-the cost was fairly high; I don’t say it wasn’t WORTH it, but if we could head it off…?
9Aren’t we sposed to go get a beer sometime? Soon might be good!! OT: Am I the only one disappointed in the Piano Guys y’all?
I agree with the comment that some wingnuts just won’t listen. That’s why I’m hoping it gets bad enough to really hurt them. That’s what finally happened in the 1930s and lead to 20 years of Democratic presidents, even longer Democratic Congress and liberal government. I don’t want anyone to suffer like the Great Depression, but I think that’s all that will get through many wingnut heads. Dum basses.
10Is there a point where the dems sense the vacuum in leadership? And go there?
11I blame our so-called mainstream media for much of Trump’s success. Of course their fawning over him throughout the campaign (while ignoring Hillary) & the free air time, etc. But earlier & for years they have treated Fox News as if it is truly a news source instead of the propaganda machine that it is. I have this horrendous memory of a front seat made available for the President’s news briefings & the Fox News representative being ushered to the seat. Meanwhile, Fox brainwashed our unsuspecting citizens.
12Lynn N, I agree, but how do you squeeze an entire list of grievances on a poster? There isn’t a single one of Trump’s abysmal cabinet picks who isn’t completely unfit for the task ahead, at least in the frame so many of us want. We can’t chew up the whole banquet of garbage at once, so it’s down to one nibble at a time.
13Lynn N, to expand on my comment, I am rendered nearly catatonic by the appointment of that vile DeVos creature. She is evdentally given a “pass” on the question if she would promise to not divert TAXPAYER funds to private and charter schools. My 32 year career was entirely in a public elementary school environment, so I have some level of understanding of its importance, as well as the areas of need that should be funded. Private and charter schools rarely have the staffing to deal with special needs. One side note: we have a friend who took a job teaching at a charter school in Washington DC, which clearly needs much attention in it’s educational needs; he quit after one frustrating year in which he was instructed to pass every student, including the disruptive ones who never opened the textbook. Another, a colleague left the private school environment after one year for much the same reasons.
14I recently had an experience similar to yours, Primo:
I was sitting in my favorite coffee shop in the gayborhood which is midtown St. Petersburg, FL when a man walked in with his adult son. The son is disabled – the father later told me he has Autism.
OK, so we’re sitting at the bar, drinking our coffees and he told me that he’s Jewish and his mother-in-law was in Auschwitz.
Then he began holding forth on Muslims. How they ALL want to kill us all. How they are ALL evil. How they ALL are sworn to wipe out the West and will lie and pretend to be Good People to achieve their ends.
When I tried to cool him down by smiling and saying, “Well, we’ll just have to agree to disagree,” he shouted, “NO WE WILL NOT!!!” and just got louder.
I had known there was no hope of getting him to see reason and it now became clear there was also no hope of getting him to just quiet down, so I gathered my things and started to walk out.
And he followed me spouting, “WE HAD TO PUT UP WITH OBAMA FOR EIGHT YEARS AND NOW YOU CAN SEE WHAT IT’S LIKE FOR THE NEXT EIGHT!!!”
So now I’m scared. I ducked into the beauty salon next door which, fortunately was just jam-packed with people. And he went on his way.
On reflection, I’m betting I could have saved myself the trouble of running away. What would have happened if I had informed him he was sitting in the gayest neighborhood in Florida drinking coffee a gay man had made and put into his hand? Would he have spit it out in a panic and run out the door hisownself? I don’t know – but I can guess.
So anyway, here’s a man who is part of a minority group. He hates all members of at least one other minority group – possibly two. Or more. He has a disabled son. And he voted for Trump.
Every day it becomes clearer and clearer to me: I simply do not understand the human race.
15It’s a minor point, but worth remembering that it’s Athoritarianism that is at issue, not Fascism. Stalin was no one’s Facist but he was one heck of an Authoritarian and he used the same techniques that are showing their colors in Trumpland.
16Lies do work, up to a point. Sadly that point is often mass deaths from starvation and disease even when there aren’t actual purges going on.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/01/a_lesson_for_trump_from_stalin_lies_work_up_to_a_point.html