The United States of Fascism

When I wish to understand something, really grasp the idea of a concept, I tend to make an archetype of it, then use that archetype as a template that I can then overlay onto other fields to help me identify the concept, or idea of the thing. I do this to see if in my understanding of the thing, I can identify patterns or even how the concept may affect whatever I am attempting to objectively understand.

Lets’s take for instance the word “fascist”. Used pedantically, the term originates from the Fascisti, or as Websters English dictionary states “a member of an Italian political organization under Mussolini governing Italy 1922–1943 according to the principles of fascism” leading us directly to the same resources definition, being “a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.” If we decant this into an archetypal model, and then use that model and form a lens with which to examine the world around us, the lens has some important things to show us. The archetype becomes a governing body, nationalistic, racist, autocratic, repressive of any opposition, cultish social aspects of leadership, and myopic economic control.

When we apply the archetype as outlined above, create our template that we will then use as a lens, and apply it to what we have in play currently in the U.S. we find some highly unnerving, disturbing trends, characteristics and tendencies.

First, let’s use our new archytype lens of fascism to look at the American economy. Despite what might appear a relatively well functioning economy, the U.S. GDP, is much less than China, and even well below that of even Uzbekistan or Vietnam, according to the World Bank. The insistence of the U.S. to continue to engineer an economy that benefits the 1% is literally killing people here, never mind folks spraying lead into stadiums filled with people, the survivors of which will have to have Go-Fund-Me sites in order to pay their bills. Half of all Americans are either already well below the poverty line or will be there shortly.  Again, our economy is an engineered system, just like other countries, not some random mistake. Two of the four countries I just pointed out have socialist systems whose economies function at better than 2.5 times the GDP of the U.S., and in the case of China, better than 3 times the GDP of U.S.

In terms of autocracy and dictatorial government, without minimizing flat out classic autocracies such as North Korea, we simply have the American version of autocracy. This neo-autocracy is in the form of corporations who own American politicians, thanks to a number of legal rulings, namely Citizens United, which allowed for virtually unlimited corporate and private contributions to politicians. And make no mistake, more laws that erode and remove whatever fences we have between corporations and politicians are in the works. The autocracy part comes to fruition in when we combine the effects of destruction of laws prohibiting monopolies or antitrust laws in the US, resulting in fewer corporations running more politicians.

Examples of how the U.S. leadership represses opposition is heart- breakingly easy to find. The day before this writing our president threatened the federal broadcast licencing of National Broadcasting Company, the oldest broadcast company in the U.S.. Recently the “Justice” department, headed by a crypto-clansman asked for a warrant for a server that hosted a website that helped organize the inaugural protests. This same Justice department has also obtained 3 warrants to access Facebook profiles of people who helped with those protests. Of course, the G.O.P.’s lapdog, Fox News, is helping spread the propaganda of the administration, their usual role when a Republican is in office, in terms of calling other media “fake news”. Fox itself, has elevated fake news to an art form. Amazingly, the only litigation surrounding actual fake news is focused on Fox News.

Beyond heart breaking, we have the downright infuriating and disgusting aspects of racism we have emerging, with ever increasing frequency, daily. This aspect is probably the most dangerous of all we are currently dealing with in the United States of Fascism. Northern California is burning, Puerto Rico still suffers, Americans are dying in both places, and the President is focused on the NFL and taking away health care from Americans through executive order. Unable to get the G.O.P. controlled Congress to pass any repeal of the Affordable Care Act, this executive order is sure to kill many thousands of Americans. ICE, the law enforcement agency, is using gestapo like tactics to round up people fleeing; drug wars, repressive U.S. supported regimes and people like their own ancestors, who came here and took land from the aboriginal inhabitants.

Arguably, the most disturbing aspect of the archytype we’ve developed here is the cult-like attributes of the Presidents followers. Recent polls have proven his comment made during the run up to the election when he stated, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” True enough, his supporters flat out don’t care if he lies, cheats, gropes, or threatens. In fact, they are encouraged by such behavior and bravado. These supporters are for the most part, not the old school G.O.P. supporters. My own mother, a long time, hard core G.O.P. activist, who in her 86 years, has never once voted against what her party told her to do, did NOT vote for the G.O.P.’s offering, she was and is still so repulsed by the President.

To say the Presidents supporters are fanatical is not hyperbole.  They believe anything he says. For instance, he is promoting fake news  there is wide spread voter fraud in the U.S. while nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, there is now an actual commission, based on absolutely zero facts, headed by one of the main promoters of this complete lie. In January the President said there were between 3 and 5 million fraudulent ballots cast for president, without a shred of evidence to support this. The supporters of the President do seem to have certain similarities, as the single largest predictor of if a person is going to be a supporter of the President is how much a person worships authoritarian leaders.

The nationalistic tendencies of these fanatics is on display, and a favorite of the emerging and encouraged neo-Nazi community. This community has also been buoyed by a recent member of the Presidents inner circle and Breitbart editor Steven Bannon. Brietbart and Bannon offer your basic red meat that makes this crew the rabid base they are, prone to doing things like setting up bombs filled with nails at airports, acts because they are done by white men, receive almost no mention in the press. Clearly, if a Muslim had placed that bomb rather than a white male there would have been great weeping and lamentations from the White House, yet not a peep from that once revered institution.

Clearly, America is goose stepping toward out-right fascism. Our leadership uses insidious  dog whistle politics, blaming Jews and other minority populations directly or indirectly. In my 50 years, I have never seen anything like what is going on today. Rumors of civil war are common. The Reich wing purveys images of anybody who isn’t one of them as being on the payroll of George Soros, while the only proven paid protesters are that of the President during his election campaign. What remains to be seen is if the average American has enough guts to step up and fight what appears to be the end of whatever democracy we have left in this country.