Tag Archives: Right Wing

Faces of Fascism

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First, they came for the Mexicans and Muslims…

Michael Barbaro, The New York Times:

Mr. Trump made no real case for his qualifications to lead the world’s largest economy and strongest military. He is, he said, a very successful man who knows how to make it all better.

Inside the Quicken Loans Arena, a thicket of American flags behind him, he portrayed himself, over and over, as an almost messianic figure prepared to rescue the country from the ills of urban crime, illegal immigration and global terrorism.

“I alone,” he said, “can fix it.”

Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker:

It is no surprise that the American face of fascism would take on the forms of celebrity television and the casino greeter’s come-on…What all forms of fascism have in common is the glorification of the nation, and the exaggeration of its humiliations, with violence promised to its enemies, at home and abroad; the worship of power wherever it appears and whoever holds it; contempt for the rule of law and for reason; unashamed employment of repeated lies as a rhetorical strategy; and a promise of vengeance for those who feel themselves disempowered by history.

It promises to turn back time and take no prisoners. That it can appeal to those who do not understand its consequences is doubtless true. But the first job of those who do understand is to state what those consequences invariably are. Those who think that the underlying institutions of American government are immunized against it fail to understand history. In every historical situation where a leader of Trump’s kind comes to power, normal safeguards collapse. Ours are older and therefore stronger? Watching the rapid collapse of the Republican Party is not an encouraging rehearsal. Donald Trump has a chance to seize power.

Hillary Clinton … has her faults, easily described, often documented—though, for the most part, the worst accusations against her have turned out to be fiction. No reasonable person, no matter how opposed to her politics, can believe for a second that Clinton’s accession to power would be a threat to the Constitution or the continuation of American democracy. No reasonable person can believe that Trump’s accession to power would not be. 

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New Jersey Governor Chris Christie addresses the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., on Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2012. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

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The Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, they all gave birth to Trump. Now we all have to get off our asses and vote a straight Democratic ticket in November. A Democratic President and a Democratic Congress are the only way to get our government working again and, therefore, the only way to stop the fire from spreading.

Because, yes, it could happen here. 

German Leaders Thought Hitler Was Trump

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Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine asks why leading Republicans are supporting Trump and finds the answer in 1933:

“Like Hitler, Trump is a radical, authoritarian figure who lies outside the normal parameters of his country’s conservative governing class. Thus, there is a parallel between the two men’s unexpected rise to power that is worth considering: Why would traditional conservatives willingly hand power to a figure so dangerous that he threatened their own political and economic interests? Why, having failed in their halfhearted efforts to nominate an alternative candidate during the primaries, don’t they throw themselves behind a convention coup, a third-party candidacy, or defect outright to Hillary Clinton? Why do so many of them consider Trump the lesser rather than the greater evil?”

“….In January 1933, the Nazi party’s vote share had begun to decline, and its party was undergoing a serious internal crisis, with dues falling, members drifting off, and other leaders questioning Hitler’s direction. A widely shared belief across the political spectrum at the time held that Hitler would not and could not win the chancellorship….”

“Hindenburg and the German right viewed Hitler in strikingly similar terms to how Republican elites view Trump….Alfred Hugenberg, leader of the German-Nationals, deemed the Nazis “little better than a rabble, with dangerously radical social and economic notions…Hindenburg considered Hitler qualified to head the postal ministry at best. Hitler, in their eyes, was not a serious man, unfit to govern, a classless buffoon. His appeal, the German elite believed, came from his outsider status, which allowed him to posture against the political system and make extravagant promises to his followers that would never be tested against reality.”

“All this is to say that German conservatives did not see Hitler as Hitler — they saw Hitler as Trump. And the reasons they devised to overcome their qualms and accept him as the head of state would ring familiar to followers of the 2016 campaign. They believed the responsibility of governing would tame Hitler, and that his beliefs were amorphous and could be shaped by advisers once in office. They respected his populist appeal and believed it could serve their own ends….Their myopic concern with specifics of their policy agenda overcame their general sense of unease….Think of the supply-siders supporting Trump in the hope he can enact major tax cuts, or the social conservatives enthused about his list of potential judges, and you’ll have a picture of the thought process….”

“Whatever norms or bounds that we think limit the damage a president could inflict are likely to be exceeded if that president is Trump. Those Republicans who publicly endorse Trump because he probably won’t win may be making an error on a historic scale.”

The full article is here.

Reasons to Smile, Clear Sailing Ahead

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Who wants to read depressing crap every day? Not you! Not me! Hell no!

That’s why I’m planning to devote this blog to good news and encouraging thoughts until after the election.

That means I won’t quote from, comment on or link to disheartening articles like these:

“The Dangerous Acceptance of Donald Trump”, by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker: It’s excellent:

He’s not Hitler, as his wife recently said? Well, of course he isn’t. But then Hitler wasn’t Hitler—until he was. At each step of the way, the shock was tempered by acceptance. It depended on conservatives pretending he wasn’t so bad, compared with the Communists, while at the same time the militant left decided that their real enemies were the moderate leftists, who were really indistinguishable from the Nazis. The radical progressives decided that there was no difference between the democratic left and the totalitarian right and that an explosion of institutions was exactly the most thrilling thing imaginable.

The American Republic stands threatened by the first overtly anti-democratic leader of a large party in its modern history—an authoritarian with no grasp of history, no impulse control, and no apparent barriers on his will to power. The right thing to do, for everyone who believes in liberal democracy, is to gather around and work to defeat him on Election Day. Instead, we seem to be either engaged in parochial feuding or caught by habits of tribal hatred so ingrained that they have become impossible to escape even at moments of maximum danger….

If Trump came to power, there is a decent chance that the American experiment would be over. This is not a hyperbolic prediction; it is not a hysterical prediction; it is simply a candid reading of what history tells us happens in countries with leaders like Trump. Countries don’t really recover from being taken over by unstable authoritarian nationalists of any political bent, left or right—not by PerĂłns or Castros or Putins or Francos or Lenins or fill in the blanks…. If he can rout the Republican Party in a week by having effectively secured the nomination, ask yourself what Trump could do with the American government if he had a mandate.

Or “Trump Has Taught Me to Fear My Fellow Americans”, by Richard Cohen in The Washington Post. Maybe Mr. Cohen hasn’t been paying close attention in recent years, but now he understands:

Donald Trump has taught me to fear my fellow Americans. I don’t mean the occasional yahoo who turns a Trump rally into a hate fest. I mean the ones who do nothing. Who are silent. Who look the other way. If you had told me a year ago that a hateful brat would be the presidential nominee of a major political party, I would have scoffed….

When I see these Trump supporters on television — the commentators …  — I have to wonder where they would draw the line. The answer seems to be: nowhere. They want to win. They want to beat Hillary Clinton, a calling so imperative that sheer morality must give way. Muslims and Mexicans are merely collateral damage in a war that must be fought. What about blacks or Jews? Not yet.

Maybe the talking heads on TV would draw the line at some mild version of fascism, but would the American people do the same?

And “Trump’s Lies and Authoritarianism Are the Same”, by Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine:

Donald Trump is a wildly promiscuous liar. He also has disturbing authoritarian tendencies. Trump’s many critics have seized upon both traits as his two major disqualifications for the presidency, yet both of them frustratingly defy easy quantification. All politicians lie some, and many of them lie a lot, and most presidents also push the limits of their authority in ways that can frighten their opponents. So what is so uniquely dangerous about Trump? Perhaps the answer is that both of these qualities are, in a sense, the same thing. His contempt for objective truth is the rejection of democratic accountability, an implicit demand that his supporters place undying faith in him. Because the only measure of truth he accepts is what he claims at any given moment, the power his supporters vest in him is unlimited….

Truth and reason are weapons of the powerless against the powerful. There is no external doctrine [Trump] can be measured against, not even conservative dogma, which he embraces or discards at will and with no recognition of having done so. Trump’s version of truth is multiple truths, the only consistent element of which is Trump himself is always, by definition, correct. Trump’s mind is so difficult to grapple with because it is an authoritarian epistemology that lies outside the democratic norms that have shaped all of our collective experiences.

Those are just a few examples of the kind of material I’m going to avoid from now on. After all, our political situation isn’t all bad. Some in the press are waking up to the fact that they can’t cover Trump as if he were a normal candidate. Some Sanders supporters are accepting the fact that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee (and not because the super-delegates are all corrupt). More stories are appearing about Trump’s nefarious past. The businessman’s campaign is running out of money, while Clinton is sharpening her attack and correctly labeling Trump as a fraud and a con man. On top of all that, we’re only a few days away from the end of the primary election season! What’s there to worry about? Life is good! 

A Message Like His Will Always Appeal to Some People

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Depending on how we define “fascism”, Trump probably isn’t a fascist. He’s more of a fascist-in-training.

But he sure is an authoritarian. He boasts that he will do this, that and the other thing as President, as if his word will be law. That is the authoritarian ideal: the Great Leader who can make things happen without worrying about the niceties of constitutional government.

Authoritarianism, obviously, is anti-democratic. Once they’ve got the power, Great Leaders aren’t bound by elections. They do not go quietly. They talk loudly and carry big sticks.

If you want to read a short article on the danger Trump poses, I recommend “This Is How Fascism Comes to America”. The author is Robert Kagan, an historian and foreign policy specialist who was a Republican until a few months ago. A few words from Mr. Kagan:

What [Trump] offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger….

This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac “tapping into” popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party — out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear — falling into line behind him.

If you want to read a long article about Trump’s message and what his success says about millions of Americans, I recommend “Welcome to the Age of Trump” by Jonathan Freedland, a British journalist. Some selections:

He’s clearly not fettered by the restraints that hold back [other] politicians. On this logic, Trump is the fearless truth-teller. Which may seem an odd accolade to give a man who has been caught out as a serial liar and perhaps the most provenly dishonest candidate to seek, let alone win, the nomination of a major US party. But that is to forget that Trump’s core supporters believe it is the establishment – the media and political elites – that have lied to them for at least two decades. So when those same elites brand Trump a liar, his supporters either don’t believe it, or else they don’t care….

One reason why Trump seems sinister rather than simply clownish is the hint that he is hostile not just to the current two-party system in the US, but to the very norms that underpin liberal democracy…This is more than a rejection of the current Democrat-Republican gridlock. This is a contempt for the very notion of constitutional democracy. And if Trump is pushing it, it may be because he knows there is a ready audience for just such a message.

The World Values Survey of 2011 included a stunning figure. It found that 34% of Americans approved of “having a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections”, the figure rising to 42% among those with no education beyond high school. It’s worth reading that again, to let it sink in. It means that one in three US voters would prefer a dictator to democracy. Those Americans are not repudiating this or that government, but abandoning the very idea of democracy itself.

Among the evidence Mr. Freedland cites is a video from Vox that examines Trump’s popularity from a political science perspective. It’s called “The Rise of American Authoritarianism, Explained in Six Minutes” and is worth watching. It helps explain why someone like Trump will always appeal to certain voters. In fact, their authoritarian psychology may be the most defining characteristic of the people who actually believe Trump should win, not their racism, fear of Muslims, worries about immigration or their economic complaints.

That’s why we need to do everything we can to defeat Trump by the largest possible margin in November. If the election is close at all, it will encourage more fascists-in-training to seek high office, one of whom might be a much better salesman than Trump.

A Clear and Present Danger

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The title of this post might have been “Ignoring the Next Six Months – Day 21”, except for two things. Our Presidential election is a little more than five months away and my plan to ignore the campaign has been a complete failure.

In fact, I’ve paid so much attention to the campaign that I haven’t gotten around to doing a few other things, like updating this blog. Instead, I’ve spent a lot of time reading political news and commentary. I’ve left a few of my comments here and there (actually, all of them have been there). I’ve sent a few emails to a New York Times reporter who is assigned to cover Hillary Clinton. For heaven’s sake, I’ve even tweeted (@SomeGuyFromNJ). 

In case you missed it, Donald Trump now has all the delegates he needs to become the Republican nominee for President on the first ballot at their July convention. I’ll repeat that for emphasis: Unless he drops out or drops dead, Donald Trump will be the Republican’s 2016 nominee for President of the United States of America.

That means the question before us is: What should each of us do to stop this person from becoming President?

I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know this: There is no sense in filling a blog with random thoughts and commentary when we’re this close to a disaster.

For now, I’ll leave you with the photograph at the top of this page, a few words from Senator Elizabeth Warren, and my favorite quote from the past few weeks. First, Senator Warren:

Let’s be honest – Donald Trump is a loser. Count all his failed businesses. See how he kept his father’s empire afloat by cheating people with scams like Trump University and by using strategic corporate bankruptcy (excuse me, bankruptcies) to skip out on debt. Listen to the experts who’ve concluded he’s so bad at business that he might have more money today if he’d put his entire inheritance into an index fund and just left it alone.

Trump seems to know he’s a loser. His embarrassing insecurities are on parade: petty bullying, attacks on women, cheap racism, and flagrant narcissism. But just because Trump is a loser everywhere else doesn’t mean he’ll lose this election. People have been underestimating his campaign for nearly a year – and it’s time to wake up.

People talk about how “this is the most important election” in our lifetime every four years, and it gets stale. But consider what hangs in the balance. Affordable college. Accountability for Wall Street. Healthcare for millions of Americans. The Supreme Court. Big corporations and billionaires paying their fair share of taxes. Expanded Social Security. Investments in infrastructure and medical research and jobs right here in America. The chance to turn our back on the ugliness of hatred, sexism, racism and xenophobia. The chance to be a better people.

More than anyone we’ve seen before come within reach of the presidency, Donald Trump stands ready to tear apart an America that was built on values like decency, community, and concern for our neighbors. Many of history’s worst authoritarians started out as losers – and Trump is a serious threat. The way I see it, it’s our job to make sure he ends this campaign every bit the loser that he started it.

I wouldn’t say that America was only built on values like decency and community. America was also built on greed and inhumanity. Senator Warren would certainly agree. But her main point is unassailable: In the 228 years that we have been holding elections, Trump is the absolute worst person who has ever come this close to becoming President of the United States. The worst ever.

And lastly, a quote from Michael Vlock, a rich Connecticut investor who has given a lot of money to Republican candidates, but who says he won’t support you know who. Why?

He’s an ignorant, amoral, dishonest and manipulative, misogynistic, philandering, hyper-litigious, isolationist, protectionist blowhard…I really believe our republic will survive Hillary.

Vlock left out “narcissistic” and “authoritarian”, but it’s not bad for a Republican.