American Fascism, The Irony of Democracy, and why the Left Should Be Worried

[elucidator]

Benign neglect. There’s a great difference between the unity to gain the spoils and the unity when it comes to dividing the spoils. Mr. Falwell would ban Ms. Spears titties, Time Warner sells Ms. Spears titties.

We of the Left are the Loyal Opposition, by our own definition. We are the Not Them, our best case is that we are Not Them. As the price for their folly becomes clearer, and the vultures come home to roost, the moderates in their party will exhibit the behavior common to rodents in nautical crisis.

Venceremos!

[Shodan]

@tomndebb

If I enjoyed reading ad hominems I’d hang out at MoveOn or with the Freepers. I expect better, even in the Pit–and this is not the Pit. I would ask everyone to debate the OP (or any side issues) and leave the personal innuendo out of this.

[ /Moderator Mode ]

Followed by:

@tomndebb

This hardly counts as a rant, and your attempt to belittle it as “so innocent” simply indicates that you seem unable to evaluate posts on their merits rather than whether they are more or less close to your own feelings.

And the usual two-line drive-by assholery from rjung.

It seems ad hominems and personal innuendo are only unwelcome under some circumstances. Gosh, I’m surprised!

[BrainGlutton]

@SteveG1

Did that make any sense, or am I rambling?

No, but you are ignoring the even more important fact that the basic circumstances of public life change in irreversible ways in every decade. Once women got the vote, there was no possibility it would ever be taken away from them. Once segregation was abolished, it was gone for good, even though white Southerners’ nostalgia for their irretrievably lost “way of life” was enough to give the South over to the Republicans from 1968 to the present. At present, gay rights are a big issue; gays might or might not ever win the right to form same-sex marriages with legal status exactly equal to that of straight marriages, but at any rate it is inconceivable the “pendulum” will ever swing far enough the other way to make sodomy a crime once again – something which seemed a natural and unalterable state of affairs as recently as the 1950s.

[BrainGlutton]

@Shodan

It seems ad hominems and personal innuendo are only unwelcome under some circumstances.

Shodan, accusing you of inability to evaluate posts on their merits is not “ad hominem” or “personal innuendo”; it is a criticism directed at the content of your posts in this thread so far, not at your general level of intelligence, carnal proclivities, personal hygienic habits or maternal genetic ancestry, fascinating as such topics might be.

[elucidator]

@BrainGlutton

… not at your general level of intelligence, carnal proclivities, personal hygienic habits or maternal genetic ancestry, fascinating as such topics might be.

I rush to be on record as having no such fascination, and will vigorously resist any attempt to bring such matters into public view.

[Rashak_Mani]

I think labeling current US tendencies as “fascism” kind of distorts things… after all we tend to compare that to Nazi Germany… which naturally isn’t where the US is headed too. It might be labeled corporate fascism this… or patriotic that… but it wouldn’t be fascism as we think about it for sure.

Another case in point is that many of the characteristics pointed out only happen outside the US and with foreigners (eg human rights)... so its "fascism" outside but more "populism" within the US IMO.

It would still take quite a few decades to become something more monstrous... but the fact that the initial signs are visible should be worry enough to most. It might be just war rhetoric or response to threat... but its hardly dismissable.

[tomndebb]

@Shodan

It seems ad hominems and personal innuendo are only unwelcome under some circumstances. Gosh, I’m surprised!

The original admonition to refrain from ad hominems was directed to all the posters. If you felt it was aimed at you, particularly, you might consider why you felt yourself selected from that group.

Brutus then chose to make another off-topic comment, without supplying any supporting facts or logic which is a mode that I perceive to be typical of his posts. (If he wishes to be better perceived as addressing the topic, then he should address the topic more frequently.)

rjung responded to your ad hominem with humor and an actual observation about the logic of your post. (Speaking of two-line drive-bys, that seems to be close to the number of lines in each of your and Brutus’s last posts.)

Please note that I do not particularly agree with the OP, and that I actually offered criticism of the material presented. I am not sure why you are trying to imply that I am showing any particular partiality, given that my only comment regarding the actual topic would seem to support your apparent position (had you addressed this topic rather than swiping at the posters).

[Jonathan_Chance]

@Jonathan Chance

Boy, Lib. When you’re right you’re right.

Frankly, if I was Howard Dean I’d immediately begin positioning the Democratic Party as the party of fiscal responsibility. There’s plenty of ammo there and it would take a while to get traction…but I’d be on it. There’s real gains to be made there.

Splitting the conservative coalition along economic/defense/religious fault lines should be job one.

Allow me to pat myself on the back.

Dean accuses Administration of ‘fiscal recklessness’.

[SteveG1]

@BrainGlutton

No, but you are ignoring the even more important fact that the basic circumstances of public life change in irreversible ways

Right again. Womens suffrage rocked a lot of boats in its time, it took a Civil War to finally abolish slavery, segregation was supposedly outlawed but in reality is just more subtle now. However, from time to time, we do see one group or another try to return to a “good old days” that either wasn’t very good or didn’t even exist.

[Brutus]

@tomndebb

…Brutus then chose to make another off-topic comment, without supplying any supporting facts or logic which is a mode that I perceive to be typical of his posts. (If he wishes to be better perceived as addressing the topic, then he should address the topic more frequently.)

You are talking about my comment to your post? You know, the one where you tell people to ‘leave the personal innuendo out of this’?

rjung responded to your ad hominem with humor and an actual observation about the logic of your post.

Humor? You do realize that tacking a onto a insult doesn’t diminish the insult when it is coming from that one, right? He has a history of doing that.

(Speaking of two-line drive-bys, that seems to be close to the number of lines in each of your and Brutus’s last posts.)

What was that about personal innuendo?

(had you addressed this topic rather than swiping at the posters).

Ironic or hypocritical or both?

[tomndebb]

Brutus, you need to discover what the word innuendo means.

I have made no passing reference to you in which a casual observer might be drawn to a conclusion that you are intellectually challenged, morally corrupt, or otherwise blemished. Rather, I have declared quite openly that you rarely participate in these discussion, relegating your comments to drive-bys, either caustic or facetious, that rarely move the discussion forward and almost never actually engage the discussion, itself. There is no “innuendo” in my statement. I have suggested that your approach may be an aspect of your personality over which you have no control, but I have not speculated as to why that should be.

Two-line drive-bys? Count the lines in your post and in Shodan’s. That was a factual observation, not innuendo.

There is no irony, here. If you choose to make your personality the focus of your posts, then your personality is the aspect of your posts to which people will respond.

Now, if you have substantive rebuttals ot the OP, I’m sure we’d be glad to see them. Making vague comments about the proper venue for “threads like this one” when you have not taken the time to establish what constitutes “threads like this one” does not count.

[laigle]

@John Mace

As for a certain “bomb them ay-rabs” mentality, that’s nothing new. There has always been a vocal minority holding this type of view for as long as I can remember.

Vocal I’ll grant, but for minority I’m going to need a cite.

[Brutus]

@tomndebb

Rather, I have declared quite openly that you rarely participate in these discussion, relegating your comments to drive-bys, either caustic or facetious…

Right. Well, lesson learned. From now on, I shall dutifully tag a to my drive-bys, thus elevating them to the realm of humor and actual observations.

[Shodan]

The only people who think rjung’s crap is worthwhile are lunatics and assholes.

That better?

[tomndebb]

Brutus, rjung’s response to Shodan was funny even without the smiley, just as there are many posters who find much of your stuff funny without smileys. (Maybe you should have tried to be funny instead of whiny in your first post, here.)

Shodan, it really is unseemly to be whining about the fact that I allowed a response to your personal attack on rjung, but now that you have that out of your system, I trust that you can pay attention to the topic and get off your persecution schtick?

At any rate, I feel you’ve both had enough fun playing martyr.
Do not interupt this thread with more of this silliness.

[ /Moderator Mode ]

[edwino]

I’ve been reading these comments on blogs and in editorial columns for a few months and been debating starting a thread like this.

I think of course that claiming that we are fascists is overblown. But note that no one is doing that. The OP asked a very focused questions, which I interpreted to mean: Are the seeds of fascism possibly being sown in the US at present?

We aren’t talking about Nazi Germany or Duce’s Italy – by then, it was too late. We are talking about conditions during the Weimar Republic that led people to cling to the Nazis as a solution. We are talking about a mindset that people had that welcomed a militarized, nationalistic, government. That led to the situation where dissent was nonpermissible not only because of nationalistic fervor, but because the government had replaced/merged with religion to a certain extent. That said, I think that conservatives around have no right to become defensive. Either you see these things or you don’t and either way is grounds for clean debate.

That said, there are a few things that really bother me about the political landscape today: the politics of fear, torture and human rights, quashing of dissent, and the embrace of faith as a policy-making tool. I think these feed into each other to create a particularly noxious atmosphere.

It doesn’t even matter what the original ideology is, but in today’s landscape, the invasion of Iraq serves as a nucleating point. The politics of fear is used to justify it and keep justification no matter how the situation changes. This in turn leads to a dehumanization of the enemy and allows the American populace to do things like approve of the illegal detention and torture of detainees. It draws the focus away from domestic missteps and towards a common enemy. Fear combines with the use of faith to allow the administration and its supporters to claim that they are above the law and that they are nearly infallible. Lastly, this facilitates a quashing of dissent. This happens IMHO far more on the right than on the left. The mass media will gladly put people on who actively call liberals traitors and it goes totally unnoticed. The equivalent people on the Left are moonbat college professors with no influence on anybody except maybe 15 people who read his book. [As an aside, IMHO the comparison of Michael Moore, with his one out-of-context line comparing Iraqi freedom fighters to minutemen, and Ann Coulter, who has written two books basically calling for liberals to be arrested and tried for treason (and graces the talk show punditry circuit much more than Moore) is ill-founded.]

With ancillary other factors – the consolidation of mass media, the power of incumbency, campaign financing, and steps which seem to indicate the future embrace of propoganda by the government – steps taken now may be very difficult to reverse. And since so many of the steps are so popular, there is no reason to suspect that the pendulum will ever swing back, especially with further terrorist attacks or wars. Personally, I think that many more moderate Republicans, especially secular ones in the Glenn Reynolds and Virginia Postrel mold who support this administration for their world-view on terror, will be cleaved off if changes become more pronounced.

The left in this country has to find a united voice, quickly, or else start bracing themselves for the possibility of having to leave.

[Snag]

Another sign of sliding towards fascism is our growing trend toward modern corporatism whereby business interests have been gaining untoward influence over our government through the use of lobbyists and ever greater financial support for political campaigns.

I believe the OP’s cite of Joe Wilson points towards this. IMO this could be the trend that mostly accelerates us down the slippery slope if we’re not careful, especially if one factors in the influence of the military-industrial entities.

[annaplurabelle]

@tomndebb

The rest of the list is either true of a lot of non-Fascist authoritarian states or true of totalitarian states or simply added to the list to make the point that Fascism is “bad.”

Maybe so, but would those features be any less worrisome if they can’t be strictly termed as traditionally fascist? I used American Fascism for a reason - I wouldn’t expect it to take the exact form of the European models. Would you?

@tomndebb

In addition to those points, I would note that Fascism has traditionally enhanced point #1 with a sense of “identity” (frequently, but not always racial)…

I can think of an “identity” model for what constitutes a “true” American to many people, but the precise parameters of who qualifies as “Us” or “Them” is still debatable. I chose “The Left” in my title and OP because I think they’ll most likely be blamed for any perceived failure in Iraq (similar to Vietnam), but there are other possibilities, and certainly there are gays, libertarians, and conservatives who are also worried.

@tomndebb

It also depends on a devotion to a charismatic leader (Duce, Fuehrer, Generalissimo, etc…) So far, none of these latter components have established themselves in the current American scene. (Even the people who chant “we must support the president” rarely set up shrines to worship any monumental W’s.)

I guess you missed those “Our Leader” billboards… Seriously, I think this is debatable too; “devotion” is out there:

Last year on Presidents Day, The Presidential Prayer Team made history by establishing the first ever Virtual Prayer Rally. The VPR brought together tens of thousands of concerned intercessors to pray for the President, his cabinet, our nation and our Armed Forces.

This 2003 Salon article covers “Bush Worship” in Young Republicans:

Some attendees were driven by spiritual conviction that seamlessly encompassed faith in two messiahs, Jesus and Bush. For the true believers, Bush is a man of wonder-working powers. Jason Cole, a 22-year-old senior at the University of Iowa, grew enamored of Bush when he heard his earnest, simple talk of God during the 1999 presidential campaign. Cole says he has little interest in working in politics beyond the 2004 election. “I do it,” he explained simply, “because I love President Bush.”

@BrainGlutton

Your OP does not explain “why the Left should be worried about losing in Iraq.”

From the AmCon article cited in the OP:

I don’t think there are yet real fascists in the administration, but there is certainly now a constituency for them —hungry to bomb foreigners and smash those Americans who might object. And when there are constituencies, leaders may not be far behind. They could be propelled into power by a populace ever more frustrated that the imperialist war it has supported—generally for the most banal of patriotic reasons—cannot possibly end in victory. And so scapegoats are sought, and if we can’t bomb Arabs into submission, or the French, domestic critics of Bush will serve.

[EsotericEnigma]

What we need here is a good old fashioned enilghtened monarchy. Where a ruler will make decisions based upon what he feels is best for the nation, without regard for popular opinion and without real congressional evaulation of his actions. There are too many laws restricting what our leaders can and can’t do, and I for one welcome a chance to cut through all the beaurocracy and miles of Red Tape. Hail to the chief!

Hey, everyone else is doing it, so I thought I’d stick my completely worthless mudslinging in this thread too. Who needs debates when you can just close your mind, form an opinion, and defend it like your honor no matter how ridiculous it is proven to be?

The bottom line is that comparing American society to any sort of fascist or pre-fascist state is premature at BEST, and I would bet money that anyone doing it is doing so only to serve their own political agenda. Scaring up support for your cause is sneaky and underhanded, and does more to piss everyone off while isolating yourself (sort of how moderates and conservatives are pissed off and liberals are isolated) than to generate any real support.

[Nietzsche]

I don’t agree with the idea that the U.S.'s is becoming fascist or even planting the seeds. I think there is still a phenomenal rage lingering from 9/11 which manifests itself in security and perhaps a little payback. Otherwise, I don’t think this administration is any more fascist than Reagan’s. But it is undoubtedly the best marketed so far.