There are 2 levels here, the internal politics of this power grab by WHITE America AND the outright abandonment of 70 years of America's foreign policy efforts.
In the first instance this is a "now or never" moment for White America to reassert segregationist ideals and policies. Since 1972 the Republican, and now MAGAt, party has been built on the understanding that ONLY the White vote mattered in American politics. When you could get 51% of the vote just by winning the majority of the White vote this was a "winning" strategy.
Since 1972 the Republicans/MAGAts have gotten about 2/3rds of the White vote in almost every election. Between 1968 and 2008 they ran the country 28 out of 40 years. If not for the flukes of the Carter and Clinton years they would have "run the board".
Demographically things have CHANGED.
We are set to become a "Minority Majority" nation between 2040 and 2050. One in which Whites are the biggest minority but where "non-whites" make up 51% of the population. Just like California has recently become and why Democrats are dominating state politics there.
These are the VERY LAST years that the MAGAts can win with 2/3rd's of the White vote and a "token" minority vote. Particularly since women under 30 DESPISE the MAGAt party over the abortion issue.
Trump got 2 out of 3 White American voters, that was about 44% of the population. The MAGAts got 1 out of 10 Black voters (almost all male), 1 out of 3 Hispanic voters (again, heavily male), and statistically 0% of the Asian-Pacific Islander-Indian (Native American) vote. The MAGAt party itself is 90% White and its members are MOSTLY over 55. Over the next 20 years a lot of them are going to die of old age.
So, if the Right wants to seize control of America and maintain a democratic facade, this is literally their "last chance". That could explain the internal state of American politics.
We are looking at a racially based "coup" as a once dominant racial group is loosing its grip on society. They are seizing control while they still can.
EXCEPT.
Usually when a group takes control of an empire, they want to CONTROL THE EMPIRE.
If this coup was strictly about internal US demographics and political/social fractures you would expect both sides to try and "keep up appearances" to our allies, friends, partners, and clients. Both sides would want to maintain the web of agreements and treaties that make the American Empire what it is today.
Both sides would want to maintain America's foreign position and power.
The MAGAts are walking away from the Empire. They are "pulling out" of the agreements/alliances/groups that ensure American influence and power. They are literally saying to the world "America First" and that all agreements made with the US will be honored only as long as we "feel like it".
The MAGAt Elites are suddenly acting as if none of this matters anymore. They are acting as if they expect the world to start collapsing VERY SOON. They are acting as if this is the ENDGAME for the current world order.
Which is WHY I think this is about the Climate Crisis.
Which is WHY I think 2 billion people are going to die by 2035.
Because, while I can believe White America would engage in a fascist coup in order to hold onto its racial privilege. I cannot see America's 1%ers and Elites accepting the abandonment of America's foreign power and risk destroying the American economy built on that power. Not unless they were convinced it was "necessary". Not unless they were convinced it was time to retreat into "Fortress America".
They only thing with the power to cause that kind of global collapse in the immediate future is the Climate Crisis.
While I agree with almost all of the essay, throughout history dictatorships never end well, I disagree that America will falter. The orange Nazi may have the upper hand now & in the coming months, but America will show what it always does: fight for democracy.
Like Syria’s Assad with Russia’s backing, decimated his country & could not be stopped for decades, yet was overthrown because of a surprising factor: Ukraine’s defiance of Russian invasion that had Russia bleeding literally of thousands of dead soldiers and, figuratively from the millions of rubles spent in the war.
Dictators falter because they think money flows forever, that their power knows no bounds and deadlines. Their largest mistake is to believe in permanence.
Their top-down ideology is the antithesis of the decentralization-of-power ideology of democracy. It’s the reason Ukraine, as small a country it is compared to Russia, has persisted and won in the 3 years of war defending their country. It’s the same reason America — the majority of us — will win against the few, the oligarchy currently holding power.
I wonder about putting some really good damning pieces together. A new Common Sense. Your last one would go in it, too, about all the consequences of the firing. I'd add this, which lately has been circulating on Facebook without an author. AI? Dunno, but it makes sense of how Trump is drawing from the Nazi Playbook. Ther's no link so I will post it all -- you can delete if you don't want so much in your backyard:
History repeating itself:
“In 1923 Adolf Hitler incited an insurrection against the German government. He was tried, given a slap on the wrist, and became a convicted felon. Despite being treated charitably by the judge, Hitler claimed the trial was political persecution and successfully portrayed himself as a victim of the “corrupt" Social Democrats.
Hitler cleverly positioned himself as the voice of the "common man," railing against the "elites," cultural "degeneracy," and the establishment, who he all labeled as "Marxists." He claimed the education system was indoctrinating children to hate Germany, and promised to return Germany to greatness.
To solidify his base, Hitler masterfully scapegoated minorities for the nation's problems, exploiting societal divisions with an "us vs. them" narrative. Many Germans took the bait. Hitler's Nazi Party continued to gain traction, until he became Chancellor in 1933.
Hitler appointed German oligarchs as his economic advisors. He proceeded to privatize government-run utilities, solidifying support of the economic elite.
With the working class divided along cultural and ethnic lines, the Nazis shut down workers unions and abolished strikes. Progressives and trade unionists were imprisoned and sent to concentration camps. Corporate profits skyrocketed while working class Germans lived paycheck to paycheck.
Hitler, who became a billionaire while in office, knew he and his clan of oligarchs could get away with the scam if they constantly had an "enemy within" to blame while the corporatocracy robbed the country blind.
An easy target was one of the smallest minorities. Hitler removed birthright citizenship rights of Jews and started rounding them up for mass deportations for being "illegally" in the country. The German press under Nazi rule highlighted instances of violence by Jews to convince the public that Jewish immigrants were a danger to the "real Germans."
Hitler wasted no time dismantling democratic institutions. Loyalty wasn't just encouraged; it was demanded. Opponents were silenced. Media that dared to questioned [sic] him were vilified as "the enemy" and "Marxists."
Hitler's Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, bragged about how the Nazis were able to intimidate the media into giving them favorable coverage, and didn't need to give direct orders. The Nazi regime and its followers collected all books they saw as promoting "degeneracy" or what would be considered "woke" today, and burned them in large bonfires. They also burned books that promoted class consciousness.
Berlin had a thriving LGBTQ community in the 1920s, and even had the first transgender clinic. The Nazis burned it to the ground. LGBTQ people were sent to concentration camps and forced to wear triangle badges. Many were killed in the Holocaust.”
******************
[I will interrupt this article here in order to express some of my own views and those of Stanley, which will serve to bolster the argument of the document I have been quoting by giving further examples to illustrate it.]
On May 10, 1933, some months after the fall of the Weimar Republic, and shortly after Hitler had become chancellor of Germany, one the most heinous defining acts of the new regime took place – the burning of many books, especially those by Jews. One of the primary targets was the entire archive of the Institute of Sexual Science, at the time the most extensive collection of queer theory in the world. Its director, Magnus Hirschfeld, became a target of the Nazis and was terrorized by them afterward. His Institute was later burned to the ground.
Freud’s books were also incinerated at the same time, and five years later, Freud himself was forced to flee to England. His sisters, however, were not so lucky. They all perished in Treblinka, a notorious death camp.
Of course, in this country, we don’t burn books; we ban them. One of the main themes of Stanley’s book is how important it is for fascist regimes to control the education of its youth. This is also taking place in America today, and perhaps the most flagrant example of this is what is happening in Ron DeSantis’s Florida. If you haven’t been following these worrisome developments, you might want to read about them in Stanley’s book where he covers them extensively.
Students are given a potted history of America, rooted in white supremacist doctrines and a sense of American exceptionalism – as well as a mythic past that never was.
In Florida’s schools these days, students are not told that our country was born with the double sins of the genocide of native Americans and the centrality of slavery. In fact, slavery was said to be not all that bad and did at least provide some useful tools for living. Never mind that slaves were not allowed to read. Let’s not bother to mention the Chinese exclusion act; the detention camps that Japanese-American citizens were sent to in 1942; the days of Jim Crow and the years of the Klan and lynching; the forced sterilization of poor and Black women. And so on – and on. No “critical race theory” allowed either.
Particularly troubling, of course, is the kind of sexual education – or lack of it -- that young students are exposed to. “Don’t say gay.” Pretend that it doesn’t exist and root it out and condemn it where it does.
Of course, I’m not suggesting that DeSantis himself is a fascist, but if you are familiar with the way fascist regimes are structured, you can see that he is drawing from the fascist playbook.
Stanley notes that the Nazi education system focused particularly on national greatness. In Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, the Führer-to-be wrote:
Only those who through school and upbringing learn to know the cultural, economic, and above all the political greatness of their own fatherland can and will achieve the inner pride in the privilege of being a member of such a people.
This is what Hitler’s youth were taught, so that later they could become good warriors, wearing their brown shirts and brandishing their cudgels, and later, stormtroopers, stoking and committing violence to intimidate any opposition or resistance to the leader’s edicts.
Then there is the problem of diversity, which is quickly becoming in our country a dirty word. Diversity, according to our President, a self-proclaimed expert on aviation, is even said to have been the cause of a recent airline collision. In any case, as in all fascist regimes, diversity is a threat and must be stamped out.
Perhaps the most shocking and shameful example of this tendency is the current attack on trans people that is now taking place in America, particularly by Republicans and led by Trump himself, whose recent diktats now make it impossible for trans people to pursue or continue their hormonal therapy. If you are a trans person in today’s America, you are now an un-person, if not stuck in transition. According to our President, again a soi-disant expert in gender studies, there are just two sexes: male and female. There is nothing in between or other. This, too, is Fascism 101.
This is how Stanley sums up this litany of horrors:
These themes are essentially different ways that fascist movements stoke grievances among the dominant group they serve in order to further their aims. In the process, they are careful to eliminate any contradiction in their narrative. This would include, for example, any scholarly research revealing flaws in national myths, any form of education that clearly reveals national guilt, any suggestion that diversity and plurality might be beneficial to society, or that more equitable gender relations might be beneficial, or that the political left is significantly less of a threat than they imagine.
[Furthermore], fascist social and political movements thrive on a sense of grievance.
Wonderful article, as always. I agree with Richard's comment as to motivations. This 'game' is playing out against an inexorable clock with no time outs left. My money is on the clock....
Serious discussion on the farm whether it makes sense to plant some fruit trees, if there is enough time for them to reach harvest maturity. We're farmers so we probably will, if we had any sense we wouldn't be doing this anyway....
There are 2 levels here, the internal politics of this power grab by WHITE America AND the outright abandonment of 70 years of America's foreign policy efforts.
In the first instance this is a "now or never" moment for White America to reassert segregationist ideals and policies. Since 1972 the Republican, and now MAGAt, party has been built on the understanding that ONLY the White vote mattered in American politics. When you could get 51% of the vote just by winning the majority of the White vote this was a "winning" strategy.
Since 1972 the Republicans/MAGAts have gotten about 2/3rds of the White vote in almost every election. Between 1968 and 2008 they ran the country 28 out of 40 years. If not for the flukes of the Carter and Clinton years they would have "run the board".
Demographically things have CHANGED.
We are set to become a "Minority Majority" nation between 2040 and 2050. One in which Whites are the biggest minority but where "non-whites" make up 51% of the population. Just like California has recently become and why Democrats are dominating state politics there.
These are the VERY LAST years that the MAGAts can win with 2/3rd's of the White vote and a "token" minority vote. Particularly since women under 30 DESPISE the MAGAt party over the abortion issue.
Trump got 2 out of 3 White American voters, that was about 44% of the population. The MAGAts got 1 out of 10 Black voters (almost all male), 1 out of 3 Hispanic voters (again, heavily male), and statistically 0% of the Asian-Pacific Islander-Indian (Native American) vote. The MAGAt party itself is 90% White and its members are MOSTLY over 55. Over the next 20 years a lot of them are going to die of old age.
So, if the Right wants to seize control of America and maintain a democratic facade, this is literally their "last chance". That could explain the internal state of American politics.
We are looking at a racially based "coup" as a once dominant racial group is loosing its grip on society. They are seizing control while they still can.
EXCEPT.
Usually when a group takes control of an empire, they want to CONTROL THE EMPIRE.
If this coup was strictly about internal US demographics and political/social fractures you would expect both sides to try and "keep up appearances" to our allies, friends, partners, and clients. Both sides would want to maintain the web of agreements and treaties that make the American Empire what it is today.
Both sides would want to maintain America's foreign position and power.
The MAGAts are walking away from the Empire. They are "pulling out" of the agreements/alliances/groups that ensure American influence and power. They are literally saying to the world "America First" and that all agreements made with the US will be honored only as long as we "feel like it".
The MAGAt Elites are suddenly acting as if none of this matters anymore. They are acting as if they expect the world to start collapsing VERY SOON. They are acting as if this is the ENDGAME for the current world order.
Which is WHY I think this is about the Climate Crisis.
Which is WHY I think 2 billion people are going to die by 2035.
Because, while I can believe White America would engage in a fascist coup in order to hold onto its racial privilege. I cannot see America's 1%ers and Elites accepting the abandonment of America's foreign power and risk destroying the American economy built on that power. Not unless they were convinced it was "necessary". Not unless they were convinced it was time to retreat into "Fortress America".
They only thing with the power to cause that kind of global collapse in the immediate future is the Climate Crisis.
Yes. Their actions can only be explained by expected climate collapse. They've seen the charts. They know.
https://www.collapse2050.com/why-the-u-s-is-threatening-greenland-and-canada/
While I agree with almost all of the essay, throughout history dictatorships never end well, I disagree that America will falter. The orange Nazi may have the upper hand now & in the coming months, but America will show what it always does: fight for democracy.
Like Syria’s Assad with Russia’s backing, decimated his country & could not be stopped for decades, yet was overthrown because of a surprising factor: Ukraine’s defiance of Russian invasion that had Russia bleeding literally of thousands of dead soldiers and, figuratively from the millions of rubles spent in the war.
Dictators falter because they think money flows forever, that their power knows no bounds and deadlines. Their largest mistake is to believe in permanence.
Their top-down ideology is the antithesis of the decentralization-of-power ideology of democracy. It’s the reason Ukraine, as small a country it is compared to Russia, has persisted and won in the 3 years of war defending their country. It’s the same reason America — the majority of us — will win against the few, the oligarchy currently holding power.
I wonder about putting some really good damning pieces together. A new Common Sense. Your last one would go in it, too, about all the consequences of the firing. I'd add this, which lately has been circulating on Facebook without an author. AI? Dunno, but it makes sense of how Trump is drawing from the Nazi Playbook. Ther's no link so I will post it all -- you can delete if you don't want so much in your backyard:
History repeating itself:
“In 1923 Adolf Hitler incited an insurrection against the German government. He was tried, given a slap on the wrist, and became a convicted felon. Despite being treated charitably by the judge, Hitler claimed the trial was political persecution and successfully portrayed himself as a victim of the “corrupt" Social Democrats.
Hitler cleverly positioned himself as the voice of the "common man," railing against the "elites," cultural "degeneracy," and the establishment, who he all labeled as "Marxists." He claimed the education system was indoctrinating children to hate Germany, and promised to return Germany to greatness.
To solidify his base, Hitler masterfully scapegoated minorities for the nation's problems, exploiting societal divisions with an "us vs. them" narrative. Many Germans took the bait. Hitler's Nazi Party continued to gain traction, until he became Chancellor in 1933.
Hitler appointed German oligarchs as his economic advisors. He proceeded to privatize government-run utilities, solidifying support of the economic elite.
With the working class divided along cultural and ethnic lines, the Nazis shut down workers unions and abolished strikes. Progressives and trade unionists were imprisoned and sent to concentration camps. Corporate profits skyrocketed while working class Germans lived paycheck to paycheck.
Hitler, who became a billionaire while in office, knew he and his clan of oligarchs could get away with the scam if they constantly had an "enemy within" to blame while the corporatocracy robbed the country blind.
An easy target was one of the smallest minorities. Hitler removed birthright citizenship rights of Jews and started rounding them up for mass deportations for being "illegally" in the country. The German press under Nazi rule highlighted instances of violence by Jews to convince the public that Jewish immigrants were a danger to the "real Germans."
Hitler wasted no time dismantling democratic institutions. Loyalty wasn't just encouraged; it was demanded. Opponents were silenced. Media that dared to questioned [sic] him were vilified as "the enemy" and "Marxists."
Hitler's Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, bragged about how the Nazis were able to intimidate the media into giving them favorable coverage, and didn't need to give direct orders. The Nazi regime and its followers collected all books they saw as promoting "degeneracy" or what would be considered "woke" today, and burned them in large bonfires. They also burned books that promoted class consciousness.
Berlin had a thriving LGBTQ community in the 1920s, and even had the first transgender clinic. The Nazis burned it to the ground. LGBTQ people were sent to concentration camps and forced to wear triangle badges. Many were killed in the Holocaust.”
******************
[I will interrupt this article here in order to express some of my own views and those of Stanley, which will serve to bolster the argument of the document I have been quoting by giving further examples to illustrate it.]
On May 10, 1933, some months after the fall of the Weimar Republic, and shortly after Hitler had become chancellor of Germany, one the most heinous defining acts of the new regime took place – the burning of many books, especially those by Jews. One of the primary targets was the entire archive of the Institute of Sexual Science, at the time the most extensive collection of queer theory in the world. Its director, Magnus Hirschfeld, became a target of the Nazis and was terrorized by them afterward. His Institute was later burned to the ground.
Freud’s books were also incinerated at the same time, and five years later, Freud himself was forced to flee to England. His sisters, however, were not so lucky. They all perished in Treblinka, a notorious death camp.
Of course, in this country, we don’t burn books; we ban them. One of the main themes of Stanley’s book is how important it is for fascist regimes to control the education of its youth. This is also taking place in America today, and perhaps the most flagrant example of this is what is happening in Ron DeSantis’s Florida. If you haven’t been following these worrisome developments, you might want to read about them in Stanley’s book where he covers them extensively.
Students are given a potted history of America, rooted in white supremacist doctrines and a sense of American exceptionalism – as well as a mythic past that never was.
In Florida’s schools these days, students are not told that our country was born with the double sins of the genocide of native Americans and the centrality of slavery. In fact, slavery was said to be not all that bad and did at least provide some useful tools for living. Never mind that slaves were not allowed to read. Let’s not bother to mention the Chinese exclusion act; the detention camps that Japanese-American citizens were sent to in 1942; the days of Jim Crow and the years of the Klan and lynching; the forced sterilization of poor and Black women. And so on – and on. No “critical race theory” allowed either.
Particularly troubling, of course, is the kind of sexual education – or lack of it -- that young students are exposed to. “Don’t say gay.” Pretend that it doesn’t exist and root it out and condemn it where it does.
Of course, I’m not suggesting that DeSantis himself is a fascist, but if you are familiar with the way fascist regimes are structured, you can see that he is drawing from the fascist playbook.
Stanley notes that the Nazi education system focused particularly on national greatness. In Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, the Führer-to-be wrote:
Only those who through school and upbringing learn to know the cultural, economic, and above all the political greatness of their own fatherland can and will achieve the inner pride in the privilege of being a member of such a people.
This is what Hitler’s youth were taught, so that later they could become good warriors, wearing their brown shirts and brandishing their cudgels, and later, stormtroopers, stoking and committing violence to intimidate any opposition or resistance to the leader’s edicts.
Then there is the problem of diversity, which is quickly becoming in our country a dirty word. Diversity, according to our President, a self-proclaimed expert on aviation, is even said to have been the cause of a recent airline collision. In any case, as in all fascist regimes, diversity is a threat and must be stamped out.
Perhaps the most shocking and shameful example of this tendency is the current attack on trans people that is now taking place in America, particularly by Republicans and led by Trump himself, whose recent diktats now make it impossible for trans people to pursue or continue their hormonal therapy. If you are a trans person in today’s America, you are now an un-person, if not stuck in transition. According to our President, again a soi-disant expert in gender studies, there are just two sexes: male and female. There is nothing in between or other. This, too, is Fascism 101.
This is how Stanley sums up this litany of horrors:
These themes are essentially different ways that fascist movements stoke grievances among the dominant group they serve in order to further their aims. In the process, they are careful to eliminate any contradiction in their narrative. This would include, for example, any scholarly research revealing flaws in national myths, any form of education that clearly reveals national guilt, any suggestion that diversity and plurality might be beneficial to society, or that more equitable gender relations might be beneficial, or that the political left is significantly less of a threat than they imagine.
[Furthermore], fascist social and political movements thrive on a sense of grievance.
Sound familiar?
Wonderful article, as always. I agree with Richard's comment as to motivations. This 'game' is playing out against an inexorable clock with no time outs left. My money is on the clock....
Serious discussion on the farm whether it makes sense to plant some fruit trees, if there is enough time for them to reach harvest maturity. We're farmers so we probably will, if we had any sense we wouldn't be doing this anyway....