Brad DeLong is circulating a draft of part of his new book (he gives permission to share it), in which he writes:
To seize power Mussolini needed to perform the role of the prophet of a new ideology, he then needed a doctrine to cloak his personal despotism, and he needed to keep his opponents divided and off-balance. To claim that his doctrine was “fascism”, and then to at every moment define “fascism” as what seemed tactically opportune, and then to play the trump card of asserting that contradictions and inconsistencies were in fact the point of the leadership principle that was at the core of fascism.
Thus one point of view is that there is no there there, there was no there there, there never was any there there: that fascism was always a confidence game run by con artists. The goal of the one promoting fascism was to become a leader in order to gain status, wealth, and power. In order to do that, he needed to find people who wanted to be led. And then he had to undertake a delicate psychological negotiation with them to figure out where they wanted to be led to. Only then could he enthrall them, and then pick their pockets.
Mussolini started out as a socialist. Then, in DeLong's telling, he decided that socialism as an ideology would be less effective at mobilizing mass enthusiasm and loyalty than ethno-nationalism. So that's the route he chose. There's plenty of evidence that Donald Trump has always been a racist, but he was originally a New York libertine who donated to Democratic candidates, was friends with the Clintons among other Democratic figures, and supported abortion rights. This picture is from Ivanka Trump's wedding. (The Clintons also attended his own wedding to Melania.)
But then he got the idea that he could win the Republican nomination for president by reaching into the swamps of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and white Christian nationalism, with an added dose of authoritarianism and cult of personality: "Only I can fix it." It turns out he was right. He probably didn't expect to win the general election but he did definitively reveal the true nature of the Republican voting bloc.
It turned out that in order to stay in the good graces of those Republican voters it was necessary to grovel before his every whim, no matter how insane. He had the largest inaugural crowd in history. Kim Jong Un is now our best buddy and will disarm. Vladimir Putin did not interfere in the 2016 election and you know it's true because he says so. There are good people on both sides of a neo-Nazi demonstration and counterprotest. (Well, most Republicans probably believed that already.) Covid 19 is magically going to away, and random quack treatments are effective. The people who claim that Hillary Clinton is the leader of a global conspiracy of Satan worshiping pedophile cannibals are patriots who love their country. Any Republican officeholder who took issue with any of this had to retire, because they couldn't be re-elected.
And now, even as the party has lost the presidency and control of the congress, even after the shocking Capitol invasion, they are embracing the loser ex-president all the more tightly, along with the insane conspiracy theories. The only explanation is that they have no real policy program. Congress scarcely passed any legislation when the Republicans controlled both houses, except for massive tax cuts for the wealthiest. (By the way, in case you didn't know it, that same legislation includes tax increases for middle income people starting this year, unless the Democrats can stop it.) The personality cult and the ethno-nationalism are all they've got.
Dear Moron: The vast majority of Biden executive orders have consisted of reversals of executive order issued by your Beloved Master. Why don't you try removing your nose from his anus long enough to look around you and observe reality?
I'll let Scott Lemieux "do" the ridiculous NYT editorial about Biden's executive actions. As the editorial itself notes, most of the actions are reversals of executive actions of the previous White House occupant. It would be nice to get them enshrined in legislation eventually, but Moscow Mitch isn't cooperating. Meanwhile, why wait?
18 comments:
Yep. That's all they've got. That and tax cuts for the biggest donors.
The weird part is it's a death cult. Everything Shitler touches dies; everyone who follows him gets screwed royally. The people suffer, species die, the Earth gets raped.
Weird.
But we're always looking to connect; it's in our wiring. If we're not connecting in a healthy way, we're connecting in another way--with drugs, hate, depression, anomie.
So Republicans are people who, in their negativity, or insecurity, or racism, or greed, or cynicism, or a combination of these, have given up on healthy connection.
They've gone to the Dark Side.
It's as I've said before, the GOP Central Committee (senior elected, large donors and bundlers, etc...) is a white shoe law firm representing a specific subset of capitalists in manufacturing, extraction, and assorted labor intensive industries. Tax, wage, and regulatory cuts are the entire program; all that gas about abortion, crime, race, etc... is just carnival barking to bring in voters. Thing is, when those voters see the actual proposals they reject them out of hand. Enter Trump, who ran on protecting social security along with using a bullhorn rather than a dog whistle. He locked up the nomination in SC by calling GWB a liar and humiliating JEB. The general election had nothing to do with Trump as an individual; republicans vote republican and the Clinton campaign failed miserably at turning out Dem base voters.
Biden won solely because Trump was such a cartoonish bugaboo that he drove that same Dem base to the polls in record numbers. The actual Biden campaign was a dismal affair that would have been crushed without the specter of coronavirus.
The question here isn't why or what the GOP is doubling down on, that's obvious. Their electorate hates them and will turf them out for any failing by now. That's the real story behind the GA runoffs: GOP base voters stayed home to punish their elected officials. The survivors got the message and will be toeing the line from now on. The real question is: why do appeals on racism, bibles, and guns work? For my money the answer is rather simple: anthropologists note that, in times of existential insecurity, people cling harder to tribal mores. Since the Dems have nothing to offer anyone other than the winners of the last four decades, they'll take what they can get from the GOP, which at least has the decency to lie to them.
And they are connecting, well and solid, along lines that liberals don't like to acknowledge. They connect far better than the left because it's wedded to a church schism style politics of denouncement and splintering. A left which is allergic to wielding power and has no broad unifying vision. Well, the right is developing such a vision, and they're not going away. We have four years to unfuck what "normal" has brought us and develop a vision of our own. If we don't they will retake the white house with a competent fascism carrying a real program in his brief case.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/pelosi-marjorie-taylor-greene-death-threat-sandy-hook-parkland-174418708.html
THE WHOLE FUCKING REPUBLICAN PARTY ATROCITY HAS GOT TO GO. SCRUBBED. ABOLISHED.IT IS AN ABOMINATION IN THE SIGHT OF WHATEVER YOU BELIEVE IN.
I don't care how it happens. But it needs to happen.
Musings by someone who stayed up too late:
Perhaps Trumpism is a case of unrecognized existential angst.
The Conservative self-concept is tied up in phrases like "individual liberty", "freedom", and "solely responsiblity for oneself". Søren Kierkegaard already thought through the implications of this line of thought in the early 1800's. He came up with some interesting consequences:
If each of us is a unique individual who is free to chart his or her path through life, nay responsible for charting that path, then it can be like no one else's; otherwise we'll be a slave to the choices made by someone else. Even the Bible contrasts the "straight and narrow" path of salvation to the broad and easy path to damnation that others thoughtlessly follow. Living Free means blazing a brand new path that no one else has ever been on. But then there's no one who can tell you if you're doing it right. Nobody has put up guard rails to keep you from falling off a cliff.
Kierkegaard compares it to the feeling of dizziness when staring into a "yawning abyss". Your gut's tied up in knots, but at the same time you have this mindless urge to jump. Scary as hell! I suspect that the kind of folks who don't care to pay attention to people like Søren can still have this same feeling. They just can't describe or even name it. Who is there who can show them how to manage?
Enter Donald Trump; a man who has made a point of making up his own rules. He even boasts about it. I think it is possible that people who are troubled by the nameless terror described above see him as a model for how its done. The more outrageous he is the more he establishes his bona fides as a trail blazer.
People who respond to MAGA are good people, they'll stop to help you if you have car trouble. They aren't self-centered asshole Libertarians. They're not ready to go full John Galt. They have souls. That's why they can have these feelings.
Notice how Trump schmoozes his followers. He's no Ayn Rand. He's a leader of a community of individualists and he'll show them how to be unique.
That's his genius.
This sounds like B.S., even to me. But its the only way I can make sense of the Trump phenomenon.
Really Chucky? good people who would stop to help if you have car trouble? Maybe if they are sure you're a white Christian conservative, but not if they were in a hurry to beat up a liberal. Because of the NYT paywall I'll give you this link to LG&M:
"As 34-year-old Rosanne Boyland lay dying on the steps of the Capitol on Jan. 6 after being crushed by a mob, fellow rioters were charging over her to attack police officers with crutches, a hockey stick and pepper spray, new police body camera footage shows.
Video obtained by The Times provides a previously unpublished view of the brutal fight between rioters and officers at a central entryway on the west side of the Capitol — the same one that President Biden used to descend to his inauguration ceremony two weeks later.
The footage shows how rioters, in their effort to attack the police, trampled on Ms. Boyland even as her friend, Justin Winchell, shouted that she was dying and needed help.
Federal prosecutors in Detroit played the video at a Jan. 25 court hearing in the case of Michael Joseph Foy, a Michigan man accused of attacking the officers with a hockey stick. The U.S. attorney’s office in Detroit provided the one minute and 20 second clip to The Times.
The footage appears to come from the body camera worn by one of four Metropolitan Police officers dragged out of the doorway and beaten by rioters during the hourslong battle. It begins at 4:26 p.m., just as officers have managed to push the mob out of the doorway. Inside, rioters had packed together in a dangerous crush in their attempt to force their way through the police and into the Capitol."
Mo, I didn't publish your last comment because I can't figure out what it's referring to. As for your first, as usual I don't fundamentally disagree but I think you're a bit too negative and pessimistic. There is more progressive energy among Democratic elected officials right now and they're talking about some things that could really matter, like a $15/hour minimum wage and massive investments in a low-carbon economy that would create a lot of decent jobs. This will matter to people. Whether they'll tax the rich -- and the most important thing would be a substantial inheritance tax on large estates -- remains to be seen. We need to find ways of mobilizing people that are powerful enough to defeat the big money. I'll continue my series about the rise of capitalism anon.
Cervantes, I was actually referring to a typical Trump follower, not the tip of the berg that showed up in D.C. on Jan 6.
I must admit that I was influenced by a December Zoom presentation by Prof. John Hibbing, U. of Nebraska-Lincoln, Psych Dept, of material from his new book The Securitarian Personality. He collected responses from a large number of people across the political spectrum to a fairly extensive set of questions. (I haven't yet read the book itself.)
The most surprising thing for me was the differences between Conservatives who were enthusiastic about Trump and Conservatives who weren't. The skeptics were much more like our image of a typical Conservative; rather pessimistic, cold, and hard-assed. The true believers were relatively more empathetic and optimistic; the kind of people who'd help you out if they saw you in trouble. Conservatives who haven't lost their humanity.
I grew up trying to believe the dogmas of the conservative, literalist denomination my parents and almost everyone I knew belonged to. It's a heavy load to believe that an Eternity of either ecstasy or agony hinges on your performance during the relative eye blink of one human lifetime.
Mix that with the Right's shrill rhetoric of "American" freedom, liberty, and self-determination, and you have a potent recipe for some serious existential angst.
I think that Donald Trump represents a way out for people not used to thinking critically at this level. He has magically cut the Gordian Knot of rules that bind us by making up his own. Don't ask me how that works.
BTW, I was able to look at the NYT article itself, and it shows that some rioters did indeed try to help Rosanne Boyland. They were just too late.
Again Chucky, you're overlooking the racism. I'm afraid I can't do that. Racists aren't actually nice.
People are complicated. "Racists" aren't nice ... hmm ... I suspect some of my friends in NE Florida are racist, and yet one of them was teaching at an all-African-American college.
People are complicated. Hitler liked babies ... as long as they weren't Jewish. I suppose it's a balance sheet. When someone's personal list of "cons" so grossly outweighs his or her "pros"--either in number or severity of heinous qualities--then for all practical purposes, he or she is like a barrel full of honey that's had a kilo of rat feces poured in it. It's harmful at that point.
In retrospect it was a rather ambiguous comment, esteemed Cervantes, and moment has passed.
I am forced to agree with both Chucky and The Don here. Individual bigotry and collective adherence to racism are just single aspects of any person's character. Reducing any person to one facet of themselves is to make them into a cartoon version of a human, which in turn is both unjust and strategically foolish. The american left's one dimensional characterization of these people is our greatest barrier to making political headway and only serves the interests of the capitalists and the leadership class. It gives the GOP an easy tool for isolating their voters and provides Dems an easy out when they do nothing and demand our votes. And in no case is racism the sole reason one might vote for Trump or literally any other GOP candidate.
As for the energy you identify in the Dems, that's all coming from outside the Party Central Committee. Raising the minimum wage is an easy lift now, almost political suicide to reject it, but it would never have originated in the minds of Schumer, Pelosi, or Biden. Do not forget that Obama tried to gut social security and was only stopped by to pig headed intransigence of a fraction of republicans who refused to "give him a win." Biden is making some hopeful noises but his track record leaves any thinking person deeply less than sanguine about the possibilities. The speed with which they climbed down from "$2000 cheques" campaign promise is instructive.
You are right that I am deeply pessimistic. That's part of being america's last conservative.
If you will permit an off-topic digression, estemado Cervantes?
The unwisdom of allowing private companies to set the boundaries of public speech just made itself painfully obvious with Book of Faces shutting down hundreds of left organization accounts and those of their managers. This is why folks like Greenwald, Chomsky, et. al. are such free speech absolutists. As I have said for decades: The price of freedom is putting up with other people's freedom.
Digression taken.
I agree, with one BIG, BIG caveat:
To paraphrase Cervantes, your "freedom" to swing your fist stops BEFORE it gets too close to my nose.
In matters both local, state and national, our society gives WAY too much consideration to "individual freedom" over the "purfuit of happineff." Just try getting the local authorities to do ANYTHING at all about the spitting lady of the Upper East Side (they finally moved her after over 1,000 incidents), or just a crazy neighbor across the street that our society should be helping, but won't--and it's at everyone else's expense.
What the Shame and Fear Boys did in the Capitol (let's call it like it is) and what Sludgery Hater Slime is doing in Congress, goes way, WAY beyond "free speech." It is hate speech, injurious, and cannot be allowed--precisely so that our society CAN be free.
Again, and I cannot stress this enough--we must all agree on what FREEDOM means. I, for instance, do NOT agree with my former Arizona far-right coworker that it is the sound of screaming jets that we send to bomb brown people. I believe that she said that because the jets represent the "protection and entitlement of her tribe."
Viz: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/sunday/when-is-speech-violence.html
Dearest Cervantes, I perceive that you are conflating ideas which I consider seperate for the sake of argument, even though they have some overlap on Earth. The first is distinguishing the boundaries of permissible speech from who gets to make and enforce such rules. Whatever the former are found to be it should be clear by now that the latter cannot be left to Zuckerberg, et. al.
The second is clearly about mental health, obviously something american society largely ignores. While this may sometimes be called freedom, it's really just penny-pinching foolishness or the sort that made millions homeless starting in the 80's. None of that is speech.
The third is rioting and seizure of halls of government, which may be a form of political speech, but is not one an organized society can tolerate. I suspect, however, that it is more a symptom of our progressive collapse than its etiology. The unfortunate reality is that a large and growing body of americans do not trust either the state, the government, or the bulwark private institutions, and with sadly good reason. This isn't some conspiracy nonsense, just the growing understanding that our elites have a distinct consensus which only occasionally intersects with the rest of ours, and that they feel no compunction to share information which might contradict their pronouncements.
The last is classified, generally, as hate speech and this is where we must disagree. While we can certainly restrict direct threats or incitements to violence, anything beyond that puts us on a very slippery slope. That may seem to imply a logical fallacy, but (a) the slope does exist and (b) in law it's called precedent. Threats and incitements provide us with a clear, bright line which is absolutely crucial to making and enforcing law. Going beyond that opens up a lot of gray area and, having known a couple prosecutors, will never trust them with this kind of power.
The larger and more important question, which that NYT article completely begs is: how much long term stress and cognitive damage is caused by individual hate speech as opposed to neoliberal austerity, meritocratic mythology, policing, or capitalism itself? To my mind this calls a deeper question: who benefits from publishing information like this while burying similar information on those other causes in scientific journals most PMC folks never see?
While we can certainly restrict direct threats or incitements to violence, anything beyond that puts us on a very slippery slope. That may seem to imply a logical fallacy, but (a) the slope does exist and (b) in law it's called precedent. Threats and incitements provide us with a clear, bright line which is absolutely crucial to making and enforcing law. Going beyond that opens up a lot of gray area and, having known a couple prosecutors, will never trust them with this kind of power.
This guy is a very thoughtful and a very good writer. He's very interesting. You don't have to agree with everything everybody says to like someone's writing.
Where can we find more of his stuff?
Hear, hear, Mo. That's my point: violence is violence, whether in obvious forms that hurt physically--or in the form of hate, emotional and financial abuse, prejudiced policing, and neglect. It's like the two police members that just got fired in Georgia because they were heard using the n-word and asserting that enslaved people had everything they needed, and just "had to work"--as if they weren't raped, beaten, and tortured in many forms.
We need common sense laws against hate speech, like they have in Germany--a country that knows a thing or 2,000 about hate speech--so that we CAN have freedom of speech.
And yes, the government needs to do the regulating, not social media companies.
PS: As Cervantes has correctly noted, there are no ABSOLUTE freedoms that can be guaranteed, simply because one person's freedom can encroach upon another's.
That said, as Mo is pointing out, the historically oppressive "freedoms" that the U.S. government instituted--the freedom to enslave, oppress, relocate, and kill entire populations--was always unacceptable and criminal. There has to be a national reckoning and fessing up on the part of this country, because only a rationally based country can enjoy true freedoms.
A lot of why we're in the shit we're in:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/opinion/michael-goldhaber-internet.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
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