Galloping Fascism

"Donald Trump Is Becoming an Authoritarian Leader Before Our Very Eyes"

In the New Republic

"Donald Trump [henceforth to be called Dear Leader] on Friday issued a proclamation declaring January 20, 2017, the day of his inauguration, a “National Day of Patriotic Devotion.” The decree was uploaded to the Federal Register on Monday…”

In the Daily Beast

"The White House has shut down its public comment line, instead telling callers, with an automated message, that they should contact the new administration via Facebook Messenger instead. There’s only one problem: Neither the White House nor President Donald Trump seem to currently maintain an active Facebook Messenger account."

In Variety

"A provision tucked into the defense bill guts the Voice of America board, stoking fears that Trump could wield a powerful propaganda arm."

In Politico

In his rambling angry speech at the CIA on Saturday [President] Trump said America should reinvade Iraq and take their oil. The words were different, but the rationale is the same as the one that Germany used when they invaded Eastern Europe in 1939-1941.

Reported by Juan Cole

Newt Gingrich, a familiar proxy for [President] Trump, said something the other day that sounded disturbingly fascist and authoritarian. Speaking of employees of the federal government, Gingrich said “All those bureaucrats overwhelmingly voted for Clinton. There won’t be any real cooperation until we change federal law so we can fire them.”

In Salon

The Confederacy Has Won The Civil War

POLITICO has a very good article today about how the Republicans have managed to break our democracy.

The American people have, for over a decade, been saying they are sick and tired of government that doesn’t work.

Which is why they have elected the party that made government stop working.

It is a Southern revolt, Southern-driven, a revolt led by men with Southern accents and Southern roots and values. A barely disguised racism plays a key part. Racism seems to work for the Republican Party. The Republican Party is the Old Confederacy reborn.

If you dig a little you’ll find some racism in most white Americans, not a basic or an overriding racism but a small tumor of racism that you can cultivate and prod into metastasizing if you work at it. The Republican Party has become very good at cultivating this tumor in a lot of people.

John Dean famously said “There is a cancer on the presidency.” He was trying to warn Richard Nixon that his problems were fatal. Now you could say cancer has won the presidency. The Republican Party, which most of this past year seemed in the final stages of collapse has regained its vigor. They have done this by realizing they are the cancer.

Cancer is practically unstoppable without very unpleasant side effects. Nobody likes cancer. Everybody is deathly afraid of cancer. This explains its power, and maybe it explains the power of the Republican Party right now. They are the party of failing government and a degraded working class and racism and the theft of our American Dream by Wall Street billionaires and banking billionaires and healthcare billionaires. Why have we voted to empower the same people who have degraded our lives?

This election has played out like the Chris Rock joke: “I’m really angry that Obama hasn’t cured cancer. So you know what? I’m gonna vote for cancer!”

It makes no sense, that’s why it’s a good joke. It makes no sense but it is exactly what has happened. Reality doesn’t have to make sense. People behave stupidly. Large groups of people are especially prone to stupidity. Which is why the Founding Fathers invented the Electoral College, which tomorrow will finalize the election of a stupid, corrupt, ignorant, treasonous man to the presidency over the objections of a majority of the voters.

The Electoral College isn’t a perfect thing. It isn’t just a safeguard against mob rule. It’s also a relic of America’s slave past, designed to safeguard the less populous states (The South) from having their slaves freed.

It’s as if the Civil War hadn’t ended in 1865 with the defeat of Lee. It’s as if the assassination of Lincoln was the more important event, the continuation of war that led to Jim Crow and the murders and lynchings of many thousands of black citizens.

It seems like the dominant rump of our Congress is itself a recidivist remnant of the old Confederacy. The American flag pins in their lapels are only a disguise. The South never forgot the Civil War cause. They never really surrendered as a people, never accepted the values Lincoln set out for us, never relinquished the comfortable idea that whiteness is superior. And they have been an invading army long after Meade turned Lee back at Gettysburg. They have invaded, infiltrated and infected the northern states with their bigotry. Bigotry isn’t the goal, though, it is simply a tool.

Of course all white Americans have bigotry in them. It just needs bringing out. The racism in northern cities is different from the racism of the South. In some cases it seems more virulent.

The material that helps breed racism and division is what Republicanism has been manufacturing for decades: the careful degradation of working lives, the careful degradation of public sector protections of working people, the careful degradation of our democratic institutions which guarantee our rights.

The Republican goal has been to break the whole American democracy so people feel powerless, because powerlessness makes people angry, and anger makes them more easily divided and defeated.

In a way these unreconstructed Confederates have taken the Union strategy that defeated them in 1865 and turned it upon the North itself. Grant and most memorably Sherman took the war directly to the Southern infrastructure and broke it down. Sherman’s march to the sea burned a wide path of destruction from Atlanta to the sea, cutting the Confederacy in two.

Look at the Republican strategy unfolding this weekend in North Carolina. (Described here at MEDIUM) The defeated Republican governor is hurriedly destroying the power of his office before he surrenders it to the Democrat who defeated him.

Look at what Republican rule has done in Kansas (reported by USNews) and in Michigan (...Yo––Flint? Poisoned drinking water?) or what Scott Walker has done to Wisconsin, or just go read Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann's books about the march of Republican dysfunction from DC to the states

The modern Republican Confederates have brought their industrial and infrastructure and political destruction north to Michigan, to Ohio, to Wisconsin, to western Pennsylvania. Those places now feel like the old South––poorer working people, jobs gone, water systems broken, universities in decline (the Southern universities––not all of them certainly but many––have long been a great example of poorer education and superior football), bridges decaying, social fabric frayed, systems dysfunctional––and the dysfunction has been carefully achieved under strict Republican principles. Principles very unlike the ones that shaped the party under Lincoln, principles directly opposed to the founding ones, just as the designs of the modern “conservative” Republicans directly contradict the pocket Constitutions they carry around in their pockets and the flag pins they wear on their lapels.

Trump Supporters Are Openly Discussing Assassination

Then there is this video story, reported in the Wall Street Journal, of all places.

The Trump juggernaut may be shrinking, but it remains heavily armed and very angry. The alternative course they are discussing, if Trump is not elected president, is for "true patriots” to assassinate President Hillary Clinton.

Politics have reached a dangerous point.

Eight years ago, as President Obama was being inaugurated, Republican leaders met at a Washington D.C. restaurant and swore to oppose everything he proposed and block every person he appointed.

In the antebellum South this was called Nullification. Slave states that didn’t like federal laws limiting the rights of slaveowners and slave traders would simply ignore those federal laws, and ignore any federal courts that upheld them.

In a way, Obama faced what Lincoln faced. When Lincoln became president half the country seceded. That clarified Lincoln’s predicament. But most of these past eight years the modern nullifiers remained in control of Congress, disguising their racism as principle, defying the Constitution while worshiping it, serving in government while actively trying to degrade and destroy its functioning, pouring sand in the works, stirring people’s fear and hatred of our democratic institutions and urging defiance.

When Lincoln's armies won the Civil War, the South was absorbed back into the Union but it remained the same. The treasonous leaders of the rebellion were not hung, they were appointed to head universities. When the South successfully re-suppressed the black majority those Confederate leaders became governors and senators. The new Jim Crow South was, in many places, worse than it had been under slavery.

The United States government did not hang the traitors who had led the rebellion, but one of their embittered followers did assassinate Lincoln.

Your Daily Trump

I realize I'm not posting these every day, but the news items come out every day, several each day, and the title is catchy. Will it keep him from being nominated at the convention? Maybe. If it does there will be mayhem. The mob doesn't care if he's a swindler or a liar or a thief or a rapist (that's the newest story).

The Gothamist, out of NY, reports that Trump is being sued for the alleged violent rape of a 13 year-old girl in 1994. He also allegedly threatened to kill her and her family if she ever spoke about it.

Trump’s bankruptcies: his companies tanked but he pocketed lots of money. Is this true? Politifact says yes it is.

Trump’s campaign seems to be paying a lot of its money to Trump himself. What a con trick. WinningDemocrats has the details.

Trump’s mob connections? Well known.

Reported by CNN.

Verified by Politifact.

Trump’s “christian” backers are from that wing of Christianity that says Jesus favored the rich.

The Daily Beast has the story on this, but there are other reports readily available. Trump will roll Christians as readily as he will roll gamblers at his casinos. And the Christians he rolls with are con men of a similar type.

Minnesota Public Radio is reporting that one of Trump's top “christian” advisors is Michele Bachmann. You kind of wonder. Does she support Trump because she thinks he’ll bring the end of the world? Possibly, because when the world ends, Jesus will come, or so she believes. Which may explain how bizarre and deranged her ideas are. Planned catastrophe in the name of her savior. Like throwing your children in front of a car or off a bridge so Jesus will save them. A dangerous kind of psychopath.

This bizarre idea of Bachmann's is may represent another plan to fulfill one of her favorite biblical prophesies. Place America in such imminent danger that wiser heads will step in, allowing her to point and say “See? The Antichrist. Just like the Bible says.” Bushwa. LeftWingNation has the audio of Michele discussing Obama's evil plan in a radio interview.

CBSNews is quoting former first lady Barbara Bush: “I don’t know how women can vote for Trump.”

To balance all of the white haired Republican ladies in their pumps and pearls, we have the millions of Trump’s other more unpleasant followers. From the New Republic.

The Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Party

I can’t decide how to characterize the GOP these days.

Are they the stupid party?

The New York Times, not prone to such language, called them idiots after their letter to Iran.

Alternet reports on the author of that letter, Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), telling an uninsured constituent not to use Obamacare because Russian mobsters would steal her identity...

Stupid?

Or are they the incredibly insanely horrible party?

Raw Story reports on a GOP candidate in Indiana expressing frustration that nobody has the guts to let people just wither and die. (Death panels, anyone?)

Vox is reporting that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) promised if he were president he would send troops into Congress. (Would he wear knee pants and lace like Oliver Cromwell?)

From DailyKos: A state senator in Missouri has raised a few eyebrows for subjecting two abused girls with severe emotional problems to exorcisms. When the exorcisms failed to work as expected he gave one of the girls to a friend who raped her. He insists that he is the victim.

Raw Story: Former Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson recently advised a caller to his television program to quit her job because working alongside Buddhists might infect her with Buddhism. Buddhism being a kind of disease.

It hasn’t always been this way. A new book reviewed in the Washington Post describes how the Republican Party used to be the practical party, the party that got things done, the progressive, problem-solving party. It’s been downhill since Eisenhower.

Letter to George Will

(George Will gave some advice to Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker about the stupidity of science denial. Which prompted me to write this letter.)

Mr. Will,

I sympathize with your situation, having to advise a Republican frontrunner to acknowledge science and reality. It must be embarrassing.

John McCain corrected a woman in the crowd during his campaign who said Obama was a Muslim. Then it seemed the only rational thing to do.

The problem is the Republican Party has spent the years since then catering to this same ignorant prejudice. Actually they’ve been doing it longer, if you consider Lee Atwater's and Roger Ailes' and Pat Buchanan’s not so subtle dog whistle bigotry. This past week we also have Giuliani’s ugly, ignorant remarks.

Why cater to ignorance? Because it’s worked for you. It’s elected right wing Republicans, each one further right than the last, each one more out of touch with reality. Each one more cynical and dishonest and nutty.

And this has made your party the cynical dishonest nutty bigoted party. It wins elections for you.

Well (and I realize it’s totally wrong to use this analogy) this kind of nutty cynical dishonest bigotry also helped Hitler win elections.

If it works it becomes compulsory? That seems to be the rationale Republicans have imported from the business world. It’s wrong and dangerous in both places. It’s endangering the climate our food supply is based on, it’s endangering our democracy, it’s endangering our economy, it’s endangering our future.

You have a lot of work to do unwinding this.

Of course, if you think it’s more important to carry water for the Republicans in next year’s election… if that’s more important to you and the other commentators on the right, God help us.

The Fear Card

Freedom of speech now protects the sacred right to yell fire in a crowded theatre as long as it is for political purposes. We’re that crowded theatre.

This is what Republicans and the Republican news network are doing these last few weeks before the election. Ginning up irrational fears that Islamic extremists and ebola are on the verge of killing thousands of Americans. These fears are irrational. The danger is remote. Of course we only have scientists and national security professionals to trust on that. Why believe experts when there are attractive blondes on Fox telling us ebola is just outside the door and Islamic terrorists hiding under the bed? Pretending these threats are imminent here in America is shrewd politics. Never mind the ethics or the dishonesty problem.

“Be afraid. Vote Republican!"

Fear is persuasive and the FoxNews strategy is making us into a nation of cowards. Working towards that goal would once have been called unpatriotic, unAmerican, but we mustn’t speak ill of a major network, particularly one that is so obviously losing its mind. It would be impolite.

Neither problem is made any easier to handle when Republicans slash CDC budgets and the budgets of other key government agencies.

Isis is emboldened by Republicans’ persistent and dangerous efforts to undermine and handicap the president and our federal government at home and abroad.

Fear is the GOP’s stock in trade. They have an entire network devoted to creating fear and suspicion and hatred and anger in American viewers.

News media are so intimidated by Republicans they are afraid to call a lie a lie or an extremist and extremist lest they appear “partisan.” Genuine science is diminished when our public conversation has to give equal respect to irrational, unscientific garbage. Honesty used to be considered the best measure of fairness. But money now does our talking for us.

Money is now speech, as surely as corporations are now people. Which has the effect of diminishing the freedoms of the rest of us who are not corporations and are strapped for money. Love money? Want money? Help sell the right wing agenda; money will pour in. Money is the ultimate validation in the new Republican value system. If you own for a living, you are holy. But if you work for a living, be prepared to show your papers. Be prepared to prove you’re a legitimate member of society.

The Rich Live Larger And Longer Than You And Me

I read an interesting article at the Atlantic and it got me thinking...

The core philosophy of the Republican Party these days is that a problem only exists if you spend money on it, meaning tax dollars, meaning THEIR tax dollars.

If you stop spending money trying to solve poverty (or the healthcare crisis) the problem ceases to exist.

In the mind of the Republican Party, poverty is only a problem because solving it costs rich people money they’d rather spend on another home in another tropical tax haven or on another corporate takeover.

If you stop spending money to alleviate poverty or the ill health of poor people the poor will go away and die and solve the problem more cheaply and therefore more efficiently.

As Scrooge said “Let them die then and decrease the surplus population.”

Why the American public doesn’t find this repugnant is a mystery until you realize that vast wealth also buys a lot of PR, a lot of network time, or, in the case of FoxNews, a whole network. (The Koch Brothers now hold a partial veto power over programming on PBS because they help fund it.) The .1% own most of the media.

The rich are not necessarily fascists, but they benefit from fascist policies so they often aren’t inclined to oppose them. It takes time out of their leisurely existence. Those who donate to liberal and progressive causes are to be applauded. They are acting against their own financial interests, just as the rural poor are voting against theirs, but what use are so few in the face of so many?

There is a meme going around that suggests that poverty is caused by the poor. You hear this on right wing talk radio.

Oddly enough, it’s true. In a way not quite captured by the right wing meme.

The poor who listen to right wing radio and watch FoxNews and nod obediently are helping deepen their own poverty and ignorance and ill health, by cooperating with the rejection of ObamaCare and by disbelieving science, by obeying their masters, by voting for Republican candidates who perpetuate their powerlessness. They are not stupid people, even though they are behaving stupidly. They are ignorant, not stupid. They may not even be ignorant, just ignorant of their predicament. They have been conned and are now invested in that con game, too embarrassed to admit it, because admitting you were tricked is harder than losing what was stolen from you in the process.

You have to reach a very low point before you admit you did something dumb, and, luckily for the Republican Party, most of the poor people who vote for them would rather die first.

Republicans' Rationalizations for Rape

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." Todd Akin, Republican Senate candidate from Missouri.

Right now Akin sits on the Republican majority's side of the House Science Committee but he has no clue about the science of human reproduction. Nor does his Republican House colleague Steve King.

Republican Congressman Steve King: "I’ve Never Heard Of A Girl Getting Pregnant From Statutory Rape Or Incest"

Todd Akin and Steve King coauthored a bill in Congress last year that would limit a rape victim's access to abortion to women who were victims of "forcible rape". In other words a woman or girl would be expected to carry her rapist's child to term if he didn't break her arm or her nose, or maybe if he said thank-you afterwards.

The other co-sponsor of HR3, this draconian restriction of reproductive rights that redefined rape? Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's running mate.

Today's Republican Party (which is writing these issues into their national platform as we speak) values a fertilized egg (in many cases an egg that has not even been fertilized yet but may if contraceptives are not available) values its rights above those of women and girls who have been assaulted. A single cell, a sperm cell, a infinitely small bundle of cells, created by a criminal assault, trump the rights of a living person. Women and girls have a lower status than their male assailants in the estimation of this modern Republican Party. Rapists' rights to parenthood are sacred to the GOP.

It isn't only Republican men who hold these medieval beliefs. This prominent Republican said rape can be a blessing from God.

"If God has chosen to bless this person [the rape victim] with a life, you don’t kill it." Sharon Barnes, Vice President, Membership Committee, National Association of Republican Women and a leader in Missouri Republican politics. Rape a blessing?

When asked what she would say to a young girl who has been raped by her father, Nevada Republican and Harry Reid's opponent in 2010, Sharron Angle said carrying her rapist's child to term would be like making lemonade when life gives you lemons.

This narrowing and redefining of rape is nothing new to Republican politics. Republicans have a history of rationalizing and excusing and defending rape and rapists, basing these rationalizations on old myths and good-old-boy fairy tales. They've carefully instructed their candidates and spokesmen to use certain terms that put the burden back on the rape victim and narrow her rights and her options, that make the rape victim responsible for the crime.

"When pro-lifers speak of rape pregnancies, we should commonly use the phrase "forcible rape" or "assault rape," for that specifies what we're talking about. Rape can also be statutory. Depending upon your state law, statutory rape can be consensual, but we're not addressing that here .... Assault rape pregnancies are extremely rare." John C. Willke, president of the National Right to Life Committee, 1999

Untrue. He should have known better then. We certainly know better now.

"A series of state lawmakers have made similar arguments since at least 1988, when Pennsylvania state Rep. Stephen Freind (R) argued in a debate on abortion that the odds of pregnancy from rape are "one in millions and millions and millions," because "when that traumatic experience is undergone, a woman secretes a certain secretion which has a tendency to kill the sperm."

The Republican Party is spending its billions of dollars advertising myths and false beliefs. Their objective? To revise our medical standards back to the middle ages.