Or Words to that Effect

What effect do words have? Just as the great words of the U.S. Constitution empowered liberty, freedom, and justice, the most notorious autocratic dictators of our time, from Hitler to China’s Li, have used not-so-subtle words and Ideas to subjugate.

The U.S. is in a place I never expected to see. But many left wing progressives warned us. I just thought it was so much liberal hyperbole. 

Today in this country we see the makings of a Fascist racist ‘regime’ masquerading in the guise of a Republican party led by Donald Trump. It is not ‘Republican’ by any stretch of the imagination.

Here then are the eight seeds – the words - of a dictatorial regime in the making:

1. Suppression of free speech and a free press. 
• Trump appears to believe he has the power to outlaw speech critical of him, and he calls the free press “...the enemy of the people.” 
• He repeated in a tweet about articles in the New York Times and The Washington Post, in particular: “They are both a disgrace to our Country, the Enemy of the People.” 
• Former national security adviser John Bolton, in his new book, claims that Trump said of journalists: “These people should be executed. They are scumbags.”
2. Using government troops & security forces to suppress peaceful protest.
• It’s reported that Trump wanted to deploy 10,000 troops to Washington alone. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took this so seriously that he got into a shouting match with the president over the prospect of deploying active-duty troops on U.S. soil.
• July 2020: Trump orders DHS and federal marshals into Seattle and Portland to quell civil unrest due to police violence. They employ unmarked vehicles and snatch and grab tactics against peaceful unarmed protesters. Anyone even yelling at the federals are jailed without cause. 
3. Challenging the validity of free and open elections. 
• After a Republican mayor requested the opening of an additional polling station, Trump tweeted falsely that the Democrats “...have just opened a voting booth in the most Democrat area in the State. They are trying to steal another election. It’s all rigged out there. These votes must not count. SCAM!”
• Trump has repeatedly tweeted that mail-in voting will lead to fraudulent and rigged elections. After winning the 2016 presidential election while losing the popular vote, he claimed a ‘landslide victory’ and said that Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote was due to “...millions of people who voted illegally.” 
• Numerous investigations by the Trump administration have yet revealed any fraud that was out of the ordinary (there is always ‘someone’ trying to game the system) or had any impact whatsoever.
• In 2019 a republican 'consultant' stuffed ballot boxes in North Carolina. When caught they had to redo the election. The new Republican party was silent.
• In 2020 Republican Representative Steve Watkins, of Kansas, was charged with three felonies related to voter fraud. The new Republican party remains silent.
4. Consistent references to removing term limits for themselves.  
• Looking at what Putin had accomplished in Russia – and what he was proposing – Trump stated: “President for life . . . maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.” It’s a ‘joke’ he’s tossed off on several occasions. The power of suggestion was so strong with the Trump cult that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen expressed serious concern that Trump may try to steal the election or contest the results, and not leave the White House if he loses in 2020.
• More recently last September Trump said: “Under the normal rules, I’ll be out in 2024, so we may have to go for an extra term.” The crowd cheered.
5. Employing propaganda to alter public perception.
• With tabloids posing as ‘News’, like Fox News & Breitbart, promoting Trump’s lies as truth, the president controls one of the most powerful propaganda machines ever created. 
• During the impeachment trial, for example, Fox hosts repeatedly attacked the character and mental faculties of Democratic representatives and sworn administration witnesses, while focusing almost exclusively on the testimony of pro-Trump Republicans. When it did show footage of Democrats and witnesses, the network frequently used voice-overs to explain or interpret what was being said, rather than broadcasting what witnesses were actually saying.
• Another good propaganda ploy is to elevate those that have the same inspirations, as a model for success.
• Of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un he said: “He gets it. He totally gets it”; Later in 2018: "I just received a beautiful letter from Kim". Kim later called Trump a fool.
• on the Philippines’s Rodrigo Duterte he said: “What a great job you are doing”. During Duterte's four years in power he has overseen hundreds of extrajudicial killings, rights abuses and terror.
• on Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman: "You have done a spectacular job”; after he ordered the murder of a Washington Post journalist. 
• and, of course, Russia’s Vladimir Putin: “You know what? Putin’s fine. He’s fine”. He also referred to another "beautiful letter" he received from Putin.
• Trump has had few good things to say about western democratic leaders, especially in Europe. Often calling them 'Stupid" or "Socialists".
6. Coopting the Rule of Law
• Trump quote: “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”. 
• He has also claimed to have the “…absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department” and, in the event the judiciary branch disagreed, “..the absolute right to PARDON myself.” 
• His attorney general, William Barr, and his own lawyers have made clear that this is the administration’s position as they have rejected both congressional and criminal subpoenas for information during the past few years. 
• Their arguments — including an assertion to a federal appellate court last October that the president could shoot someone in the middle of New York’s Fifth Avenue and still be immune from prosecution until he left office — came crashing down with a Supreme Court decision in 2020. The court stated: “We cannot conclude that absolute immunity is necessary or appropriate under Article II or the Supremacy Clause,” - Chief Justice John Roberts
• Trump has dismissed an FBI director and a deputy FBI director, as well as five inspectors general and U.S. attorneys, all of whom were investigating or considering either his abuse of power or the alleged crimes of associates. 
• After the Mueller investigation of Russia’s role in the 2016 election, Trump ordered a criminal probe into the origins of the inquiry — to, in Trump’s words, “investigate the investigators.” He tried to get the Justice Department to prosecute both former FBI director James Comey and Hillary Clinton. Although the most politically biased Justice Department in American history, they have yet to build a case.
7. Coopting the Religious majority
• One of the key success factors to autocratic rule is to overcome religious objections. Trump has mastered this better than any president in history.
• Biographies of Trump by many friends, associates, and enemies alike, tell of a man that is not the least bit religious.  The only time they saw him in a church was for weddings and funerals. 
• Trump's promises to the religious right to keep their tax exemptions, get federal funding for their schools, overturn Row vs. Wade, and push for religious exceptions to federal law, delighted the Christian evangelicals. 
• He has “jokingly” looked up to the sky and said, “I am the chosen one” in relation to negotiations with China. Then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry echoed other evangelicals who’ve said that Trump was sent by God to do great things when he seriously proclaimed that Trump is the “chosen one.”
• When Trump’s staged a photo op in front of Lafayette Square’s St. John’s Episcopal Church, many evangelicals viewed it positively: One evangelical supporter was so moved that she began speaking in tongues when she saw the footage, according to her son.
8. Providing a symbol of hate
• The last and most basic focus for a successful totalitarian regime is the need to focus hate on to something that is the core of all problems. 
• Hitler used the Jews. North Korea uses the U.S. and the South. Trump uses Obama, Democrats and the racial justice they stand for.
• He has rallied his base with dog-whistle attacks, calling Mexicans rapists and criminals. 
• When he attacked a group of progressive members of Congress from diverse backgrounds, he stated that they should go back to the places they came from. All were American citizens.
• When Nazies and BLM protestors faced off in 2018 he said there were "Good people on both sides".  
• Over the years Trump has frequently praised his “winning” genes, at one point telling an interviewer, “I’m proud to have that German blood — there’s no question about it."

All the above are real quotes. They are not ‘taken out of context’ as Trump leaves little to the imagination. They are not from some obtuse blogger - they are words from the President of the United States of America. They are words of Fascism - 

Or Words to that Effect.

JWB

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Let’s talk Anarchy

Currently the United States has a leader that is using any means at his disposal to divide Americans. Foreign leaders love it.  They even try to assist.

President Trump’s tactics are old, worn, and totalitarian, but still effective on those he can keep frightened.  Fear of such words as ‘black’, ‘liberal’, ‘looser’; and his latest: ‘anarchists’ are part of his tool kit..

The term anarchy has several definitions, depending on source. I have found definitions like: “A state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority.”, or “A state of society without government or law.”  Along with more transcendental definitions like: “Absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal.”

So, take your pick. It's a kind of an ideal disorder of society I guess.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon first coined the term anarchy in 1539, to mean "an absence of government". The definition stuck and has been a mainstay of civil disobedience ever since.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1864) wrote in his acclaimed essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience: “I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe—’That government is best which governs not at all’; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."

From demonstrations against slavery in the 1800’s, to the Vietnam war in the 1900’s and now persistent racial inequality in 2020, aspirations of ‘defunding' law enforcement or government has been a rallying cry of those calling themselves anarchists.

The question needs answering. Can we disassociate governance and the rule of law? And why are we here? Again? Now?

All of nature – from the universal law of the speed of light, to nature’s cycle of life – observes laws.  We cannot remove all the lines from our highways.  Laws are a natural structure of life. There is governance in nature as well. From the alpha members of a pride of lions, to the parenting of a human child, nature subscribes a certain amount of governance into life. Otherwise life will fail.

So, if true anarchy is against the laws of nature, how do we strive to be as free and ungoverned as possible?

In reality, the Constitution of the United States of America was designed specifically to provide the greatest amount of individual freedom, with the least amount of government, as possible, and sill have a progressive functional society. It is my belief that Thoreau would have approved if he were around in 1776.

However, our constitution has been misrepresented and wrongfully applied ever since.  We have ignored almost completely its intent since the second world war.  From the rise of the military industrial complex to supreme court rulings, such as the Citizens United decision, we have created exactly what the founders were trying to avoid.

I am as guilty as others when I attack Trump for present day divisions and dissent, but in truth, he is not the cause – he is the result. He’s the result of a return to a government that considers its people to be ‘subjects’ and not individuals. A government run by lobbyists, foreign influence, and profiteers. The very state of affairs we fought a War of Independence to escape. A war, by the way, the British considered an invitation to 'anarchy'.

America has been asleep at the wheel for 80 years now. We need to get back in the game before it’s too late. If it’s not too late already.

Read my Five Steps posts from July 2019. Then tell me what You think.

JWB

Perspective

Perspective is the natural enemy of hypocrisy. 

The US is celebrating its independence the weekend of 4 July, 2020. But we are missing the perspective of the people that are not enjoying the self-evident truths and the Rule of Law that our Constitution supposedly guarantees. From children in immigration concentration camps, to African-American racism among law enforcement; Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness is still somewhat far off.

It is fitting then, I suppose, that the actual declaration of independence was made on July 2nd, 1776, not July 4^th. History and perspective are captives of time and culture. 

I was under the mistaken impression, some 30 years ago, that the culture of white privilege in this country was eroding; by the 21^st century we would be far beyond where we are now.  

My perspective was to blame. As a white Marine Corps veteran, with as many black friends as white, I had put my racist upbringing to a peaceful rest.  My admiration for Martin Luther King, and the later success of Barack Obama, made me all the surer that we were slowly coming out of our racial dark ages. 

I could not have been more wrong if I tried. The new millennia gave rise to Social Media and right wing tabloids that elevated persistent white nationalism. And, in 2016, we reaped what they had sown. 

So, on this July 4^th, let’s reflect, more than party, for a change. Let us reflect on the promise of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Just celebrating that we have them does not seem like enough right now.