Let’s talk about Mike Pence and the little procedural change he made that saved the United States of America from civil war or worse (at least for the time being) and inspired Donald Trump’s followers to try to execute him on January 6, 2021.
As you know, each state produces “electors” for the US Presidential election that are provided to the Senate where the Vice President presides over a ritual where the electors are counted and the winner of the election is officially declared. At the beginning of this ritual, the Vice President reads some instructions, and a crucial sentence from these instructions used to (2005, 2009, 2013, 2017) read:
After ascertainment has been had that the certificates are authentic and correct in form, the tellers will count and make a list of the votes cast by the electors of the several States.
Which basically means, “We are going to count all the electors.” The words “authentic” and “correct in form” are left to the Vice President to interpret. Now, compare this to the new procedure that Pence chose to read in 2021:
After ascertaining that the votes are regular in form and authentic, the tellers will announce the votes cast by the electors for each state, beginning with Alabama, that the parlimentarian has advised me is the only certificate of vote from that state that purports to be a return from that state that has annexed to it a certificate from an authority of that state purporting to appoint or ascertain electors.
Hm, that sure is a lot more words. The intent is to change the meaning, with the new meaning being: “We are going to count all the official electors and I’m going to let the parlimentarian decide which ones are official.” With this new procedure — approved by Mike Pence — the Vice President no longer is allowed to decide which electors are the real ones and has instead tasked the parlimentarian with that decision.
Let me just emphasize three important details here: First, Mike Pence chose to change the procedure. Second, the parlimentarian is only an advisor regarding the rules and has no actual power. While it is considered very naughty to overrule the parlimentarian, there’s absolutely nothing stopping the Presiding Officer (in this case, Mike Pence) from doing that. Third, the parlimentarian at the time was appointed by a Democrat; it is not an elected position.
The fact of the matter is that Trump’s electoral coup could have worked. Mike Pence could have announced the alternative slate of electors as being the electors, thus handing Trump the Presidency a second time. There’s nothing in the Constitution that would have stopped this and anyone claiming that such a scheme is either illegal or impossible is simply wrong about that; our interpretation of the associated law might be more correct, but that’s really just our opinion on the matter. Certainly, there would have been an enormous brouhaha, and quite likely civil war if Mike Pence had chosen this action, and that would be why he chose to change the procedures instead.
If Pence had declared Trump the winner (by declaring the alternative electors), then Trump would have been the defacto President — end of story. To change that, the Democrats would have had to choose between a long legal battle — that could literally take years and would ultimately end at the Republican-controlled Supreme Court — or violence. Trump would definitely have found a reason to call for a State of Emergency, and that would have been the end of elections in the USA. Mike Pence looked at that possible future and chose to make that little tweak to the procedure to enforce the false idea that he had no power in that moment.
The entire purpose of the electoral college is to protect the “opulent minority” from the majority vote of the people — i.e., to circumvent democracy. Yet, for some reason, people are still absolutely unable to accept that a system meant to circumvent democracy might be used to circumvent democracy. There are all sorts of rules about what electors can do and how the electors are counted, but if people choose not to follow those rules, it creates ambiguity that the person holding power (in this case, the sitting President) can leverage for the purpose of maintaining that power. An ambiguous situation favors the sitting President, because he is the person that has the power.
Killing our democracy is illegal, but if the President kills it, who exactly is going to avenge the murder? Do you recall how the military promised not to get involved in the election? Were you aware that the police mostly supported Trump? The same goes for the Secret Service. Who, exactly, would have dragged Donald Trump out of the White House if Pence had cooperated in Trump’s scheme? Nancy? Chuck? You?
The Mid-Missouri John Brown Gun Club has an active shooter workshop available that I believe to be unique in that it fills in the details of the “fight” step with a more concrete workshop. Although it is certainly true that the best weapon against a person armed with a gun is a gun, we are not at all interested in trying to convince you to arm people with guns in preparation for an attack for a couple of reasons. First off, despite how things may seem, an attack by an unhinged person with a firearm is still a very low probability event for most places, and even less likely in a place where everyone is anti-gun; most mass shootings are performed by a man associated with the place where the shooting happens. Second, things are the way they are in the US because people keep compromising their ethics for selfish reasons; we’d hate to push you into doing that same thing. A third reason is that proper firearm training takes a lot of time and is a huge commitment (even though many Americans treat it as trivial); we’d rather get you something practical that you can use today.
Our active shooter workshop is not a replacement for other types of trainings, and our club can only serve the Boone County, Missouri area. It only addresses strategies for fighting back against an intruder armed with a firearm, and not any of the steps that might precede that moment — all of which are more important to learn than how to fight back. Members of the Mid-Missouri Fellowship for Reconciliation have participated in this workshop and have told us that they found it very helpful; I don’t think there’s any group that personifies a philosophy of non-violence more than the FoR.
I’m bringing this up today for a couple of reasons. There was the recent attack on a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas; the rabbi there threw a chair at the hostage-taker’s weapon, and then he and the remaining hostages fled the building. While that might have been a reasonable strategy at the moment, and it was certainly courageous, I think it is likely that the hostage-taker had given up hope in that moment and allowed them to flee. We’re also approaching the next low-point in community transmission of COVID-19, and since this is a rather up-close and personal workshop, the next opportunity for this workshop might be happening soon. (We’ll certainly take as many measures as we can to reduce the chance of COVID-19 transmission and work out those details with you.)
You can email us at MidMoJBGC@protonmail.com but if you’re in our area, you probably know who we are or know someone who does, so just reach out to whichever member you know.
There are at least two fascist double agents within the Democratic Party.
I did just use the f-word, so let me explain why I’m making such a bold declaration. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema both oppose the Freedom to Vote Act. OK, that might be completely fine. Let’s take a look at what is in the bill that they oppose. Here’s a summary by widely-respected Democratic Party commentator Heather Cox Richardson (these are her words, verbatim, reformatted as a list):
It establishes a baseline for access to the ballot across all states. That baseline includes at least two weeks of early voting for any town of more than 3000 people, including on nights and weekends, for at least 10 hours a day.
It permits people to vote by mail, or to drop their ballots into either a polling place or a drop box, and guarantees those votes will be counted so long as they are postmarked on or before Election Day and arrive at the polling place within a week.
It makes Election Day a holiday.
It provides uniform standards for voter IDs in states that require them.
The Freedom to Vote Act cracks down on voter suppression. It makes it a federal crime to lie to voters in order to deter them from voting (distributing official-looking flyers with the wrong dates for an election or locations of a polling place, for example), and it increases the penalties for voter intimidation.
It restores federal voting rights for people who have served time in jail, creating a uniform system out of the current patchwork one.
It requires states to guarantee that no one has to wait more than 30 minutes to vote.
Using measures already in place in a number of states, the Freedom to Vote Act provides uniform voter registration rules.
It establishes automatic voter registration at state Departments of Motor Vehicles, permits same-day voter registration, allows online voter registration, and protects voters from the purges that have plagued voting registrations for decades now, requiring that voters be notified if they are dropped from the rolls and given information on how to get back on them.
The Freedom to Vote Act bans partisan gerrymandering.
The Freedom to Vote Act requires any entity that spends more than $10,000 in an election to disclose all its major donors, thus cleaning up dark money in politics.
It requires all advertisements to identify who is paying for them.
It makes it harder for political action committees (PACs) to coordinate with candidates, and it beefs up the power of the Federal Election Commission that ensures candidates run their campaigns legally.
The Freedom to Vote Act also addresses the laws Republican-dominated states have passed in the last year to guarantee that Republicans win future elections.
It protects local election officers from intimidation and firing for partisan purposes.
It expands penalties for tampering with ballots after an election (as happened in Maricopa County, Arizona, where the Cyber Ninjas investigating the results did not use standard protection for them and have been unable to produce documents for a freedom of information lawsuit, leading to fines of $50,000 a day and the company’s dissolution).
If someone does tamper with the results or refuses to certify them, voters can sue.
The act also prevents attempts to overturn elections by requiring audits after elections, making sure those audits have clearly defined rules and procedures.
And it prohibits voting machines that don’t leave a paper record.
Manchin and Sinema are also blocking the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which is a similar common-sense pro-democracy bill. As HCR said, opposition to these bills is “bananas”.
Now, we know that Republicans are opposed to democracy. They’ve literally told us this without any shame whatsoever; they told us in a condescending way meant to imply that we should have known that democracy is bad. They believe that democracy means “the mob” will take away their power and property and literally destroy the country; this is why they always emphasize that the US is a republic, not a democracy. Moreover, we know that Republicans are fascists. Manchin and Sinema are supposed to be Democrats, though. What’s their excuse?
The answer is that they are not Democrats; they are fascists. They are actively working to support the Republican agenda, which is fascism. HCR is confused as to why anyone — Republican or Democrat — would oppose these common-sense changes to voting law because she — like most Democrats — has not yet accepted that Republicans are fascists. To be clear, I very much respect HCR and and find her daily summaries to be the best source of information about daily politics; she is both smart and well-informed. However, she is clearly in denial about a great many problems plaguing this country, and she shares that malady with most self-described Democrats.
I spend a lot of time here criticizing Democrats, but as one of the two parties that control US politics, I hope they will take some advice on how to move forward given the circumstances we find ourselves in. The following are steps that Democrats can take to stop our country from sliding into fascism and perhaps even move toward a stronger democracy.
1. Stop worrying about Republicans being sad or angry.
Every time Democrats try to do the right thing, the right wing gets really upset and threatens to burn everything down. Think of how you might train a dog: You don’t let the dog run the house, no matter how much they complain. Sure, far right agitators are a lot more dangerous than a dog with bad manners, but, much like that dog, they don’t get less dangerous when you let them run the show. In fact, one really good indicator that you are doing the right thing is that self-described conservatives are threatening to burn everything down. Let their rage serve as positive reinforcement.
2. Get the Republicans out of your party.
Every time Joe Manchin or some other Republican double agent throws a wrench in the works, it lends credence to the idea that “both sides are the same” and that idea is constantly eroding our faith in democracy, and thus democracy itself. When both sides are the same, do whatever you can to make them different. Those Republican double agents can go join the Republican party, which will moderate it and alienate fascists. One of your long-term goals should be that fascists do not have a party.
3. End the filibuster.
The filibuster is anti-democratic. It must end. While I appreciate that it is a tool you might use in the future if Republicans gain control, it is still anti-democratic and would force the Republicans to follow through on their bad ideas or admit that their ideas are bad. My guess is that in most cases, they’ll admit that their ideas are bad and that will alienate fascists from their party; this is what you should want. Again: One of your long-term goal should be that fascists do not have a party.
5. End gerrymandering.
Today, in the year 2022, we have these devices called “computers” that can be programmed to determine congressional districts in a completely objective, non-partisan way. Why are humans still being allowed to create bizarrely-shaped districts that favor their selfish agendas?
6. End voter suppression.
Restore the Voting Rights Act and end Republican voter suppression. Come up with ways to make it extremely easy to vote while still maintaining election security. Make sure that your voters can vote in the primary; one way conservatives maintain control of the Democratic Party is by allowing voter suppression during the primary. You might have to fight your own party to do this.
7. End the electoral college system.
The US President must be chosen directly by the popular vote without any intervening system at the national or state level to counter the will of the people. You can get most Republican voters onboard by stating the truth: That the electoral college benefits the elites.
CONCLUSION
There are a few of these suggestions that it seems like Democrats are about to take action on; specifically, ending the filibuster, passing the Voting Rights Act, and perhaps even an end to worrying about Republicans’ feelings. All of these suggestions are vitally important, however, to truly strengthening American democracy. Moreover, there are a lot of areas where Democrats are failing in ways that they don’t even realize because they are not typically able to see beyond their assumptions, so the above list is only meant to address electoral democracy specifically.
There’s an article in Politico by John F. Harris claiming that our new American civil war is based on nothing except two tribes of people deciding that they hate each other. He claims that all other major conflicts in US history were based on a substantive issue, but not this one. Clearly, this man has his head completely up his own ass.
There are many substantive issues that lie between Democratic voters and Republican voters. They include:
Whether trans people should be treated with respect (Democrats) or imprisoned, institutionalized, or murdered (Republicans)
Whether white supremacists should be respectfully countered (Democrats) or should be respected and empowered (Republicans)
Whether women should have bodily autonomy, be allowed to vote, and be strongly encouraged to work outside the home (Democrats) or be forced to stay home and have babies (Republicans)
Whether guns should be available only to the police (Democrats) or just laying all over the place like in a game of Fortnite (Republicans)
Whether all religious beliefs should be respected (Democrats) or whether Christianity should be the only religious tradition allowed in the country (Republicans)
Whether climate change is a significant problem requiring a small mount of effort (Democrats) or a hoax created by Satanists to force conservatives to be submissive (Republicans)
Whether Democrats should be allowed to vote (Democrats) or prevented from voting (Republicans)
(Obviously, the left has its own perspective on many of these issues, and it often isn’t the same as the Democrat’s perspective.)
There are many others, but just look at that list! Does that look like nothing to you? What they hell is wrong with John F. Harris? I mean — obviously, his head is completely up his own ass, but why and how did this happen? I have no answers except that perhaps he’s so privileged that he just doesn’t think about other people, and his lack of time contemplating these issues have left him without adequate information to assess what is happening in the world. Then, though, we have to wonder how it is that he managed to get paid to write an opinion piece in Politico. Are you OK, Politico?
Every major conflict in US history has — at the onset — appeared to be about mere tribalism from the perspective of the privileged, complacent elite. These individuals see the way the world is and because it is so gosh darned comfortable for them, cannot imagine that anything else is possible much less necessary. If you look at the lead-up to the US Civil War, we had the slavers on one side, and the complacent north on the other side. It took abolitionists — many of whom are still called “crazy” to this day — agitating and making the situation untenable to force change to happen. Now, to be fair, it is true that most Republican voters don’t understand what is going on in the world, have the issue of interpersonal dominance as their only political motivation, and are actively hallucinating. That doesn’t change the concrete issues associated with their politics, and it isn’t any different from the pre-Civil-War era. There was probably a John F. Harris of that day, sitting in his office in New York City, pondering aloud about all this unnecessary animosity between north and south.
What an asshole.
Edit: OK, I see now that he is a founding editor of Politico. 🙄 This doesn’t change anything I said, but it does explain why we’re being subjected to this man’s musings.
In November of 2020, a freelance journalist named Derek Robertson predicted that Joe Biden’s ongoing return to “normalcy” would put an end to the culture-war rhetoric on the far right. That was pretty dumb, and he’s written a lengthy description of all the ways he was wrong.
Robertson might not be the only person who has been painfully wrong about what’s going on in America, so let me break it down for you. The United States was founded by far-right communities, and those communities engaged in the extermination of native people and used the labor of enslaved Africans to build the new nation. While things have happened over time that have sometimes encouraged those kinds of people to talk less – or perhaps just more privately – they’ve never gone away. We had to fight a whole war to end slavery, but those far-right communities continued to exist afterward – they were even allowed to re-assert a modicum of control over national politics 8 years after the end of the Civil War.
There’s this odd narrative that keeps recurring in the US – that everything was fine and then The Thing happened. Before the Civil War, everything was fine, but then The Thing (slavers refusing to free enslaved people) happened. Before Obama, everything was fine, but then The Thing (racists magically appearing from nowhere) happened. Before Trump, everything was fine, but then The Thing (Trump somehow, magically converting well over 30% of Americans to fascism) happened.
What is a more accurate narrative? It seems like the majority of Americans have always been amenable to a sadistic authoritarianism fueled by active hallucination, and quite a few more have always been willing to tolerate cruelty and injustice out of complacency and cowardice. Things might be getting better (e.g., perhaps only 30% of Americans are fascists now instead of 60%), but there’s a clear continuity. Even some of the fairly specific and particularly unhinged details of today’s far-right extremist ideas share a thread that goes back to before this nation existed. The best example of this would be their obsession with Satanists. We saw this during the Salem witch trials, the Red Scare (communists were portrayed as Satanic), the Satanic panic of the 1980’s, and again (i.e., still) now (the Biden administration are secretly Satanists, they say).
While modern America does have both witches (e.g., Gardnerian Wicca, established around 1954) and Satanists (e.g., LaVeyan Satanism, established around 1966), those people aren’t in charge of anything. I’ve met a few of them. They’re fine; they’re working-class people without much money and absolutely no power whatsoever. Witches are so varied in their ideology that you can’t really generalize about them; I disagree with Satanists ideologically, but they are fairly harmless. Again: Neither group is in charge of anything.
Today in America, we have two cabals of wealthy people who control politics. They pre-approve candidates for office – especially at the national level – and then most (but not all) citizens are allowed to vote between the two pre-approved options for each office. They also control all of our media. As Marx pointed out, the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas, and most Americans have chosen to adopt the public ideology of one of those two ruling groups. Part of the propaganda of today’s politics is to portray these two groups as “sides” that are somehow naturally opposed to one another; that is highly inaccurate – they mostly cooperate.
On one “side”, we have the fascists, represented by the Republican party. They represent the ideological descendants of those first far-right communities that came to the US from Europe. Like all fascists, they’re always trying to make a sadistic, authoritarian past sound idyllic through a process that is half ignorance and half active hallucination. Ironically, the Republican party is slightly more democratic in terms of its relationship to its constituents compared to the Democrats, but the far right has nevertheless been seething for years over the Republican party’s failure to embrace open fascism. When Republicans say that US politics don’t represent their views, most of them are talking about this failure to embrace fascism; they describe fascism as “freedom” just like the original far-right Americans came to this continent in pursuit of “freedom” – freedom to do fascism. Donald Trump didn’t lead those Americans to fascism so much as he simply acknowledged and facilitated their fascism.
On the other “side”, we have the neoliberals, represented by the Democratic party. They represent a deeply held religious belief that capitalism can be the final, most advanced stage of human civilization, if only it can be rationalized through quantifying every aspect of life and eliminating irrational hierarchies (i.e., those hierarchies that are beloved by fascists). Neoliberals see the hierarchy of money to be completely rational and, therefore, good (in truth, it is neither). Neoliberal arguments against fascism tend to have an odd taint in that they don’t argue against cruelty or inequity but rather argue that it should be distributed fairly to all kinds of people. They won’t argue against prisons, for example, but they will argue that prison guards need to be more diverse and representative of marginalized groups. In perfect neoliberal form, Joe Biden keeps saying that capitalism requires fair competition, which is ludicrous; capitalism only requires that capitalists own capital and that the state doesn’t oppose their power. The assumption of “fair competition” is a religious one and the Democrats try to reify it through things like regulation and the welfare state.
Both “sides” are to the right, but one is far, far better for the average person: The Democrats. This puts both the true left and the true center in the awkward position of providing begrudging support to the machine of neoliberalism, particularly during elections. The Democratic party pretends to be “progressive” but only ever intends to progress toward perfecting capitalism. They pretend to support the left, and even allow leftist ideas to be included in their official platform, but it’s always with a wink that says, “Yeah, yeah, we’ll pretend you aren’t crazy, but we’re not going to actually do any of that.” See, for example, climate change, where the science says it is a crisis requiring us to change everything about our lifestyles or die as a species, and the Democratic party responds with subtle tweaks to how the machine of capitalism functions (e.g., increasing the percentage of energy that is renewable, while still increasing the absolute amount of fossil fuel energy used).
Based on a recent poll, we will be facing another Trump versus Biden election in 2024 (unless nature intervenes). Trump’s fascism will be four years in the rearview mirror, and the Democrats will have failed to do anything substantive about it, making it seem like Trump did nothing wrong. Meanwhile, Biden will have continued to frustrate working class Americans as well as the American left. Moreover, Biden appears noticeably more frail in comparison to Trump, which will hurt him dramatically with the uninformed idiot vote. Under these circumstances, it seems very likely that the Republican’s anti-democracy machinations will prevail and Trump will be crowned President in 2025.
I say Trump will be “crowned” because American fascists learned a lot from the previous Trump administration and the 2020 election. It would be quite surprising if they failed to completely take control of federal and state government to the extent that they are likely to be able to maintain control of the federal government beyond the foreseeable future (this is significantly worse than our current two-party anocracy). Sure, he will die at some point, but that doesn’t really change anything. Trump is the facilitator, not the cause. While he is an excellent tool, the more power Republicans have, the less the ideological focus matters. But let’s get into a little more detail about that.
The first concept that we all need to accept is that Republicans hate democracy. They believe that democracy means that “the mob” (people who are not superior like they are) will steal all the wealth and power from superior, authentic Americans and that the only way to guarantee freedom is to prevent “the mob” from having meaningful power. To them, infringing the voting rights of their enemies is a moral imperative, and the original intent of the founding fathers is consistent with limiting the electoral power of the common people.
The second thing to understand is that Trump’s insurrection plan could have worked. I very much appreciate the fact that, for example, the Vice President does not have the right to decide which electoral votes are valid. Fascists understand that there’s nothing stopping them from violating any of the rules, and that once they have power, it doesn’t matter what the rules are. Had Pence been willing to violate the rules, Trump would be President today – that’s why some of the January 6 protesters were so angry with Pence (remember, they were trying to find him so they could execute him).
The third issue is that these fascists have dramatically advanced changes to the rules that will allow them to invalidate the votes of millions of Americans in a completely legal and nonviolent way. They’ve based these changes on things that were a problem in 2020. For example, Republicans at the state level are changing state laws regarding how ballots are validated and even how election results are certified to allow them to legally steal elections. I say “steal” but if it is legal, is it really stealing? I’m sure they would say it is not. Of course, the electoral college itself – which was used to legally steal the election from Hillary Clinton – remains and continues to favor the far-right.
The final thing to understand is that although most Republicans support Trump, Trump isn’t really leading them. Rather, he is facilitating them. They support him because he is facilitating the manifestation of their previously-repressed fascist desires, not because he, himself has cast some kind of spell on them, tricking them into becoming fascists.
In summary:
Republicans hate democracy.
Trump’s insurrection was a viable plan.
Republicans are building structures for stealing the next election legally.
Trump is facilitating fascism, not creating it.
The Democratic party will react to the next insurrection in a predictable way: They will vote to pass a motion to investigate whether to declare Donald Trump (or whoever it ends up being) a Very Naughty Boy. Republicans will use their political power and anti-democratic systems to subvert the Democrats. It’s like a gumball machine at this point, it is so predictable.
Democratic constituents will do what they do best: A colorful combination of demanding and begging, backed up with nothing. They might wear sassy hats. If they ever decide to do something substantive, it will be too late. Their first line of defense, however, will be their signature move: Pretending everything is fine, which is what they are doing right now.
There’s an article in the Guardian today by Stephen Marche entitled, “The next US civil war is already here – we just refuse to see it” which is a funny title for a couple of reasons. First, because the binary of “civil war or not” is severely naïve in the context of the United States, and second, because of the very specific “we” (clearly, Democrats). Everyone who isn’t a Democrat has been seeing it just fine for a long time.
Marche’s article includes the same kind of insane pining for bipartisanship that preceded the first Civil War. It was this toxic desire for peace under any circumstances that made the United States one of the last western nations to rid itself of the evil of slavery. Though his perspective is clearly biased toward the neoliberal near-right (which he erroneously calls “the left”), most of his analysis is quite good and lacking the bullshit “both sides” narrative we see so often that villainizes the true (and blameless) left. He seems like a Democrat that almost gets it; he even says, “…if it is to survive, the United States will have to recover its revolutionary spirit.”
The problem, of course, is that when neoliberals (here meaning people who believe capitalism can become a valid system) start talking about “the revolution” they invariably start fighting over which identity group is most marginalized by the current, imperfect manifestation of capitalism. Marche says, “The left, meanwhile, has chosen infighting as their sport.” but he probably isn’t even talking about that. I suspect instead that he’s talking about people like Republican double agent Joe Manchin; it’s idiocy to think he has anything to do with “the left”.
I do not know how to proceed. It seems more and more clear that there’s no possibility other than the US collapsing under the weight of its own hate, ignorance, selfishness, and complacency. This has been the default plan for a long time, but the possibilities that might allow us to escape that kind of destruction are becoming more unlikely every day. Even more concerning is that the scale of this collapse may make it unsurvivable.
Politicians and the press keep using the word “progressive” but they never really define it, and given the widely varying political positions of people who are labeled progressive, the word has become somewhat meaningless. Let’s look at three different apparent meanings of “progressive” and where they fall on the American political spectrum (which skews right) as well as a rational political spectrum.
Progressive: According to Republicans
According to Republicans, progressive is a leftist extremist position. It is the same as “liberal” which is the same as “communist authoritarian” and all Democrats are progressive. If you’ve been listening closely to self-described conservatives, they’ve been saying that progressives should be shot for a very long time — certainly before Obama was a thing, and basically going back to the pre-Civil-War era (back when the racists were Democrats).
Progressive: According to Bidenists
According to Bidenists, progressive means working toward perfecting capitalism by making sure the hierarchy of money is the only one that matters. Luckily, that means that if you can prove that there’s another hierarchy going on — like one related to gender, skin color, ethnicity, or religion — they will fight against that kind of injustice and inequity. They just won’t fight against injustice and inequity if it caused by capitalism. The best they can do is urge capitalists to behave ethically, which never works; see, for example, Joe Biden creepily whispering, “Pay them more!” into his mic, but never considering a push to raise the minimum wage. Interestingly, Bidenists think that they can be “progressive” while still maintaining the status quo (“Nothing will fundamentally change.“); you would think that progress might require change.
Progressive: According to Sanders and The Squad
According to the most leftish members of the US Congress, progressive means working toward a balance between the desires of the super rich and those of working people. They want to keep capitalism going, but make it humane and ethical. They don’t suggest taxing the rich out of existence, and they certainly never suggest Other Solutions; they just want the rich to pay their fair share. They’re able to get along with the Bidenists because they agree about all those other things — sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and so on.
There are no leftists in Congress.
As much as Americans like to call Democrats “the left”, they are certainly not the left. The Democrats that are closest to the actual left are moderates. I think I can make the case that Erwin Rommel was to the left of the German political spectrum during the Nazi era; does that mean Rommel was a leftist? Of course not!
What is moderate?
A moderate political position balances what the elites want with what normal people want — that is what defines the center of politics. A moderate position means that the rich have to pay their fair share of taxes; the people who have the most money naturally have to give up some of that money to fund the essential functions of government that keep capitalism functioning. From a moral perspective, the rich benefit more from the existence of government, so it makes sense for them to pay more; they also need a smaller percentage of their income to survive. If you only taxed people who have little or no money, there would not be enough funding to keep the government going.
The deference to capitalists that both parties exhibit is the very reason why things like our social safety net are in danger, and if the social safety net fails, capitalism itself will be imperiled. The libertarian claim that capitalism can keep on functioning without the regulatory work of government is absurd; capitalism needs government, and the government is an essential part of capitalism. For one thing, without government, who is the neutral authority that will say who owns the property and enforce property rights?
What is left?
In the context of a capitalist political system like we have, the moderate left consists of people who want to tax the rich in such a way that their power is reduced over time slightly — or at least in a way that keeps them from becoming more wealthy. As we move further left, we might find people who want to tax the wealthy even more, even to the point where billionaires might cease to exist — but through a peaceful process. Further to the left, you’d find people who want to tax multi-millionaires out of existence.
In America, you’d have to take a really long walk leftward to find anyone who wants to use violence to overcome the power of the wealthy. However, there’s that really interesting quote that says, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable,” so that might change over time. If you go far enough left, there might theoretically be some people who want to do violence to the rich in the same way that Republicans want to do violence to their perceived enemies. However, the key detail of what it means to be on the far left would be that you want complete and total democracy as the outcome. In contrast, Republicans, who represent the far right, want a complete end to democracy.
Bidenists are Conservative
Bidenists want to conserve the status quo; they are not progressive at all. They do not want progress. (Republicans are outraged by the status quo and want to move society further to the right.) As conservatives, both groups are engaging in a battle against reality. When Bidenists suggest that not all of the Democratic Party platform (which is slightly progressive to entice voters on the left to support the Democrats) can be accomplished, what they’re going to do is throw out the parts that are authentically progressive and keep the parts that maintain capitalism. Capitalism is what they are conserving, and the real point of even seemingly-progressive things like the child tax credit is to allow capitalism to keep functioning. They certainly pretend that they’re going to create progress, but then something always stops them. Interestingly, the more obvious the obstacles to passing legislation, the more progressive their proposals become. (Republicans were playing this same game with fascism prior to Trump.)
Conserving capitalism requires Bidenists to engage in the same willful hallucination that Republicans engage in, with the emphasis being on imagining that this system is the best possible way and that it will not end all life on earth, which is the scientific consensus. The argument is that our leaders will somehow make it all work out, but without substantially changing anything.
In the wake of the 2016 election, there were a lot of self-described reasonable liberals claiming that describing Trump as a fascist was destructive hyperbole. While it is certainly a bad idea to just call everyone you don’t like a fascist, it seemed like in this case, people were using a lot of overly specific (and even irrelevant) details to try to justify why Trump was not a fascist. It was as if he needed to literally don a Nazi uniform and publicly state, “I am a fascist,” or people couldn’t believe it. I recently stumbled upon an article from 2017 summarizing this view, including four somewhat well-described reasons why Trump isn’t really a fascist, but instead a right-wing populist. They are:
Fascists are nationalists.
Fascists are opposed to capitalism.
Fascists are opposed to democracy.
Fascists openly embrace violence.
The author claims that for each of these points, that Donald Trump does not meet the definition. Importantly, the author is a political scientist and apparently an expert on dictatorship who eventually agreed that Donald Trump is a fascist — but it took an insurrection to convince them. I will be making the case here that this expert — and many other informed, smart people — fought against using the word “fascism” purposefully despite the facts.
The first issue is the fact that the actual question is really, “Is this fascism?” where “this” is the totality of the movement which includes Trump, his administration, and his 30 million enthusiastic supporters. QAnon is in there, too. This movement as a whole had control of the executive branch of our government for 4 years, but thankfully did not succeed in converting the whole country to fascism. Liberals strongly want the answer to be “No” and because they so strongly want the answer to be “No” they are willing to change the question to nudge the answer toward “No” and even change the definition of fascism to allow us to say that this isn’t fascism.
In this case, the author is starting out by limiting the question to Trump instead of addressing the totality of the movement, or even the administration as a whole. However, what Trump is objectively (or what his administration was objectively) isn’t as important as what his perceived function is among people who strongly support him, which means that what we really need to care about is the movement as a whole. The movement is also the most important thing from a functional perspective. Change of any kind requires broad support; a single person can’t create fascism by themselves, and an otherwise neutral leader can be nudged toward certain policy decisions based on voter or donor demand. I will be emphasizing the movement as a whole since that is what matters (even though Trump certainly fully revealed himself to be a fascist when he tried to overturn the 2020 election).
Before getting into this, I think it is important to talk about how fascism in America has changed, and how the right wing perception of “socialism” has changed, because those things are going to affect how we approach those 4 attributes of fascism. Conservative Americans do not understand what socialism is; what they call “socialism” is really capitalist globalism. Conservative Americans believe that capitalist globalism (i.e., their version of “socialism”) controls the US government (for brevity, I won’t address the accuracy of that belief). Another issue is that every American now understands that both racists and fascists are despised by the majority and that being either is marginalizing (i.e., no one will take you seriously if they believe you are a racist); the result is that even people who are privately proud of their racism will publicly deny it vociferously.
Fascists Are Nationalists
The author claims that since Trumpers do not see the nation as existing above and beyond the individual, they’re not really nationalists. From a less pedantic perspective, Trumpers are obviously nationalists and are even questioning why being a nationalist is a bad thing because they love nationalism so much. Frankly, I’m shocked that anyone in America thought that Trumpers are not nationalists (by any definition) after seeing the way they worship the US flag. Do they not make a performance of claiming that we are all beneath the flag (which represents the nation)? Was the slogan “Make Me Great Again” or was it “Make America Great Again”?
However, we’re debating a pedant, so we have to examine this claim, which comes down to imagining that fascism is a communal culture and that conservative populism is an individualist culture. That division itself is largely artificial under most circumstances; however, the thing that people don’t seem to understand is that fascism is made up of individuals who use their association with their skin color, ethnicity, religion, nation, etc. as a means of attaining their individual superiority (thus satisfying their narcissism). Fascism specifically encourages the individual to strive toward superiority and through “will to power” (believing something is true so that it is manifested), the individual becomes superior (superiority happens simultaneously with belief; they are identical processes). So, in the particular case of fascism, the communal/individualistic division is particularly artificial.
Let me give you a more specific example. You’ve heard the argument from Trumpers that “only vulnerable people are affected by COVID and therefore it isn’t a big deal”; i.e., since only the weak are killed by COVID, COVID is not a problem because the weak are supposed to die. Further, forcing Trumpers to take the vaccine is a violation of their freedom, despite the fact that it might save them from dying (death being the state of zero freedom). Even though this is violently individualistic, we can still express this same idea in communal way: The vaccine weakens the volk by keeping weak members alive instead of allowing them to die as God intended; we are collectively weakened by their continued survival. To bring that back to individualism, a fascist individualist sees the mere existence of a flawed, weak, or deviant person as an affront to themselves and a potential source of contamination or contagion through their own association with the whole. They express this by saying things like, “Liberalism makes America weak.”
I’ve recently seen “conservatives” talking about how “welfare” “treats people like victims” and that we can only be free individuals if we get rid of it. They put ADA regulations in this same bag of things that violate individual freedom. Now, obviously, many people would be much worse off without things like SNAP, Medicaid, and the ADA. Their rejection of “welfare” is a passive approach to cleansing the nation and is a step toward active cleansing, in the sense of genocidal programs to remove people from society who are viewed as tainted. If Nazism had been a truly communal culture, they’d have been trying to save all the Germans instead of physically excising some of them from the German nation.
Fascism is, at its heart, individualistic (including lacking empathy for others), and nationalism is product of narcissism. Why does the author need fascism to be communal? Probably because they, like most Americans, think individualism is good and communalism is bad; this is the same urge that has conservatives claiming that the Nazis must have been socialists.
Fascists Are Opposed to Capitalism
If Trumpers are fascists, then why do they like capitalism so much? That question would be a real stumper if Trumpers actually knew what capitalism is. Factually, capitalism is a system whereby a small minority of people own the means of production, and this gives them power over everyone else; everyone who does not own capital has rights, but they can’t necessarily exercise those rights because they don’t have power. In contrast, Trumpers think of capitalism in a self-centered way — as something that gives them freedom to buy anything they want (like guns and poison) and be served by others (like workers in foreign factories or fast food restaurants) and they do not understand what “capital” is.
Trumpers hate socialism, but the funny thing is that they understand socialism to be a system whereby a small minority of people have power (largely through control of money) over everyone else, and while the rest of us have rights, we can’t often practice those rights. That, of course, is the definition of capitalism, though it emphasizes capital’s all-important connection to fractional reserve banking and includes the part where the power of capitalists allows them to “buy” politicians so that the government itself serves their desires, as well as the part where capitalism is a global endeavor that seeks to control the entire world. In a way, it is a better definition of capitalism than the left typically uses; Trumpers just call all that socialism.
Have you perhaps heard of “cancel culture”? That’s just the free market deciding it doesn’t want to support a product (yes, under capitalism, public personalities are products). Trumpers really, really hate it. Arch Trumper Tucker Carlson actually said:
Market capitalism is not a religion. Any economic system that weakens and destroys families isn’t worth having.
If you wanted to rank the groups that Trumpers hate, “socialists” (i.e., capitalist globalists) would rank right up there at the very top and have become synonymous with “Satanists”, “lizard people”, and “the Jews” (usually expressed as “George Soros”; fascists are pretty much always anti-Semitic).
To say that Trumpers are not opposed to capitalism is to wholly misunderstand them — and in those cases where fascists believe they control the government, they are happy to demand that it intervene in a variety of spheres of life including the market. It’s just that they recognize that in most cases, it is capital (i.e., “socialists”) that control the government, so Trumpers oppose the government instead of asking it to intervene.
Let me just add that even capitalists aren’t necessarily in favor of capitalism. Capitalism is just one tool that malignant narcissists use for self-aggrandizement. They, too, are happy to throw it away if something better (from their selfish perspective) is available. In essence, whether a group favors capitalism or not isn’t really a good indicator of whether or not they are fascists.
Fascists Are Opposed to Democracy
The author’s argument regarding democracy is extremely weak. They claim that because Trumpers are reducing democracy instead of eliminating it, they’re not fascists. The observed fact here is that they are reducing democracy; the left’s assumption is that since democracy is popular, that Trumpers are reducing it as much as they can at this moment and would love to reduce it to dust. They’ve been explicit about their hatred of democracy and their belief that a God-ordained strongman is a better option. Why would anyone assume that the reduction in democracy that they’ve achieved is exactly the reduction they hope to achieve in the long term?
Factually speaking, democracy in the US consists of most citizens being allowed to choose between candidates from two parties that represent competing cabals of billionaires. Trumpers have this belief that their side (the Republican Party) represents good people whereas the other side (the Democratic Party) represents the elites (capitalist globalists) but is also propped up by “the mob” (various marginalized groups that are either brainwashed or should be cut out of the volk per the fascist view).
Based on the Trumper view, “the mob” should be prevented from voting to increase “democracy”. If that doesn’t sound like democracy to you, that’s because it isn’t. Trumpers are often open about the fact that they don’t want democracy — they want a republic, and they believe that only their leaders are legally and morally legitimate. What they love is “freedom” — not democracy. The only reason they participate in electoral democracy (i.e., voting) is because they see it as a way to fight against “the mob”. Were there no mob, they would be happy to allow far-right leaders to do whatever they want. In fact, there are many far-right people online who will describe themselves as “paleo-conservative” — i.e., people who want to bring back feudalism as a political system — and the idea of “God-emperor Trump” is part of that.
Electoral democracy isn’t the only kind of democracy that Trumpers hate. When the Black Panthers showed up in California with guns, all of a sudden the NRA itself was even in favor of gun control. In fact, if you examine the details of their positions in detail, Trumpers are opposed to the entire Constitution — yet they claim to be defenders of the Constitution. Their view of the Constitution is as a mystical document whose purpose is to uplift them, specifically, including somehow supporting Christian dominionism — while it crushes their enemies. They explicitly believe that the Constitution only applies to them. They don’t seem to really understand it objectively at all.
Despite being clearly opposed to democracy, it is also clear that fascists will use whatever tool works for them to increase their power — but will also demand that the same tool be destroyed if it is working for their enemies. As with capitalism, a group embracing or rejecting democracy isn’t really the best way to determine if they are fascists.
Perhaps one of the reasons that liberals are so quick to reject the label of “fascist” for Trumpers is that liberals keep believing what Trumpers say, as if fascists don’t lie, as if they use words the same way everyone else does.
Fascists Openly Embrace Violence
From the article: “Fourth, fascists embraced violence as a means and an end. Fascism was revolutionary: It aimed not to reform but to destroy the modern world…” I’m at a loss. It seems so obvious that Trumpers openly embrace violence that I’m not sure where to start here. First off, I would suggest that Trumpers do, in fact, want to destroy the modern world. They want to destroy it and “return” to the idyllic fantasy they believe once was. Moreover, they’ve been advocating for killing liberals for decades if not longer.
Another quote: “Violence was not merely the method through which revolution would be accomplished; it was valuable in and of itself, providing supporters with powerful ‘bonding’ experiences and ‘cleansing’ the nation of its weaknesses and decadence.” Yes, that also describes Trumpers. For a specific example, the Proud Boys literally beat each other as a hazing ritual for new recruits — since physical affection between men is considered homosexual in conservative culture (and thus anathema), they express affection to each through violence. Are you aware of this thing called “American football”? The essential importance of violence is endemic in American conservative culture.
I guess the issue might be that many Trumpers seem to be somewhat opposed to wars of choice. You’ve got to remember that Trumpers see the government as being controlled by socialists, and so the US military might be in another country for the purpose of aiding socialism (especially if under the auspices of an international organization like NATO or the UN), and Trumpers might, therefore, want to pull troops out of some conflicts. However, if you ask a Trumper if the US military should go kill some Muslims, they will indicate that all Muslims are terrorists and if they won’t submit to American authority (see Iran), “we” must go kill them.
When Trump said the US would leave Afghanistan, this was Trump reversing a socialist policy because Trumpers know Obama supported the occupation of Afghanistan. When Biden said the US would leave Afghanistan, suddenly this was a socialist showing weakness in the face of the Muslim enemy. To suggest that Trumpers don’t embrace military violence against other nations is, again, to wholly misunderstand them.
Consider also that these are essentially the same people who did things like burn Tulsa (and other successful Black towns); fascism didn’t happen under Trump so much as it just revealed itself again. Trumpers’ paranoid fantasies about hoards of Black people streaming out of the cities into the suburbs to kill them are essentially a projection of their own violent desires — but they know they can’t express them without being further marginalized. They know they are violent fascists, but they also know they can’t make that too well-known.
Summary
Both fascists and Trumpers are nationalists. In both cases, this is a nationalism that comes from the need to satisfy the individual’s narcissism, even though it may be portrayed in some cases as a form of communalism (with the nation being “above” the individual).
Both are willing to use or discard capitalism depending on whether it benefits their need to increase their power.
Both are willing to use or discard democracy for the same reason.
Both embrace violence, even seeing it as essential, but will portray themselves as peaceful if they believe it will be beneficial to do so.
I would really like it if liberals would stop pretending that the Trump movement was anything less than a full fascist movement from the very beginning. The two characteristics that made Trump appealing on day one were racism (his opening statement about Mexicans established that) and opposition to the elites (who are “socialists”). In addition, he literally started talking about ending the electoral process and making himself permanent President before he was elected. People pretended he was kidding; he was never kidding.
It’s interesting that the expert doesn’t mention the fact that fascists are always vehemently opposed to socialism — could it be because liberals are also vehemently opposed to socialism? Our organization has certainly been taught again and again that liberals are pro-capitalism and opposed to socialism.
Perhaps it is liberals who are the right-wing populists. It’s an interesting question. They’re nationalistic, but put individual rights first (in the sense of elevating the rights of capitalists above the nation as a whole). They love capitalism. They like reduced democracy, but aren’t willing to get rid of it entirely; they love the performance of democracy. They reject their own violence and say they’re opposed to foreign invasion, while consistently supporting government’s authority over violence. Hm. I’m just not sure if they qualify as “populist”.
The sole purpose of fascism pedantry — from both Democrats and Trumpers — seems to be to erase it from possibility. Trumpers want to erase it so they won’t be marginalized; Democrats want to erase it to protect their own slightly-less right wing position and capitalism in particular. If we could all accept that Trumpism is fascism, then we might be able to deal with the next round of it — which is likely just around the corner — more effectively. The only thing that stopped fascism last time was the incompetence and complacency of the fascists. Imagine if they’d actually shown up in force on January 6 instead of watching it from their couches! Imagine if the few who did show up had been competent! Can we count on that next time?
Since the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been a lot of people trying to find someone to blame. Republicans want to blame China as well as anyone who looks Asian, Democrats want to blame Donald Trump due to his bad pandemic policies and promotion of wacky, counter-productive ideas (like chloroquine and “it will just vanish in the spring”). I’d like to point out to you, though, that a pandemic can’t happen unless the virus travels. If the virus doesn’t travel, you get an epidemic, not a pandemic.
A virus can’t travel by itself. It needs to be protected inside a host or it is quickly destroyed. Black Death was able to travel in fleas (both on humans and on other animals, like rats), and that travel was facilitated by human beings, primarily traveling by ship.
Similarly, the Spanish Flu, which killed more people than the total killed in World War I and ended that conflict, was spread by travel. The second wave of Spanish Flu was particularly deadly; it was a mutation of the original disease and was spread by the movement of soldiers around Europe. (Incidentally, the Spanish Flu probably came from Kansas, but Spain was the first to report the widespread outbreak of disease, so people blamed it on that country.)
If we’re wanting to blame someone for the COVID-19 epidemic, who did it?
We have all these borders in this world we live in. From a leftist perspective, there’s no good purpose to these borders except one — to stop the spread of a pandemic. However, closing a border to travel is something politicians wait to do until the next wave has already arrived inside the border, making the border shutdown pointless. Why do they wait?
The group of people who travels the most, and with the least limitations, is the wealthy. When people without money travel, there is always someone trying to stop them from crossing a border, but when the rich travel, they (and their money) are welcomed with open arms. Because travel is something the wealthy want to do, governments wait to shut down travel — especially air travel, since that is the way wealthy people travel. I do realize that air travel is affordable enough that normal Americans sometimes get to fly, but please realize that Americans are, on average, much more wealthy than the average person on this planet.
Wealthy people keep traveling — especially by air — so the virus is flying all over the globe faster than epidemiologists can analyze our blood and waste water to figure out what’s going on. A new strain of COVID-19 that crops up in San Francisco could travel to South Africa and back before anyone realizes what’s going on because some tech guy just really needed to meet with an investor in person, or take his family to Kruger National Park.
Even if only one passenger is infected with a virus at takeoff, the tiny size of a plane means that masking is completely pointless (masks are only effective for about 15 minutes), and by the time it lands, the majority of the passengers will be carrying the disease. Every flight is a potential superspreader event.
As a concrete example, consider a recent event in the Netherlands. Authorities there tested 600 air travelers arriving from South Africa and found that 61 of them (more than 10%) were positive for COVID-19 with 14 of them having the new, more contagious omicron variant. To make matters worse, rapid testing is not anywhere close to 100% accurate, and failures tend toward false negatives (showing that the person does not have COVID-19 when they really do). Specifically:
For people with symptoms, the false negative rate is 18%.
For people without symptoms, the false negative rate is 42%.
During the first week of symptoms, the false negative rate is 22%, but if tested in the second week, the false negative rate is 49%.
Let’s consider, too, the fact that air travel is extremely expensive in terms of fossil fuels burned and climate change gasses emitted, but we just keep doing it. Greenhouse gas emissions from commercial flights (never mind private and military flight) make up 2% of global emissions and are expected to triple by 2050, which is interesting since we have to become carbon negative by then or the whole human species will likely die out. It’s nice that Google has a tool to help you find flights based on carbon emissions — but every flight emits a huge amount of carbon. Meanwhile, the powers-that-be are doing everything they can to keep the airline industry going.
You could make the argument that without airlines rapidly transporting COVID-19 all over the globe, the disease would have been able to move in a more traditional way — via international shipping. That’s probably true, but on the other hand, we probably could have come up with humane ways to continue shipping without spreading disease and, more importantly, global capitalism is not a good thing. Globalism has many serious problems, including: Reliance on far-away production (that is inevitably disrupted), huge amounts of resource waste, ability of capital to better hide its abuse of human beings, alienation of consumers from the source of the things they consume, and segmentation of the labor market that capitalists leverage to push down wages.
To summarize: It was capitalism that made the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan, China into a pandemic. The biggest factor was wealthy and relatively-wealthy people flying internationally. Politicians repeatedly chose to close down borders after a new variant had already arrived because they felt they had to satisfy the needs of the wealthy and, in richer countries, consumers. If you want to effectively fight a pandemic in the future, shut down the borders when the case count is declining rather than when it is increasing.
Let me also clarify that I’m talking about what caused the pandemic. The pandemic is here and isn’t going away, so if you’re vaccinated, feeling well, and are willing to comply with pandemic-related protocols when you fly, I will not be holding it against you if you choose to fly, and I think you will probably be fine if you do so. The same goes for other risky activities.
