Seasonal ho ho time is about upon us, and normally this would provide a respite in political news. However, this time around it is difficult to know if our Impressario-in-Chief will be willing to relinquish the limelight in favor of Rudolph, the elves in the melting North, or Santa himself. I imagine The Donald perceives himself as Santa, bequeathing his greatness to our blessed country.
Now a month and more after our national election, Mr Trump has revealed more of his show-biz moxie, making of his cabinet and other high officers of government selection process a non-stop reality TV show, riveting the press with his spectacle. Traipsing to the gold-tinged lobby of the mighty Trump Tower, his supplicants pass the gauntlet of the press, moving upward on the magical golden escalator, for a hearing with his royalness, the President-elect. Almost each day a new name is anointed, nominated by Mr Trump for this or that office on the Cabinet or some other role. They descend the escalator, chosen or emasculated, to say their two-bits. Mr Romney supplicated several times, once for a 20 minute talk session, then for a classy dinner out. According to Roger Stone, Trump’s sometime advisor, the point was to torture Romney for having characterized Trump during the primaries as a fraud and a phony. His reward was to be played with like a nearly dead mouse by a cat. Speaking of classy….
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Of those selected for cabinet posts or other positions, the list reads like the worst possible nightmare of a liberal. Most of those selected are billionaires or millionaires, chosen in part because Mr Trump feels he should pick those “who have made a fortune.” Perhaps he is well acquainted with the saying that “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime” (Balzac), a concept which fits well for someone busy establishing a kleptocracy. While The Donald may be a compulsive liar, he also seems unable to hide his real self for very long. The Pussy Grabber in Chief is simply too proud of his accomplishments to be discreet – it shows glaringly in his nouveau riche garishness, verily in the Trump Lobby where gold-plating announces loud and clear the 80’s ethos of “he who has the most stuff when he dies wins.” His Louis IX interior decor for his sprawling 56th floor apartment is more of the same. The Donald has it and wants to make very sure you know. The Queens kid’s chip on the shoulder is gargantuan.
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Beneath the show-biz glitz and Trump’s knowing use of lowest-common-denominator TV smarts, there is something far more disturbing in his choices: the “alt-right” Chief Strategist Mr Bannon, who has run a website supportive of neo-nazi’s, the sequence of military generals, one in particular noted (and fired) for his strident extremism, the Secretary of Education choice whose aim is to destroy public education in favor of evangelical vouchers, the Secretary of Labor who thinks the minimum wage is too high at $10 (of course the President-elect thinks workers should work harder – the old Stalinist Stakhanovite view, work yourself to death for an ideology – in this case that of rapacious Crony Capitalism). Yes, Mr Trump, is making a grand stew of his and his fellow oligarch’s corporatist fantasy, the uber alle’ism of capital over labor, the union of the powers of the government and … Hmmm, this, for those of us old enough, or learned enough in not-so-distant history, all has a familiar ring.
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As demonstrated by events in North Carolina, where a Republican just lost the governorship, and the GOP controlled House there had a sudden meeting to write draconian new laws to restrict the powers of the governor, like the good old fascists of old, the GOP of our present USA is playing quick and fast hard-ball. The GOP has on a State level done the same with extreme gerrymandering, voter suppression, and anti-union laws, all with an aggressive air of vengeance. There is little reason to think Trump’s group will not do likewise with its near complete control of the Presidency, House and Senate, and likely quick control of the Supreme Court. The coming months and year will let us know, and if my hunch is correct, quickly, if this is the direction Trump will take – to consolidate power, suppress dissent, attempt to silence what has thus far been an all-too supine press, and carry on with what certainly has the appearance of a kind of coup. Given Trump’s current “victory tour” where he still feeds his fans “lock her up” red-meat, we can await the emergence of a ready and willing grouping of well-armed brown-shirt militias to begin to enforce the new “political correctness” terms. Being highly realistic we’d have to note that most of those who have been busy arming themselves while stridently asserting their Second Amendment patriotism lean decidedly to the right-wing side of the political spectrum. (And I bet if black men and perhaps Latinos began to stream into the local WalMart or hardware store to buy assault weapons and such, they would suddenly find that somehow they couldn’t get them with the same facility of a good old country-boy.)
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As a long experienced left/anarcho sort, I have had a deep aversion to the knee-jerk tendency of many I know to whip out the “fascist/Nazi” rhetorical card, when ever the State oversteps, or ill- or mal-trained cops get power/gun happy. However at the same time I try to keep my political antennae well-tuned to the frequencies of the day, and, a bit reluctantly, I myself would have to say the sound I am hearing certainly carries the background thump of 20th century fascism. Trump clearly has an authoritarian streak to match the chip on his shoulder, and his supporters – a clear minority of Americans – appear to like this. Not unlike a little Austrian corporal in the echt civilized world of Germanic kultur not-so-long-ago.
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No, history does not repeat itself verbatim, but over a deeper historical time, responding to profound shifts in economic and social realities, it takes on a clear cyclical rhythm. These shifts occur from technological changes – say the Guttenberg press, or the Industrial Revolution – which in turn are provoked by or provoke major changes in the organization of societies – say the shift in the European world from feudalism to capitalism, which signaled the collapse of religion’s grip leading towards a secular-scientific view. Or from a dominantly rural food-producing based society to a dense urban mechanized one.
We are in the midst of such a profound change, instigated by rapid technological leaps (global communications systems, computer controls, robots) all of which have served to destroy old patterns across the world, while not really providing any time-tested alternative. The mantra of the time is change change change, at such a rapidity that we scarcely know the real consequences of what we are doing. At another pace, the period from early industrialization – circa 1850 or so – through to the present, did much the same. The consequence was several industrial-scale wars that leveled much of the world, at the same time prompting many of the great technological changes which are, more rapidly, doing the same to our societies now.
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Given the seeming lessons of history, great convulsions in the social order – caused by technological shifts, by “natural” catastrophes (droughts provoked by human activities for example), by cultural one-off events (Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, etc.) – in general bring great waves of disorder, violence, and in an imagined effort to control these things, frequently authoritarian regimes arise. We are only at the early edge of even greater tectonic shifts in humanity’s global presence, shifts caused by human actions of myriad kinds, and we should anticipate, as is already occurring, that the social response will reflect itself in a desperate attempt to bring “order” to the increasingly difficult changes incurred by mass migrations, wars, inundation of low-lands by rising oceans, radically changed weather patterns, all of which will drastically change our collective sense of “normality.”
Human individuals, in general, don’t really like to be responsible for themselves, and prefer to defer to institutions which “know better” and let them take care of things. Hence group behavior, tribalism, and the broad tendency to acquiesce to those more powerful. So we shall see in the coming period if the American public behaves as did the German one in the Weimar Republic, and rapidly submits to the new disruptors’ actions, taking the promises offered at face value, and so lead us into an American fascist period, or whether it resists with actions which will be risky and dangerous to many, and well outside their “comfort zone.”
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We are long past the time for worrying about “safe zones” when our political system has established cordoned-off “free speech zones.” It’s been a long time coming, and it appears it’s actually arrived. Wrapped in an American flag and thumping, as hypocritically as possible, a Bible.
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