Summary"A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it's going to get." -- Ian Williams Goddard Government is as good as the decisions it makes. Democracy is better than dictatorship because the wisdom of the crowd is better than that of any individual. Republicans have shown they would follow a demagogue. In a democracy, everyone should be able to vote, and all votes should be equal. The Constitution, which is difficult to change, prevents that. Election denial is a direct assault on democracy. Reliable information is a requirement for good decisions. It is the product of careful study, dialogue, peer review, and agreement. Right wing politicians ignore it, lie, remove experts from office, and install loyalists. (Remember how 'Brownie did a heckuva job' after Katrina ? or how Trump installed an apparatchik at the CDC ?) Science is the best way to determine fact, but scholars, journalists, investigators, lawyers, and others are instrumental in finding the truth. Republicans attack them all. Media is not always the purveyor of fact because it is owned by private institutions, advertising driven, dependent on money and often deny fact. 'Alternative truth', propaganda and lies generally become part of right wing beliefs and are propagated by the right wing noise machine including Fox News. The internet permits news from the entire world. Religion is the earliest media, which used thrilling architecture, art, music, sculpture, ceremony, priesthood, and sacred text to tell the story. It relies on faith, not evidence, so there has usually been religious resistance to the findings of science, which wins in the end. It is a natural ally of the political right. Democracy is the best way to govern, but it is usually short lived. The almost inevitable process that destroys it is the relentless accumulation of wealth. (Piketty) Democracy is also important in the economy so that it serves the people. Republicans have gamed the system so that it does not. Oligopoly overpowers government, takes over its institutions, and accelerates the process of extracting wealth from the rest of the people. The wealthy have an agenda much different than the majority. They prefer to use resources for border fortifications, massive military, WMDs, police, and prisons, not social supports, healthcare, or education. Just as wealth accumulates, so does political power and the result is right wing dictatorship. King, Czar, Fuehrer, Chairman, or unchecked President are right wing governments that no longer respond to the people. Right wing institutions want to expand, often at the expense of the well-being of their people. Examples: Putin, Hitler, and others. All those heroic empire builders in history were the heads of authoritarian, right wing government, responsible for humanity’s self destructive addiction to war. To the extent there is resistance, the fascist government meets it by force of arms. Partisan war becomes increasingly more destructive. Since the right suppresses political opposition, they are difficult to remove. Democracy is much better than dictatorship. That would be the choice of a majority, and why it is necessary for the minority of the right to fix elections. America was great when FDR was in office. He got us out of the great depression, implemented Social Security, mobilized for World War II to fight Fascism, effectively saved capitalism with the New Deal, WPA, advocated for the Four Freedoms, formulated a Second Bill of Rights (which is remarkably similar to Bernie Sanders proposals), assisted Europe with the Marshall Plan, implemented the Bretton Woods institutions to provide global economic stability, to avoid recurrence of WWII created the United Nations which subsequently drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There was an understanding that global problems require global institutions. The most challenging problems are trans national. Republicans reversed all of that. Republicans never liked the New Deal, attempted a military coup to remove FDR, and have slowly, over decades, rejected the high values of the FDR vision. A succession of Republican Presidents have been elected without the popular vote. Supreme Court allowance of voter suppression, gerrymandering, political corruption, wide gun ownership, and other dirty tricks have brought a minority government of plutocrats to power. Because Republicans are a minority party, they rig elections by gerrymandering, voter suppression, foreign interference, and other dirty tricks. Because the Constitution favors rural unpopulated areas, it is naturally biased against democracy. The U.S tends to have the lowest voter turnout of developed countries, which also favors Republicans. Republicans made it increasingly difficult to tax the rich (remember that's where the money is.) Under Ike, the top marginal tax rate was over 90% and the economy did very well. Republicans for decades claimed that reducing taxes would lead to prosperity. It actually increased wealth inequality to extremes, starved government services including infrastructure and social programs, increased taxpayer debt, polarized our politics, and made economic volatility much more likely. The middle class plummeted, poverty increased, income inequality soared, the wealthy thrived, as Republican policy redistributed upward to the 1%. The red scare was justification for suppression of labor, dissidents and a number of failed wars world-wide: Central America, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and others. But it was also useful for empire building, cracking down on dissidents and even union organizers. Ronald Reagan was hostile to unions, cooperated with Hoover to suppress left wing film makers and thus turn media to the right. Civil service was also pruned. Religion provided a pretext. The middle class began its long decline as wealth has been extracted from it. Corporate consolidation has been in progress for decades, but media has become especially problematic since few oligarchs now control everything broadcast. Extreme inequality is a hallmark of bad government, and it leads to Fascism. The US could still lose WWII.
Secret covert agencies flourished, the secret FISA Court kept empire building out of sight. The Supreme Court turned a blind eye to abuses such as secret prisons, torture, Guantanamo, gratuitous wars, and other crimes. Leading liberal leaders, such as JFK, RFK, MLK were assassinated in the 1960s. "The constant recourse to the "lone wolf" theory to explain assassinations and comparable national traumas is not only empirically challenged but also represents a kind of large scale cop-out. At what point, I wondered, is it permissible to doubt that the assassinations of both Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr - all of whom challenged the status quo in significant ways - were the result of independent actions by three "crazed loners" ? Russ Baker: Family of Secrets page 492 Reagan busted unions, expanded the military, started illegal wars in central America, financed with arms sales to Iran, (the Iran/Contra scandal), ignored the World Court after mining the harbour in Nicaragua. presided over tax cuts that piled up taxpayer debt, Media did not cover US support for dictators, the many military adventures, or the empire created from far-flung military bases. Republicans, then as now, opposed democracy. The military became a vital part of the economy, as well as a very bad government jobs program. Because its purpose is to produce WMDs, it should be subtracted from GNP, not added. The Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980s. From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990 virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift ? (from the jacket of Andrew J. Bacevich book Americas War for the Greater Middle East.) The partisan Supreme Court, in arguably the worst decision ever made, selected George W Bush President. 9/11 was the equivalent of the Reichstag Fire in German history. Civil liberties were promptly rolled back with the Patriot Act, ruinous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began the forever war. Torture, renditions, Guantanamo illustrated that human rights no longer are a part of US policy. Russ Baker in his book, "Family of Secrets", asks...how is it that W , who had an unimpressive record of accomplishment, became President ? Like other books that do not reflect the official story, Baker's book got scathing reviews, but his notes are extensive and his publisher is first class. We know that W's father was well connected and had headed the CIA. The CIA, our secret government with a black budget, is skilled at controlling public opinion, changing the outcome of elections world-wide. It has mob connections, engaged in illegal wars, torture, run drugs, assassinations, regime change, and according to Director William Colby "The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." The vast right-wing
conspiracy does exists. See David Brock's book "Blinded By The Right" for some details. Very
wealthy individuals (Coors, Scaife, Olin, ... ) funded "think
tanks" like Heritage to
produce propaganda, that is then fed to broadcasters, especially Fox News and
talk radio. Major US media conglomerates can and do
manipulate public opinion and they are a major determinant of the
outcome of US elections. The now very
partisan Supreme Court ruled with Citizens United that
corporations can spend unlimited amounts to do it. SCOTUS ruled that money is speech, but it also corrupts. Corporate elites are the major beneficiaries: oil companies fund strong messages denying global warming, polluters can do what they want with little regulation, the gun lobby gets no limits on the sale of weapons, the military acts as a security force for multinationals worldwide, defense contractors get most of our taxpayer dollars, banks get free money and permission to charge usurious interest rates, bill collectors get tougher bankruptcy laws, the very wealthy get to abolish taxes on their estates, and the Congress gets lavish campaign money, The wealthy are the winners, and the rest of us do without pensions, decent wages, healthcare, and pay the price for exploding higher education costs, predatory lending, and the largest part of the tax burden. We also get dysfunctional government: little healthcare, downsized welfare, privatized Social Security, ruinous eldercare, and crumbling infrastructure. Republicans, backed by the corporate elite and the partisan Supreme Court, were responsible for selecting Bush. The Bush years were disastrous for the US on almost every criteria. Thomas Frank wrote about it in The Wrecking Crew. We now have a military that costs more than the rest of the world's, largest prison population, poor social programs, and we have the most extreme wealth inequality of the developed world. Our elected officials have done little to assure health care to everyone, to see that higher education is affordable, to fund modern infrastructure, to do our share of foreign aid, or to assure some security for old age. No. They are building an empire. The US seems headed for a two class, widely bifurcated society. US is Facing a Weimar Moment (3/16/2009) The election of Trump, apparently assisted by Russians, has brought a rejection of all of the admirable values of the the FDR vision. Racism, exceptionalism, extreme nationalism, attacks on all democratic institutions, rigged elections, militarism, the forever wars, surveillance state, Racism motivates the Trump Republican base, knee jerk militarism is ascendant, the civil service is degraded, foreign policy has been militarized as the State Department is dismantled, Plutocrats rule, dictators are friends while democracies are not (a new Axis), human rights ignored, rejection of global agreements that jeopardize the fate of the planet. Republicans goose-step to Trump exceptionalism, authoritarianism, corruption, a strong-man head of State probably elected with the help of Russian connections. Are these not all the characteristics of Fascism ? It takes good government to maintain a balance between democracy and capitalism. The more wealth inequality, the worse the government. Capitalism wins when Republicans are in office, it is only concerned about profit so it is plundering and destroying the earth for profit. The US is governed by plutocrats who are not responsive to the people. Scandinavian Countries have a better standard of living, and been better at keeping inequality lower. Graduated income and wealth taxes, strong social services, universal healthcare, free education, public support for media, powerful unions, robust infrastructure, are features we could learn from. February 2017 Timothy Snyder of Yale warned that we would have about a year to avoid Fascism. Times up. Our former regime: constitutionally corrosive, anti-democratic, authoritarian, corrupt, favors unchained capitalism is an example which should make my point. But then it doesn´t matter so much what our politics is becoming, if we are about to destroy the planet. The IPCC reports and computer models forecast there are not many years left before collapse. Trump pulled US out of nuclear arms treaty with Russia over violations by Moscow (10/20/2018) Increasing uninhabitable areas of the earth drive immigration, fueling right wing hatred that blocks them. There will be violence, war, probably nuclear. The natural world is sacred. The idea that we can dominate it is a life threatening mistake. Capitalism threatens climate devastation now. So lets face it:
See the forecast Bibliography
|