I’m burned out from working to get the new issue of the Washington Monthly ready to go online for Monday morning. So, I’m taking a bit of a mental health day, today. Something to think about, though, is how fascism is a kind of anti-politics. And, when the Republicans decided to greet the new President Obama with a strategy of total obstruction, they basically walked away from politics.
I think this can be retroactively judged as the true gestation period for Trumpism. I know we can all identity other warning signs and slow-developing trends. But the last piece in the puzzle was making a decision to completely delegitimize the give-and-take of legislating. Once you go down that road, you delegitimize yourself as a lawmaker, or a body of lawmakers.
Anti-politics is what you get.
This is a pretty succinct explanation of the situation we are in. So the famous Mitch McConnell meeting where he committed the republicans to total obstruction was maybe the defining moment. And the Limbaugh’s, O’Reilly’s , and Fox news folks helped it along –
-r
Okay then Trumpism is Anti-intelligent or ultra-hate-mongering, take your pick or both.
But it started much earlier. The student of Weimar will note that the delegitimisation of democracy was the first essential project. The unceasing refrain that “government is the problem” from Republicans has been corrosive and insidiously effective.
Citing the “other” as the source of the working classes financial and social burden is another hallmark.
But actually plundering the nation’s wealth and prosperity is probably the biggest precursor; which party takes the blame for that?
I’m going with ‘GOP’, but something about the way that’s worded seems to suggest you’d answer ‘Dems’? (Or is that just me reading something that isn’t there between the lines?)
If so, do tell.
Not suggesting Dems aren’t indictable to some degree for assisting in “actually plundering the nation’s wealth and prosperity”. But relative to GOPers? They’re dilettantes, amateurs.
I’m suggesting probably both. And so are you apparently, with the caveat that the Democrats aren’t in quite the same league.
But they’re playing the same game; everything is fine so long as transactional wealth-creation is humming along, irrespective of the structural transfer of significant prosperity into the hands of very few. Not sure Democrats don’t rate an almost equal second in this trend.
After reading Martin’s cited article, which I highly recommend in its entirety, I did a bit more research on the Weimar era and my first thought was that there was nothing like the Versailles Treaty in our current predicament. But on second thought it seems that this massive transfer of wealth serves almost exactly the same function in the dangerous alchemy of our current politics. Is income inequality our Versailles Treaty? The policy adhered to by all legitimate parties and candidates which ultimately subsumes them?
Historical analogies can be stimulating mental gymnastics: nothing more. There is no there there.
Inevitably flawed but irresistible to me nonetheless. Versailles ultimately paralysed Weimar and left it defenceless but it was imposed by sovereign states, not global profiteers. A lesson of greed outweighing better judgement and sober evidence.
No, the analogy is not flawed, it is clear and interesting. But the problems with historical analogies is the danger of attaching more importance or meaning to them they might deserve. The situation in the US today is so totally different from Weimar (not that I know so much about it) in time, space, society, technology, etc. that any comparison provides little guidance. I’m for such analogies, I play the same mental gymnastics in my personal life, usually not to much effect.
Blame? Neither party even acknowledges that it’s happened. And DEM partisans endlessly repeat the party mantra: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama get credit for awesome economic performance under their steady hands.
“Neither party even acknowledges that it’s happened.” You’ve just explained both Trump’s and Sanders’ surprising candidacies.
Personally, I think Sanders is offering Democrats a timely opportunity to dismount from this merry-go-round.
For political class (again, especially GOP) 2016 is their mortgage crisis: moment they discover their elaborate CDOs rest on quicksand.
https://storify.com/billmon1/games-people-play
I was surprised at this, to be honest:
He neither turned to stone nor was consumed by purifying flame. He used the phrase the ‘donor class’. Imagine. The ‘donor class‘. The dialectic is strong in that phrase, now ubiquitous among activists on the Right.
I took this as an omen, albeit small. I truly thought they were all just scavenging hyenas; could any one of them experience a moment of doubt? A skerrick of self-awareness?
“could any one of them experience a moment of doubt? A skerrick of self-awareness?”
Doubt it. I think they’re following the cynical path paved by Tucker Carlson…
I see the media as a lagging indicator of public opinion.
You’re excellent link, thanks.
What he said. Also not happy with it but Hillary seems completely out of touch with a rapidly, rapidly escalating context:
Everyone should follow Billmon1. He, with the possible exception of Carl Beijer, is the best political pundit on twitter even if he’s a bit wordy for that format at times.
Been the “go to guy” since November 2002.
Nice.
Booman says it’s too late – but going for Trump is the only way anyone’s going to get any media attention at all. The Trump debacle will suck up every second of airspace from now to November.
Maybe. Still it could be a significant opportunity and Trump is extending it on a silver platter. Think Bernie can rise to the occasion? I bet he can.
Nice how so?
Nice idea.
Where’s the potential gain for Sanders in the primary by doing this? Not saying there isn’t any, but it could hurt more than help.
Oxygen. Principles; I could see him making a strong but principled stand very publicly. Demographics; by opposing Trump he implicitly demonstrates faith with potential Hispanic and black constituents.
And hopefully create opportunities, like he did at Liberty University, to make his economic pitch to Trump supporters. His platform and Trump’s tacitly agree on trade and a number of other structural issues. It’s a strange year.
It also forces HRC at least in part to address the populist issue. That is, she figures out what is going on or continues in the elite confusion. This either means she becomes a more fitting candidate or reveals her publically as the wrong person for the moment.
People can be persuaded to change their mind/opinion on an individual issue. And that’s not so easily done. However, expecting a person over a certain age to junk a worldview in which their deeply invested for another is the stuff of fantasies. The liberal fantasy that HRC is either some sort of closeted progressive or will “come to Jesus” is nuts. Yet it seems to have gripped the imagination of left leaning DEMs. HRC is who she is and always has been.
I agree with you. It CAN happen though I think it highly unlikely but I think its win win, either way.
Name one politician over the past fifty years who was also over the age of 45 that became more liberal/progressive after being elected to national office or a gubernatorial office. Some manage to hold onto what they were when elected. A higher number move rightward and rarely take a step back on individual issues that are closer to what they once were or purported to be.
The brain loses too much plasticity as we age for any radical leftward changes in political orientation or worldviews. A rightwing orientation is simpler and less complex and therefore, more easily comprehensible to an older brain. The antidote is becoming fully invested in complex liberal thinking at a young age. A curious mind gets more stimulation and exercise and therefore, retains more plasticity, barring organic disease processes.
Suggesting a direct debate with Trump, now? Someone had proposed that, no? I think it might be a game changer. I am sure he has had experience with Trump’s style of chaffing.
Fox actually tried to set up a Sander-Trump debate. Trump refused.
I think Bernie needs to start talking about how he is the candidate Trump is scared of. Makes him look strong and guaranteed to make Trump meltdown.
It would appeal to men, but there aren’t enough DEM male voters or potential male voters available for the remaining closed primaries for a such a move, and it would have to be vigorous and in-your-face to command enough media attention, to significantly increase the number of votes that he would have gotten anyway. The down side is that in general DEM women, particularly older women, prefer candidates that present a softer, mushier face. Thus, it could be the deciding factor for somewhat undecided women to go with HRC.
Beijer is projecting what he’d like to see out of Sanders but hasn’t thought through how that would work in the primary contests. Appreciate that it’s probably deeply frustrating for all minority progressive activists, writers, thinkers that it’s been so difficult to inspire large numbers of younger people in their communities to get on board with Sanders and vote and penetrate the preexisting voter base in their communities. It was so easy to do in ’08. But that was tribal and not rational politics.
Bernie hit all the right notes on “This Week” this morning. Masterful IMHO.
The Telegraph — Dick Cheney heaps praise on Hillary Clinton
Take that you DFH BernieBros. She’ll whip out this latest endorsement at the next debate and lasso Bernie to a tree.
Your cited article dates from 5 September 2011. Just typical Cheney ratf*ckery from another election.
Oops — OTOH, does the date of praise from Cheney for a DEM matter?
Does ratf*ckery have a shelf-life?
hmm. Difficult to place this one in the ratf**k category.
Darth Vader hugs Hillary and suggests she’d make a better president?:
I can almost imagine him grunting like the Penguin when he said it.
New elite American erotic image: Dick Cheney giving Hillary Clinton the kiss of death.
More like a Dementor kiss.
Delegitimize would be my choice–to withdraw legitimate status or authority from. A form of nullification?
It is aimed at the entire Dem contingent, from executive to judicial. Norquist aims it at government itself.
Not classical fascism, in which the state controls business and labor. We are the near opposite…business wields the levers of government through lobbyists/corruption and suppresses labor.
constructive way to conceptualize,
This is a good article, thanks for the link. I have been thinking for a while that trump reminds me of il duce. From the article:
“We should be warned that fascist demagogues are often made on the sly, almost imperceptibly, and that the fires they stir up tend to spread rather quickly. The pull of history on individuals is often inexorable.”
Men and women of good conscience need to stand up and fight back now or we may end up slowly sliding into a nightmare.
Or some days, Inverted Totalitarianism…”In Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco, inverted totalitarianism is described as a system where corporations have corrupted and subverted democracy and where economics trumps politics.[5] In inverted totalitarianism, every natural resource and every living being is commodified and exploited to collapse as the citizenry is lulled and manipulated into surrendering their liberties and their participation in government through excess consumerism and sensationalism.” (wiki)
About as succinct a summary of our current situation as I can imagine.
Yes, this.
Inverted Totalitarianism is fascism without a face. Corporations write the laws, and everyone watches the kabuki theatre on the evening news, oblivious to what is actually going on behind the scenes.
Yes, corporate rule with the tacit approval of government, that is, the politicians, as we see today. Sanders falls out of the boat, kerplunk, causing waves and waves…may he prevail on Wednesday morning.
As an anti-fascist image Trump surrounded on stage by a protecting and very purposeful ‘presidential’ Secret Service detail really sucks.
I’ve been calling Trump a true fascist for awhile now, linking repeatedly to Altemeyer’s book, “The Authoritarians”, for anyone who wants to read about the followers, who are authoritarians, and Trump, who is a social dominator.
More reading material that you can bookmark and read at your own convenience.
Robert Paxton’s 1998 article: The 5 Stages of Fascism
http://w3.salemstate.edu/~cmauriello/pdfEuropean/Paxton_Five%20Stages%20of%20Fascism.pdf
Sara Robinson, from August 2009: Fascist America: Are we there yet?
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2009/08/fascist-america-are-we-there-yet.html
Driftglass, 2009 Dear Democrats
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2009/08/dear-democrats.html
And, of course, Bob Altemeyer’s The Authoritarians
http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf
I don’t think of the early 20th century, the heyday of Fascism, as a period with lots of know-nothingness like the modern republican party. Maybe I’m wrong but it’s not my impression. I think it has more to do with tribalism and oppression of the working class.
Ezra Klein’s timely analysis seems to agree with your observation although I found this direct quote from Robert Paxton’s Anatomy of Facism quite disconcerting:
Sounds a lot like what we are seeing.
Sorry, wrong date for cited article, was from last 20 December 2015.
LOL Does that sound like tone deafness? “… obsessive preoccupation with community decline…”
Those are Paxton’s words, not Klein’s, apologies if unclear. I’m guessing Paxton intended the phrase to be merely diagnostic; the book was written in 2004.
America has a long tradition of political decline renewal calls to arms.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/01/how-america-can-rise-again/307839/
Police resorted to pepper spray in Kansas City.
So I am really, really supposed to be getting some writing done this week, meaning real writing and not blog comments. It’s hard.
Apparently with no justification at all, and the cops were mounted. WTF? Abusive for the crowd, and don’t they know loss of vision could mean death for a working horse?
The Trump alternative
Dictatorship appeals to people because they imagine themselves as calling the shots.
Or wielding the truncheons.
Stand Your Ground laws paired with open-carry/concealed carry go together perfectly, to provide our oligarchs with limited liability when their private police officers start murdering us.
That it has been used by a few lunatics in the meantime is neither here nor there, for the most part.
It’s fascism all right, but I’m not sure it’s really politics OR anti-politics. I think Trump is incapable of politics, he’s just defaulting into marketing, which is what he really knows. He’s not campaigning to win (this is NOT the way to do that), he’s developing a brand, and the fierce brand loyalty of true believers.
It’s the same thing the Republicans have been doing for years, weaponizing the stupid, now also the violent; and even more so. The Trumpists are a carefully selected clientele for products Trump will sell them to salve their anxieties (or peddle his mailing list to other entrepreneurs). It’s a guaranteed growth market, as things cannot possibly get better for people who believe he’s the one that will make things better. (Remember Trump University?) He has no real political organization and no viable platform. He can’t win the election. But he can make lots of money.
People say he’s like Hitler — actually in many ways he is. But imagine a Hitler who was not really trying to build the 1,000-year Reich, kill all the Jews and take over the world, but rather, a Hitler whose main goal was to enrich himself — selling bullshit products with the xenophobic racist brand, selling guns, ammo, security systems, gated communities …
iirc we’ve always disagreed on whether Trump is in it to win. I still think he is because 1) he does nothing without the expectation of winning and 2) there’s a lot more money in it for him if he wins the Presidency than if he ends up a loser in either the primary or general election. He often loses but doesn’t seem to bother with figuring out why and changing course. For example, yuuge fortunes have been made in the gambling/casino industry by people that entered it long after Trump did and all he’s managed to do is bankrupt casinos and then brags that he didn’t file personal bankruptcy.
He doesn’t have a campaign operation because he doesn’t have a clue as to what it takes and has some notion that it’s not necessary. That a “bigger than life” candidate is all that’s needed.
It has worked for him up until now. However, his schtick is now bankrupt (he’s out of material) and the other candidates, GOP, big money, and MSM are gunning for him. Looks to me as if he’ll take FL but without finishing off Rubio, Kasich wins OH and Trump could finish a weak second, now possible that Trump could come in third in IL behind Kasich and Cruz (either of whom could come in first).
Tuesday might be very interesting.
He wants to win the primary, but I was talking about the general. I don’t believe he can win that. It could well be that he just wants to see what happens, but I don’t think he has a competent organization, or is even capable of having one. He may look like some kind of politician, but he’s not. He has no experience at it nor the personality for it.
Also, Trump has the most negative approval rates of any candidate in the race, and that’s not going to change. Aside from his loving admirers, everybody else loathes him.
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/donald-trump-favorable-rating
That may sound strange, but his success so far is all based on his antinomian personality and keen sense of how to play to the rubes. It’s brilliant, but it’s all a shtick, there’s no there there. He doesn’t even know enough about politics to know what he wants, other than $$$$ for himself. OK, that’s what a lot of politicians want in the long run, but he’s thinking like a self-promoting businessman, plain and simple, which is all he is.
Sure he may WANT to win, but he’s already won this constituency hands down and can keep them as long as he likes. He’s already made mincemeat of the GOP.
NYT has a story out that Trump’s motivation is revenge for being mocked by BHO back in 2011, White House Correspondents dinner. Fascinating story, seems consistent with how thin-skinned the guy is:
The lead:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/us/politics/donald-trump-campaign.html?smid=tw-share&refere
r=&_r=2
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/can-t-take-a-joke-donald-trump-reacts-badly-to-whcd-routines-from-ob
ama-meyers
Looks like Trump is just doing what comes naturally to him.
I.e., guy is a malignant narcissist, Narcissistic Personality Disorder – the motive is status, grandiosity.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/2011-s-grand-harmonic-convergence?utm_source=feedburner&utm_
medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tpm-news+%28TPMNews%29
This is fascinating. It probably explains a lot about what’s going on. But the fact, remains, whatever Trump does in the presidential campaign, he’s out of his league. Ultimately, the only way to be taken seriously is to be worthy of it.
He is able to trash the GOP only because the GOP itself is on its last legs.
I mean, he is being taken seriously by the rest of America, but only the way you would take a case of the clap seriously.
Understood. He’s doing it “his way” and has the expectation that he can’t do worse than Mitt did. He’s a vanity candidate (and Mitt wasn’t much more than that himself). That’s not unique in the presidential primaries of either party. None has gone far in the past, but it would be foolish of us not to recognize the various reasons why they didn’t along with the fact that this time the GOP/elite has been reduced to Kasich as the boring Mr. qualified and experienced in the race and he’s a mere one brick short of being as much of a loon as the others.
I’m more cautious than I once was in declaring during the primary season who can and can’t win the general election. The WH out party for eight years begins with an advantage. Sometimes a huge advantage (’08) and sometimes with a slight advantage. The out candidate can whiff the opportunity, but merely okay isn’t good enough for the in party nominee.
How Trump Happened
It’s not just anger over jobs and immigration. White voters hope Trump will restore the racial hierarchy upended by Barack Obama.
By Jamelle Bouie
…………………
For some on the left, Trump is the result of decades of divisive politics–the inevitable outcome of a Republican political strategy that stoked white racial resentment to win elections. “Trump’s campaign can best be understood not as an outlier but as the latest manifestation of the Southern Strategy, which the Republican Party has deployed for a half-century to shore up its support in the old Confederate states by appeals to racial resentment and white solidarity,” writes Jeet Heer in the New Republic.
For some on the right, Trump is the grassroots response to Republican elites who have abandoned their working-class voters to the whims of laissez-faire capitalism. “[T]he Republican Party, and the conservative movement, offer next to nothing to working-class Trump supporters,” writes Michael Brendan Dougherty in the Week. “There are no obvious conservative policies that will generate the sort of growth needed to raise the standard of living for these working-class voters.”
……………..
All of which is to say that we’ve been missing the most important catalyst in Trump’s rise. What caused this fire to burn out of control? The answer, I think, is Barack Obama.
There have been some conservative writers who have tried to hang Trump’s success on the current president, pointing to his putatively extreme positions. But in most respects, Obama is a conventional politician–well within the center-left of the Democratic Party. Or at least, he’s governed in that mode, with an agenda that sits safely in the mainstream. Laws like the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Affordable Care Act weren’t impositions from the far left; they were built out of proposals from the right and left, passed by a majority of Congress that was elected to pursue solutions on health care and the economy. Barack Obama is many things, but conservative rhetoric aside, he’s no radical.
We can’t say the same for Obama as a political symbol, however. In a nation shaped and defined by a rigid racial hierarchy, his election was very much a radical event, in which a man from one of the nation’s lowest castes ascended to the summit of its political landscape. And he did so with heavy support from minorities: Asian Americans and Latinos were an important part of Obama’s coalition, and black Americans turned out at their highest numbers ever in 2008.
Considering the attacks we have seen coming from Trump recently, not just on demonstrators but the press, reporters also, maybe Mussolini isn’t the best comparison either. Think Saddam Hussein, maybe?