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No, it's tragic. Possibly the greatest tragedy we'll ever see in our lifetimes.
First, OK, I've been involved in debates on other boards and I've come to agree that what we are witnessing does not meet an academic definition of the term, "fascism". Others have argued persuasively for other terms, "neo-liberal imperialism", "inverted totalitarianism", "proto-feudalism". I think all apply and what we have is a situation begging for a birthing of new terms. However, the bottom line is we have indeed a situation, a tragic crisis, and use of the word "silly" helps no one but those that instigate the crisis.
I think "liberal imperialism" applies with respect to the face (and boot) we show the rest of the world. To paraphrase Bush's National Security Strategy (NSS): "The American Way of Life -- individual liberty and free market capitalism -- is self-evidently superior to all others. If the world followed Our Way we'd all be more prosperous and secure in our Liberty. There exists dangerous rogue states out there that would diminish liberty and threaten our security. We therefore have the right and self-interest to remove these illegitimate states and help their peoples build states in our own image. It is in the self-interest of everyone for us to re-order the world in this way. Thus, the New World Order of the Pax Americana." (It goes something like that, anyway.) The NSS even implies we'd go to war to ensure low marginal tax rates! Definitely very Liberal Imperialistic, there's no doubt about it! The word "fascism" doesn't (yet) apply.
There is in this some things that I think appeal to the American psyche, and maybe that's part of the reason Bush has been allowed to behave as he has. First, the notion that our way of life, the result of full exercise of the rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, is the highest expression of individual freedom ever on earth -- spreading it is a good in itself. (Remember, we're in the world of myth here.) And, second, governments gain legitimacy solely through the consent of the governed. The people in a sense "lease" their power to the state apparatus through the intermediation of constitutional democracy. Where this is not evidently so, government is illegitimate; we have a "rogue" state. Illegitimate rogue states have no right to claims of sovereignty, rendering "regime change" for the purpose of replacing the regime with one in our own image moral and legal and right. OK. However, this is just a modern rendition of the "white man's burden", last century's justification for raping other lands of their natural resources.
I think the above represents the ideology for public consumption. It hides the underlying reality. Liberal Imperialism is fundamentally optimistic. It posits value in the conquered as well as the conqueror -- all freely participate as consumer and worker over an ever growing economic pie. I think what we're witnessing today is a collapse of optimism and a reaction to limits. After writing off vast parts of the U.S. population and the world, GWB is leading a circling of the wagons for self-defense of his elite's way of life while ours is left to decline down the back slope of Hubbert's peak. It's gonna' get rough from here on out!
On the domestic front, Bush is advancing a radical right-wing agenda that is firmly focused on reducing the role of government to one narrow purpose: Security. Policing and protecting the prerogatives of power, nothing else (lest it interfer with the ability of elites to accumulate profit).
Really
The police try to protect the banks
And everything else is secondary
--D.A. Levy
Note the crushing fiscal policy -- two tax cuts totaling well over $2 trillion that overwhelmingly favor the wealthy. Our $6 trillion surplus has been reduced to a $5 trillion deficit for as far as the eye can see. This is nothing more than a continuance of the Reagan/Bush I policy of pauperizing government in order to make it impossible to continue programs other than security, including the hated social security and medicare obligations for the coming glut of boomer retirees. The intention is to avoid the obligation -- again, lest it interfer with the ability of elites to accumulate profit -- and leave the rascal multitude more dependent on the largesse of the corporate world. So, along with "neo-liberal imperialism", the term "proto-feudalism" seems to apply. (Anyone remember Heilbroner's seventies slimbook, "The Decline of Business Civilization"?)
But to the applicability of the term, "fascism": The following article makes the case for a "kind of fascism", by Professor Emeritus of Politics, Sheldon Wolin, of Princeton University, available here www.commondreams.org/views03/0718-07.htm :
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A Kind of Fascism Is Replacing Our Democracy
Sept. 11, 2001, hastened a significant shift in our nation's self-understanding. It became commonplace to refer to an "American empire" and to the United States as "the world's only superpower."
<snip>
No administration before George W. Bush's ever claimed such sweeping powers for an enterprise as vaguely defined as the "war against terrorism" and the "axis of evil"...
<snip>
Like previous forms of totalitarianism, the Bush administration boasts a reckless unilateralism that believes the United States can demand unquestioning support, on terms it dictates; ignores treaties and violates international law at will; invades other countries without provocation; and incarcerates persons indefinitely without charging them with a crime or allowing access to counsel.
<snip>
The American system is evolving its own form: "inverted totalitarianism." This has no official doctrine of racism or extermination camps but, as described above, it displays similar contempt for restraints.
----------------------------------------------------
DU posting limits force me to stop, but I suggest you read this excellent article. Wolin argues for a "kind of fascism" and argues we're witnessing an "inverted totalitarianism". But many dismiss the word "fascism" because many elements witnessed in Nazi Germany are not visible now. However, Wolin's argument is that we are achieving similar (Nazi) ends through more subtle means.
We still have the right to vote, but for whom? We have two votes in America, the "dollar" vote followed by the "democratic" vote. The problem with the first is that you get to vote a lot more if you have more dollars (very un-democratic). The result is that money sets the agenda and class interest prevails -- and, thus, we increasingly have one party in America, the Republicrats. Both Republican and Democratic factions represent monied interests first and foremost before they differentiate along the lines of their various constituencies. So, if my choices are limited to factions of one Republicrat party that first and foremost serves the interest of monied elites, and I don't have money, then what value is this right? Is this why voter turnout in America is so low? The bottom line: There is no need for Nazi-like laws outlawing competing parties -- the ends have been achieved by more subtle means.
Sure, I'm free to dissent (at least for now). I can protest, of course, but locked in pens known as "free speech zones" far from the pResidential rally. I can advocate for, say, single-payer universal healthcare, but since that item never makes it past the dollar vote it never gets on the public agenda. The result is 42 million Americans have only charitable (emergency room) access to healthcare and ours is the most inefficient delivery system on earth (33 cents of every healthcare dollar going to "administration and profit"). So what is this freedom to advocate worth if it is defeated in the oligarchic backrooms of power despite the public will?
I'm still free to speak -- witness my rant here! -- but note the difference in support between progressive and conservative media (it leads to a narrowing of the agenda). The money and power behind conservative media far exceed that behind progressive media and has the result of drowning out the progressive voice. It's not heard over the shouting sludge slopped forward daily by the major media. So, yes, I am nominally free to speak my mind, but to what effect?
Go ahead, buy a T-Shirt that makes an anti-fascist point. If you're a highschooler, you could be suspended and have an intimidating visit from the FBI; if you're in a shopping mall you just might get arrested.
I bet that the perception of the ordinary American is that nothing's changed; this is still the America of their childhood civics lessons, the land of Jefferson and Madison, of the Liberty Bell and George Washington's cherry tree. Again, subtle means, MaverickX, subtle means achieving the same ends (Lipmann-Bernays-Goebbels-Segretti-Rove have all earned their pay)...
But one's perception of "freedom" varies greatly, here, depending on what cell you occupy on this penal colony. Some cells are quite roomy and comfortable (especially if you're of the "management" class), but others, well -- one of our fastest growing industries still is prison construction and services. We have the highest incarceration rate in the first world (one of the highest over the entire world). If you're black, male, and live in a city, I think the chances that you spend time in prison are as high as 1-in-3. The chances that you're given the death sentence, another category we lead in, is 8 times higher than if you're white. A buddy of mine was nearly arrested for sitting on the front porch of his home late on a recent Saturday night, a home his family has owned for 50 years. What does this say about the Land of the Free? Depending on whom you ask, you will get very different answers. Some would already call this a locked-down police state, not a Jeffersonian democracy.
So what do we have here, MaverickX? Yes we have nominal "freedoms" and we have deeply embraced myths about our "freedoms". But are we free? Ask Martin Luther King, Malcom X, JFK, RFK; ask Carnahan and Wellstone; ask Steve Kangas, VoxNYC; ask the dead soldier in Iraq. Recall Ari Fliescher's threats after 9-11, "be careful". I hear Haliburton is rigging Gitmo to be our first death camp. What next? Will some of us winter in the Cuban sun? And will that dissolve our long-held myths?
Bottom line: Though we are not Nazi Germany and different conditions exist, we still have a kind of "fascism" here now. Mussolini's marriage of Corporation and State. The Conservatives march on ("neo", "crunchy", and "religious"), doing their best to wither the State. But note: Every inch of ground ceded by our democratic institutions is immediately claimed by the undemocratic corporation. Reagan/GHWB/GWB have pounded the bully pulpit for less government for a purpose -- again, isn't this a matter of ends achieved by more subtle means?
Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them.
-- Thomas Jefferson to Annapolis Citizens, 1809
Where we surrender, claim "silliness", there fascism steps in. I think we are witnessing the end of the American Experiment -- or, rather, a second experiment, a new mix of the prerogatives of power over the will and welfare of the many. Call it what you will, but don't call it silly!
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