November 7th, 2024, in the USA
I’m being told by a number of eminently reasonable and clearly very pragmatic folks (CLEARLY pragmatic, given their rallying to the defence of precise and truth-based, not “fake-news-based,” rhetoric), that it’s a wild exaggeration, “extreme” rhetoric, to call Donald Trump “a fascist.”
I’m being told it was her “extreme” and “negative” focus on such outlandish and ridiculous ideas that landed Kamala Harris in the shallow pool in which she and the Democrats drowned on November 5, 2024.
Also, that it was that moment when on national television Harris said that she couldn’t think of a single thing she would do differently in terms of economic policy if elected president that she lost the election.
Fine, I won’t call Trump fascist. I’d like to call him America’s “Agent Orange,” but that would be too obvious, and, let’s not forget, “extreme.”
How about I call him “despot” instead. Of the ilk and calibre of Nero or Caligula of Rome, not Hitler. Fine. We are already relativizing the Holocaust in Gaza and the Middle East anyway.
I hope I make my critics happier now.
On a side note, yesterday, in Election Postmortem (and never was the mortuary term more aptly applied to current American and world politics), Republican strategists urged the Democratic party (with such earnestness, such benevolent emotion!) going forward, to not bung spanners into the works of every endeavor, every bill, a Republican Congress might initiate. The appeal to Democrats, just strategically sufficiently giving away its underlying reality as menace, was to let the Republicans do their job instead of hobbling it.
To which one democratic analyst responded by reminding the audience of Mitch McConnell’s declaration of war when Barrack Obama was president to let “nothing” the Democrats brought to the table—no matter what it was—pass. NOTHING.
Now, that Mitch—there’s a Conquistador.
So now can we get back to extreme fascists? I think so. Here’s how.
“We” have elected as the 47th president of the USA a man who is publicly, globally, on record calling his female opponents “bitches",” “communists,” and “dangerous people.” You see any extremism here?
“We” have elected as the 47th president of the United States a man convicted of a felony requiring jail time, as well as of multiple rapes and molestations. You see any fascism here?
“We” have . . . oh you know . . . a man who publicly said that if his opponent showed any signs of resisting the election outcomes that would surely go in his favor, he didn’t see a problem with calling out the National Guard or, if necessary, the military, to put her in place. No extreme fascist would say THAT. “For Brutus is an honorable man.”
And this is only the tip of the iceberg on which “we” Americans are hoisted. Because “truth,” social or unsocial, is a joke now. Have you noticed the faces of Republicans when they lie on TV? Complete frozen masks, no matter hoe often they are called out, because they are going to pass every lie-detector test by never swerving from the ordained script. You give them a fact; they give you a brick wall.
So let me say this. Damn right, Kamala Harris should have run a campaign near the end focusing on Trump’s “fascism.”
Damn right, she should have said that the economic policy should not be changed, because lots of sensible sources and analysts are reminding us, too late, that Bidenomics, which actually runs on some solid logical and factual—not to mention ethical and farsighted ideas—would not be fast enough opium for the masses. Because it was a slow-cooking receipt for the healthy survival of a sick country.
So, my friends, it is opportunism to jump on Kamala Harris now and to wag a know-all finger at her and say, “Oh, that’s when she lost the election, when she took up the ‘fascist’ rhetoric and when she said current economic policy was fine as it was.”
Go read something, dear Truth Social anti-fascists” and “moderates.” (And eternal shame on you, Joe Manchin, for grinning on the news last night and saying you are "‘moderate,’ and moderate centrism is the only thing that works. Everyone knows what hands you are eating out of and dare not bite, though it meant betraying your party, the country, and the earth. But then you’ve also bought a Republican go-to stockingface device. LONG LIVE FOSSIL FUELS!)
Here IS some sensible thinking on how Biden’s economic policy would have made America better if not great again in five-ten years. But of course, you probably hit the NYTimes paywall there. Why should news be free if healthcare isn’t? Well, go get yourself a subscription, surely Trump will pay for it.
Or this excerpt from Shannon Pettypiece’s article “What Trump’s Return to the White House Could Mean for the Economy and Taxes” (NBC news, Nov 6, 2024): “Trump has argued that putting tariffs on goods from China would encourage companies to move their plants to the U.S., creating jobs and boosting sales for U.S. producers. But multiple studies, including those of Trump’s past tariffs and previous rounds of tariffs under different administrations, found that increasing tariffs didn’t lead to a significant number of companies relocating to the U.S. nor did it create jobs for domestic producers. Rather, Trump’s 2018 tariffs on steel and aluminum led to a reduction in manufacturing employment because of higher costs for companies using steel and aluminum in their products, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Board.”
Trump won NOT because he’s NOT a fascist and extremist.
He’s both, and more.
He won because America, which relativized the Holocaust way before the twentieth century by founding a nation on the extermination of Native Americans and the brutalization of Africans, knows only two things intimately, understands only those two things clearly: money, and instant gratification.
Which is why people think Trump tariff-ing the world (did you know that he thinks “tariff” is the most beautiful world in economics?) and tax cuts for corporations will Make America Great Again. And that Trump will get in a room with Putin and Zelensky and stop the Ukraine genocide “in one day.” ONE DAY. INSTANT. GRATIFICATION.
We do love Dreamers in America, except of the DACA sort.
PENNY wise pound foolish, SCREW thy neighbor and fellow human (oh, and the environment too, while we’re at it, which is the Screw thy neighbor as thyself part of it), and LET US DESTROY anything we don’t quite understand or isn’t fast enough for our immediate kicks.
Make America Great Again. Yeah.