Category Archives: Fascism

No, Not Going Back

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I live in the UK now. I’m on a trip to Wales. It’s one of those trips they have here with a bunch of old people in coaches taken around to ride steam trains and see stuff. At dinner I keep getting asked if I ever go back.

Two headlines this morning, “White House erects UFC cage ahead of US 250th anniversary celebrations” and “Scottsbluff police respond to gunfire at convenience store after dog accidentally shoots person with a shotgun”

A giant carnival state for a CAGE MATCH at the White House, with part of it torn down for a huge fucking Trump tribute “ballroom”! Guns everywhere. (At least they threw the word “accidentally” into that headline.)

So no. Not going back.

They Meant It

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This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy.

In 2005 I wrote a post titled “They Mean It” that warned about Christian fascism and the intent to take over the US. This is how it ended:

These people mean it. America is an experiment. Democracy is an experiment. American democracy has not been around very long, and we have never been so perilously close to losing it. All the checks and balances have been removed by allies of these people. They mean it. The leader of the Senate is saying that Democrats hate “people of faith.” They mean it. Time magazine puts on their cover a person who calls for murdering us.

They mean it. A Supreme Court Justice declares that rulers should be chosen by God, not the people. They mean it. The Vice President is the keynote speaker at a conference where other speakers called for “a new McCarthyism” to bring “terror” to intellectuals, saying “let’s oppress them [liberals],” and that “the entire Harvard faculty” are “traitors.” They mean it. They mean it.

Watch your backs. I mean it.

Well, now we know. They meant it. People didn’t watch their backs – and they did it.

They meant it, and they did it. And here we are.

The Virginia Gerrymandering Ruling: Rules Are Rules

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The main site for Seeing the Forest is now Seeing the Forest at Substack. Please check it out.

This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy.

Virginia broke the rules. That’s all there is to it. Rules are rules.

Republican states can gerrymander to favor Republicans, Democratic states cannot gerrymander to favor Democrats. States can draw districts that exclude minority representation. States cannot draw districts that enable minority representation. Rules are rules.

It’s like “Stand Your Ground” gun laws. White people can stand their ground and shoot black people. Black people better not get near a gun. Rules are rules.

It’s like when I was a kid. All my neighbors were Black. I had to go to what was called the “white” school. It was a shiny new school some distance away. All my neighbors went to what was called the “black” school. It was built in the 1800s, run down, moldy, leaking roof, etc. Rules are rules. (Ann Arbor). Along came LBJ and Civil Rights and Democrats lost the South forever.

The South has risen again.

PS Also, women couldn’t get bank accounts, loans, managerial positions, and got paid 59 cents for each dollar men got paid for the same job, etc so expect that soon, too.

Rules are rules. 

What Can Be Done?

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This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy.

America’s “system” brought THIS to the world. What can be done and how soon?

Pope Leo criticized the Iran attack. The Trump admin summoned a representative of the Vatican to let them know, “The United States has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”

“One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century in which the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission, ordering an attack on Pope Boniface VIII that led to his downfall and subsequent death and forcing the papacy to relocate from Rome to Avignon, a region inside France.”

And today “Our great Military is … looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest.”

How Did We Get Here?

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This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy.

Let’s just say the Iran situation calms down, Iran sets up the toll system and the US just … leaves. Then the world has to sit and wonder what Trump does next. It could be literally anything. Back to Greenland? Cuba? Canada? Take the UK?

How did this happen? The disppearance of rule of law, international law, norms … we are now all at the whim of one madman with incredible power. The entire world!

After WWII the world tried to set up some structures to prevent another catastrophe. The US set up the regulatory state to prevent another depression and make people’s lives better. It was all systematically dismantled, piece by piece, with the effort hidden behind a fog of propaganda called “free speech” and based on “making some money.” Now a few people have all of the power and most of the wealth.

Will the world recover and do better next time?

Corruption Leads To Corruption Leads To Today

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This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy.

Some time back I listened to Ezra Klein interviewing journalist Anand Giridharadas, The Infrastructure of Jeffrey Epstein’s Power, discussing how the networks Epstein set up worked. It was just so enlightening and I’m still thinking about it, seeing it everywhere…

Of course there were the people, like Trump, who were part of raping young girls, attending the parties, etc.

There were the people who did not engage in the worst but benefitted from the connections Epstein offered. They knew about the worst because he had already been convicted the first time, but they benefitted from the connections and that was what mattered to them.

Earlier than that there were people who saw it happening, knew about the girls and the parties and just thought boys will be boys and laughed. That’s what women and girls were for! It’s just the way it is.

There were lots of people who participated in letting Epstein off that first time. There was the entire crowd at the DOJ who stepped in and took over the prosecution and let him off easy and ordered everyone to keep quiet about it! There were the people who saw this happening and said nothing. This was how things were done and that’s the way it is and if you want your career you’ll keep your mouth shut. And so they kept their mouths shut.

An Entire System Of Corruption

After all, everyone knew that corporate executives and the very wealthy and certain politicians and powerful people like them were above the law. That’s the way it is and if you want to keep your career you’ll sign the NDA and keep your mouth shut.

This was just one part of an entire system of corruption and acceptance of and expectation of corruption built up over the years and it was of a part with the entire system of letting fraudsters and money-launderers and corporate criminals and an entire class of predators get away with harvesting the public for profit. No prosecutions of executives for anything, ever. Polluters. Tax dodgers. Bank executives who crashed the economy with fraud. “Lobbyists” who exist just to pay off politicians. Government regulators who keep their mouths shut and don’t make waves or rock the boat, then leave government and are given lucrative jobs or contracts or “speaking fees” thanking them for their service to the system of corruption.

And a corrupt Supreme Court that has now legalized that system of bribery. Every day that all just got worse and worse until we have what we have now – a King and his family and the fascists around them raking in billions and billions.

The Dirty Hippies Who Refused To Participate In The Corrupt System

What stood out to me was there also were people who were repelled by it and wanted nothing to do with it and refused to benefit from the connections, favors & gifts and other things Epstein was dangling. They told associates to keep away from him and keep him away from anything they had to do with. Those are the ones the Trump admin is going after now because of that, prosecuting, etc. They are the “dirty hippies” who protest and show up at marches. They are the people who try to protect their neighbors from being taken away by masked thugs in unmarked vans.

So I recommend listening to:
The Infrastructure of Jeffrey Epstein’s Power
The journalist Anand Giridharadas examines the power and influence that Jeffrey Epstein brokered and that the latest batch of Epstein files puts on display.

Colbert, CBS, FCC and Election Interference

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Colbert stood up to the FCC and the new CBS. This is good.

But what we’re seeing here is not really a story of the little people overcoming the boot on the throat. We are seeing the boot arriving at the throat. This is the beginning of one piece in the coming wave of election interference. The signal has been sent to the stations and networks: No coverage for Democratic candidates, issues & viewpoints.

Colbert has power but the FCC has massive power. What happens now is every local station and national network will be afraid to give local, state & national Dem candidates and viewpoints airtime. And they will likely feel they should boost coverage of Republican and fringe right-wing candidates and viewpoints (even more than they already do).

We have already seen how this works. We’re old enough to remember a time before Reagan brought in the corporatization & commercialization of news, back when all kinds of issues were (required to be) discussed. We’ve seen how “news” – especially local news – became commercialized, sensationalized and fear-mongering. When was the last time you saw coverage of union leaders talking about the benefits to working people from joining a union?

Remember “hard-hitting” documentaries on the nation’s problems, etc…?

I fear that we are about to see another shift in what the public is shown.

This Is America Now

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This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy

This is what the world sees. Read it.

ICE ‘throw flash-bang at family car’ as 6 kids hospitalized including a 6-month-old baby,

She further explained: “ICE agents began tear-gassing a residential neighborhood after shooting a man nearby. As the gas spread, a family got into their vehicle to escape the tear gas. In the video, a man is seen standing in front of a car with airbags deployed on all sides, explaining that he told the agents he was trying to leave his house, with his family because of the tear gas. It comes after an out-of-control ICE agent yelled a disgusting 3-word slur before shooting a woman 5 times.

“Despite this, an agent threw multiple flash-bang grenades at the vehicle anyway… while children were inside.

“Inside the van was a 6-month-old infant who stopped breathing after the attack. EMTs were called and taking the baby in an ambulance.

Once this stuff gets started it only gets worse.

Chemtrails

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Atrios makes a great point about right-wingers. You can’t appease them because they’re nuts. They’ll always want more.

Florida passed a law banning airplanes from spreading chemtrails (plus 7 other Republican states – so far). But people look up and still see the vapor trails from planes!!!

Lesson to learn: When they get done removing all the “illegals” (crossing the border is a misdemeanor) They will STILL see people who “don’t look like us” and that huge ICE apparatus they’re building will go to work on the rest of the population, until only the “pure” remain.

Chemtrails

The dangers of indulging the fantasies of the crazies.Since the state law went into effect, the Floridians who backed it have grown increasingly angry by seeing the skies just as marked by white trails as they were prior to the state law.

Here’s a smattering of irate posts on X in the two months since the state law went into effect:

— “Yes, the spraying has taken place every single day since the Ban was put in place!”

— “The invasion continues. Florida skies are under constant attack.”

— “DeSantis, why do you lie? Why do you say that you signed a Florida Bill getting rid of these hideous chemtrails, and it is all a fat big LIE?”

— “Welcome to Florida, the chemtrails state. Now we are being sprayed from 4 a.m. to 5 a.m., so by 10 a.m. the skies are cleared but you are breathing heavy metals. Thank you DeSantis.”

— “See how the chemicals are spreading out. Trees are dying, crops are barely growing. Why is our government doing this to us?”

By humoring Florida’s free-dumb coalition on chemtrails, state lawmakers have unleashed a tornado of disappointment upon themselves.While not precisely the same, there is a lesson here about trying to give anti-immigration zealots something you can’t give them. They don’t want cuts to illegal immigration or even legal immigration.

They want you to send them all back again, and if you can’t provide that, they won’t be happy. They will vote for the people who they think might.

Stop negotiating with the imaginary Reasonable Republican in your head, imagining that surely this compromise will appeal to them, because it’s very sensible. Reasonable Republicans don’t exist, and they haven’t agreed to your compromise.

Trump Isn’t The Collapse, Trump Is A Consequence Of The Collapse

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This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy.

People say America and its democracy are being collapsed by Trump. I have come to believe that what we have been calling “late-stage capitalism” was a system that had already collapsed.

Trump isn’t the collapse, Trump is the consequence of the collapse.

The Rule of Law had departed some time ago. The Constitutional system was nonfunctional. The economic system was rigged. The political system benefited only the wealthy and their corporations. That was collapse.

Accountability had long ago disappeared. (A pardon for Nixon? What?) Executives at corporations are never prosecuted. Instead the company itself would be fined – as if companies are sentient entities that can make decisions and do things. White-collar criminals were rarely prosecuted. This is how Trump was able to even be on the scene in the first place to run for office, instead of imprisoned for sex crimes, money laundering, fraud, etc.

The collapse was how Reagan was able to get away with the deal with Iran, and the later Iran/Contra deal.

The collapse was how the Supreme Court was able to make Bush president.

The collapse was how the Iraq War happened.

The collapse was how the climate crisis came about in the first place, how the companies were allowed to continue to put carbon into the air after scientists warned us of the harm it was causing, and how the executives at the companies that caused it got rich instead of being prosecuted.

The collapse was how tax cuts for the rich & corporations, with budget cuts for things government does to make people’s lives better happened.

The collapse was how no bankers were prosecuted for fraud after the financial collapse, and Wall Street but not the public was bailed out.

Rule of Law and accountability had long since disappeared from the United States. That was the collapse.

This wasn’t “late stage capitalism,” it was collapse.

People called these things “late stage capitalism.” This wasn’t late stage capitalism at all. We were already living with the collapse of the Constitutional system, the collapse of Rule of Law, the collapse of accountability. It was corruption taking over. It had been happening for decades.

Trump is just a consequence of that collapse.

In 2017’s Democracy and Corruption I wrote about “democracy off the rails” and democracy “corroded,” not realizing Trump was only possible was because the collapse had already happened.

Trump didn’t just come out of nowhere. The road to Trump goes back a long way. Trump comes out of a steady and intentional undermining of rule of law, norms, equality, civility and democracy.

They say these things happen slowly, then all at once. The collapse was happening for decades, then all at once with Trump.

Can You Trust American Tech?

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I live in the UK now. The reaction here and in the EU to what Trump is doing to Ukraine from what I’m reading, is intense. That is putting it mildly. Suddenly the US is a hostile client-state of Russia? Wow!

And the reaction is Canada to American threats of annexation is also intense!

Not Just Tesla

Tesla has been an obvious target. Sales are way down. Maybe “over” is a better way to put it. People are throwing things at Tesla dealerships, throwing things at Teslas.

But it’s not just Tesla. People – and governments – are talking about the need to stop using ANY American technology as fast as possible. If America can turn it off if you don’t give in to extortionate demands, you had best protect yourself by finding alternatives.

Will Trump make Apple turn off your iPhone if France doesn’t hand over enough cheese? Will Google turn off the search engine if the UK doesn’t send enough period dramas?

The long-term consequences of this will be felt for a long, long time. US tech dominance is over.

On The Word ‘Genocide’ By ‘The Left’ To Describe Israel’s Actions In Gaza

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My mother’s parents were Orthodox Jews, coming from Ukrainians who emigrated to the US (in a hurry) during prior eras of persecution. I also lost family members (one in the US in the 30s) to that stuff.

There is a human tendency to tribally identify an “us” and a “them,” and to whip people up against an “other” for political gain. Humans do that, not any specific branches/types/races of humans. We have seen this happen throughout human history.

In mid-20th century Europe incredible atrocities occurred. Horrific. It showed what humans can do under certain circumstances. People this happened to vowed, “Never Again!” as a lesson to watch for the signs of those circumstances and that horror recurring elsewhere.

For a while in Gaza there was a debate whether genocide was occurring or “only” ethnic cleansing as the Netanyahu government forced mass migration and then systematically destroyed the homes, hospitals, schools, mosques, government buildings and civil infrastructure left behind. There were very large numbers of civilian casualties. We don’t know the actual extent of what happened because journalists there to report information kept getting killed.

I don’t for a minute think “Jews” are doing what is happening in Gaza. That’s a ridiculous thing that ridiculous people might conclude. I blame the Trumpy Netanyahu right-wing government for using “othering” to create circumstances encouraging what occurred. (Evidence presented to international tribunals is rather conclusive on this.) And the Biden administration for enabling and arming it. The latter – US complicity – is what is driving some of “the left” to pay particular attention to this particular mass atrocity. (There was also lots of anger on “the left” at Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine.)

As you pointed out, “genocide” is a recent term. So its meaning could be limited to only refer to what happened in Europe in the mid-20th century. I don’t know if it has to happen on the scale of events that brought about the invention of the word before using that particular word elsewhere. The point, I think, was to give the world a way to be watchful for those human tendencies to do those kinds of things to each other. Others may disagree.