Fascist Fatigue

 Opponents of the current regime and the institutions behind it have been using the f-word for years now, with a sprinkling of the n-word as well. The terms "fascist" and "Nazi" have become meaningless epithets, as both sides fling them at each other.

Voices on the left face accusations of crying wolf because they have been calling "fascist" for so long. But there's a difference between crying wolf in the sense that we've all come to scorn: alarming the populace about an imaginary peril; and simply providing advance warning long before the general public is ready to see where the trend must inevitably lead. The wolf was a long way off, but its path was clear.

As with original recipe fascism in the 1920s and '30s, the current iteration has had its supporters who like some or all of its tenets, whether they just hope for the economic prosperity or also relish the suppression of fringe elements in society. Maybe they believe that what really brought down the fascists and Nazis was their expansionism (which is true), and believed the rhetoric of the current regime about ending foreign wars and concentrating on some nice ethnic cleansing at home. Now, of course, the regime has struck militarily at Venezuela, threatens to steal territory from a NATO ally, has eyes on Cuba, and is rattling sabers at Iran.

Nothing annoys a modern fascist more than being called a fascist. They will lead the chorus saying that anyone who points out their fascistic tendencies is overreacting. They find harmony among all of the ordinary folk who don't want to believe that their simple struggle for survival and economic advancement is going to be interrupted by either an authoritarian crackdown or a messy resistance to an authoritarian crackdown. Surely things aren't so dire! We just want affordable housing, food, education, and transportation.

America is the land of the open mind when it comes to debating political philosophies while ignoring systemic oppression of women and minorities. Let's argue fine points of whether we're really well into a fascist state, while said state sends armed goons into selected cities to harass, maul, and even kill without remorse or restraint. Don't get between them and their targets of ethnic cleansing, or you will be punished, up to the point of summary execution in the street (you fuckin' bitch).

Sounds pretty fascist to me. And the playbook was public before the election that threw this regime into power. We knew what they wanted to do. Now they're doing it. Call it what it is and declare your support or opposition. It's that simple.

Are we just creatures of statistics?

 Voters have let the parties take them for granted for so long that we all just accept that partisan gerrymandering will almost always work. It only fails when the party in question loses control of a subset of voters that they might have expected to win, as may occur in Texas this year. But a "dummymander" only trips up the party that drew it because statistics let them down unexpectedly in a limited instance. Voters in general plod along on such predictable paths that districting is destiny.

Does that sound like a free people to you? Does that sound like the outlaws and anti-heroes that Americans pretend to be? I guess pretend is the operative word.

As a "left-leaning" independent, I have been voting consistently Democratic, because a Democrat supermajority would be much more likely yield some of the programs progressives yearn for. A slim majority is just a tease, doomed to failure. The government needs to be strong and fearless, and be able to institute a well-chosen selection of solid policies to prove their concept long before it all gets pushed over by a backlash election just based on party label.

It's not that the Democrats are so great. It's that the Republicans are so...not. Look at them right now: they've let the current occupant of the Oval Office blunder around and shit all over the place, and for what? Seriously, I can only guess. I do not know exactly what the party in power thinks they are doing other than amassing as much wealth as they can and avoiding criminal prosecution.

If international law had any teeth, a whole bunch of them would be in serious trouble right now. Unfortunately, the rules-based international order has about as much real clout as the global environmental movement. "Heyyyyy!! You guyyyyyysss!! Stop it! Stop it now!"

Polling shows that the policies of the party in power are wildly unpopular, but when has that ever translated to a resounding ass-kicking electorally? We barely saved ourselves in 2020. The policies of the Biden administration were great economically, and represented a re-centering of the interests of ordinary citizens in place of the super wealthy, but the handicaps it faced from the pandemic provided just enough economic turbulence to give the GOP a talking point from which to spew lies about all of it. Then Hamas decided that they'd like Trump to be president, and Netanyahu agreed.

Voters have power, but it's all single-shot muskets. It's not dramatic while you're doing it, only afterward if it turns out that enough people agreed with you. If they didn't, it's frustrating at best and horrifying at worst. Right now we're living in "at worst." But that's the mechanism. You vote. It's the basic unit of citizenship.

Anyone content to remain rigidly partisan will continue to fulfill statistical probability. The country gets run by maps, not by people. Not by us people, anyway.

If you believe that the only way to clean up the political system is to collapse the country completely and rebuild from the ashes, you are incorrect. The collapse of this country would lead to such a long period of chaos and weakness that any transition to a better system for regular folks would take many generations. Doing it my way would only take a few election cycles, if we got our shit together about what really matters, and quit focusing on suppressing and persecuting LGBTQ people, controlling women, and imposing any kind of religion onto government. You're never going to get a perfect election. But if voters don't defy the maps and vote against the ignorance, greed, and incompetence of the current party in power we are headed down. Not "down a difficult road" or "down a dark path." Just...down.

November 2014; a haiku

Flags of fall decay
foretell a brutal winter:
right-wing campaign signs.

Reshaping the Political Debate

Listening to some political analysis of the fall of Eric Cantor on NPR, I realized that the only way to get the debate away from partisan squabbling is to disband the Democratic Party and have everyone register as a Republican. Instantly the people who only look for the (R) or automatically vote against the Democrats will either have to start figuring out where they stand on each and every issue or quit voting.

Such a move would completely change the familiar election process that has been letting us down so consistently. Why have a primary and a general election when everyone's in the same party? There would be no us and them. It would render the brand name of the politician meaningless and turn the focus instead to the individual's fitness to meet the needs of voters.

It will never happen, of course. Some people can't live without their group identification. Within the greater Republican Party would develop subcultures that would name themselves and publish their separate ideals in party platforms ranging from Communublican to Libertublican. There would be secret handshakes and coded necktie patterns. Next thing you know one or more of these groups would feel the need to declare their discrete identity. But it would still be hilarious to see what happens in the first weeks or months after every voter joins the R Party