An extremist, and if we're honest (and we should be), neo-fascist wing of the Republican Party now holds sway in many states, and in the U.S. House of Representatives.
And this network (often underground of course) is literally targeting everything community-minded, the formal structures of representative democracy such as voting (a tactical mistake for American fascism) and ...
women.
This explains why the Catholic Church hierarchy has consolidated its alliance with the Republican Party:
Misogyny, and convenience. Power is needed, and an alliance with religious misogyny is part of the fascist coalition with grandiose aims.
Public resources, sell them out to private interests, as is now on stark display in Wisconsin as mining interests seek $billions as they ravage pristine land. Writes Wisconsin resident, Jimmy Fawcett, commenting on a piece in
Esquire entitled, Wisconsin Inc: "I live in Ashland, WI and even the very notion of this mine being put in is an abomination. I've never seen a darker, more volatile time period in Wisconsin than the one I've lived in since Walker took office. There is a war going on, and it's only going to get worse. I wish I could say that was an exaggeration, but it truly feels this way." Native Americans have already made clear that militant, violent opposition is an option.
As for public education, destroy it.
This neo-fascist movement has a ready array of instruments to rush into law to codify its objectives—for example,
ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Fascist is the right word for the Kochs, Clines, and so on and their tools: Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, the Tea Party, the GOP, and the religious right; so many more as bystanders in America rush home to their televisions to view whatever reality shows are on TV now-a-days.
And we ought not be frightened of the word, f
ascist, for fear it is too harsh to describe people whom when we meet personally often turn out to be kind in person, not monsters.
This is the face of fascism: Normal people complicit in destruction.
Nativist, bigoted, superstitious, ignorant, rapacious, racist, misogynistic and narcissistic. Sure.
But we won't see the SS here; just a prison-industrial complex and militarized, local police forces (see for example,
ACLU report; March 2013) that few question, but even this armed display won't touch most of us. If you're male and black (urban): Different story.
A passing thought, a lot more war coming out of view, if the fascists get their way.
If I had one book to suggest to America's youth, to anyone, it is Milton Mayer's
They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (University of Chicago Press. ©1955).
Mayer, an American Jewish writer who had gone to Germany in the 1930s, made friends with some 10 people, all of whom were members of the NAZI Party. He found them courteous, funny, genuine human beings whom he called "friends." They were also fools and certainly were guilty.
Today's destruction of the planet's eco-systems, oppression of minorities, program of defunding of public education, attack on women's health and very dignity, the disregard for the common good, these features and more already define the American neo-fascist movement that declares itself the defender of liberty and family values against an array of external and internal enemies.
No, the neo-fascist, American movement is
not the German NAZI Party, though its racism and militarism, its anti-human rhetoric on the worth of individuals ('takers') ought to remind anyone with a sense of history of what trends are accelerating.
Fascism is wreaking destruction upon the United States, and the world.
And right now, many merely 'sense' it; though most readers here will remain comfortable in our lifetimes; and if we choose removed from human, politicized concerns. Fascism never was inflicted uniformly upon populations, by definition.
Noam Chomsky has a piece out today on this critical moment in the history of the United States, though of course the domination of economic royalists of many types has been an ongoing concern since the birth of the United States.
Here's a paragraph:
For those whom Adam Smith called the "Masters of Mankind,” it is important that we must become the stupid nation in the interests of their short-term gain, damn the consequences. These are essential properties of contemporary market fundamentalist doctrines. ALEC and its corporate sponsors understand the importance of ensuring that public education train children to belong to the stupid nation, and not be misled by science and rationality.
Dark and volatile times, indeed.
