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“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” – Sinclair Lewis
Now here’s a nice, light question to start your day with. But it is a relevant one.
Below is an article from Chris Hedges. Hedges is someone I consider to be far more left-wing than I am, and far less of the mindset that change to our political system must come from a more centrist leader working from within. Hedges has good reason to doubt the strategy that I advocate, but his solution – an immediate shift to a left-wing President – does not hold the promise of accomplishing the change that he seeks.
Specifically, Hedges would be far more inclined to support someone like Ralph Nader for President, and with good reason. Nader has been spot on about the Democratic Party having sold out to corporate interests, and to maintaining the militaristic approach of the Republicans while doing little to nothing about rolling back the infringements upon civil liberties in this nation.
It is ironic that the right-wing should direct its wrath at the left-wing. The left-wing that is in power (which is only marginally left of center) is only walking down a path already blazed by the right-wing. And the things that the right-wing in this nation is advocating, as Hedges notes, smell suspiciously like the trappings of fascism. Thus, while I typically find Hedges’ writings to sometimes border on hysterical (hysterical alarmist, not hysterical funny), the fact of the matter is that Hedges’ musings are usually close to on-target. The difference I see between Hedges and myself where the Obama administration is concerned is that I knew I was voting for a pragmatic centrist with a left twist, while Hedges held out hope that Obama would metamorphosize into a Nader-like Progressive within hours of inauguration.
In my view, this nation needs Barack Obama to nudge us back to a true center, after more than thirty years of this country drifting (or being shoved) further and further to the right.
How far to the right have we drifted?
- The Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act are both pieces of legislation signed into law by President George W. Bush that infringe upon the privacy rights and legal rights of American citizens. Both were passed with Democratic support, and both are still in affect, without significant alteration.
- The health care bill just passed and signed into law is no more progressive than proposals made by conservative Republican President Richard M. Nixon or than Congressional Republican counter-proposals offered during Bill Clinton’s first term when Hillary Clinton was charged with moving health care forward. In fact, the new law, as President Obama openly acknowledges, contains many Republican principles brought forth in those debates.
- The Supreme Court has been stacked with neo-conservative CINOs. What’s a CINO? A Constitutionalist in Name Only. The conservative judges on the Court pretend to be loyal to our nation’s founders and to the Constitution, when in fact they are acting just like the legislators that are owned by corporations. This was made extraordinarily clear in the 2010 decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in which corporate rights to free speech were put on par with individual rights. And this is not a new trend. For more than a century, courts have been providing corporations with all the rights of citizenry without any of the accompanying responsibilities. If the right-wing wants something to bark that, and wants to challenge something that truly threatens their own interests as it does the interests of the left-wing (as opposed to the hyperbole and fallacies surrounding health care), they only need to look to corporations – corporations that are making record profits while taking taxpayer dollars, corporations that treat their executives like royalty while laying off middle class employees, and corporations who poison the political arena with lies and misinformation designed to serve only their own interests, not the overall welfare of the American people.
I have seen a number of sites talk about a new bogus 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution addressing about the application of laws to Congress (see the real story here). Well, our Constitution does need a new Amendment, one that places corporations as secondary to the interests of the American people. Corporations should be subservient to society, not directing it. Any business interacting with the public that has a profit-motive will in fact give preference to (and utilize all means to achieve) its profit. That is the nature of greed. In the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gecko talking about greed being “good”. Rather than viewers of that movie capturing the intended message of the negative impacts of corporate greed on real hard-working Americans, Gecko became the role model of people for people in our banking and financial firms, our insurance industry, and much more. They knew they needed either active support or active ignorance of legislators, so that is what they bought and paid for. And now the Supreme Court, in one of its most disturbing rulings ever, has said that corporations can spend as much as they want in pursuit of the profit motive, without any regard for the American people. This is the real legacy of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.
Now we finally arrive at the article with one final thought. I believe Hedges sees the corruption of the Democratic Party as something that Democrats alone are responsible for, and as a result Democrats are somehow to blame for everything currently wrong with America. I see it differently. I believe that Democrats didn’t have their act together enough to realize that this nation was drifting to the right, and in defining moments went with the popular tide, unable or unwilling to realize that they were sowing the seeds of their own destruction. I believe we now have a President who is enough of an historian to realize what has taken place and who is trying to place weight on the high side of the scale. But this will not happen overnight, and will require at least two terms from President Obama and then likely require more. But there is one hopeful sign – Congressional Democrats had their alarm clocks go off during the health care debate. At some point they realized that bi-partisanship was as real as the Easter Bunny, and not as fluffy. The woke up for a brief moment, emboldened by President Obama, and made the right choice. If Democrats can (as Bill Maher suggested) become intoxicated with that feeling, they can begin to challenge the corporate status quo in this nation, which is what I hold is truly the biggest cause of anger among ordinary Americans, whether or not they realize it. In coming weeks and months, OLV will begin looking at how Corporate America has replaced the vision of our Founders.
In the meantime, Hedges’ article gives us cause to consider what happens if we don’t set things right.
Is America ‘Yearning for Fascism’?
by Chris Hedges
The language of violence always presages violence. I watched it in war after war from Latin America to the Balkans. The impoverishment of a working class and the snuffing out of hope and opportunity always produce angry mobs ready to kill and be killed. A bankrupt, liberal elite, which proves ineffectual against the rich and the criminal, always gets swept aside, in times of economic collapse, before thugs and demagogues emerge to play to the passions of the crowd. I have seen this drama. I know each act. I know how it ends. I have heard it in other tongues in other lands. I recognize the same stock characters, the buffoons, charlatans and fools, the same confused crowds and the same impotent and despised liberal class that deserves the hatred it engenders.
“We are ruled not by two parties but one party,” Cynthia McKinney, who ran for president on the Green Party ticket, told me. “It is the party of money and war. Our country has been hijacked. And we have to take the country away from those who have hijacked it. The only question now is whose revolution gets funded.”
Read the entire article at Truthdig…
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