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Building a Fascist Future |
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By Bill Weintraub
They've done this by exacerbating, as they have for the last 20 years, the sorts of problems that contribute to the overthrow of democracies and the rise of fascist regimes. Though diverse, these problems are all of the kind that, left unsolved, produce a sharp increase in feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, a sense that events are out of control and that societal ills and potential crises are no longer responsive to democratic solutions. Consider the following factors making people increasingly uneasy: Fear among white Americans that they may soon be outnumbered by African-Americans, Asians and Hispanics; the mass penetration of the drug culture into the middle class and the abject failure of the government's “War on Drugs” to do anything other than fill prisons and erode civil liberties; racial polarization, marked by anger and resentment among Blacks and a concomitant inability and unwillingness of the white majority to respond; school and workplace shootings; inadequate and capricious health insurance; falling standards of living for families; the sexual revolution and emerging “militant” sexual minorities; glaring income disparities; urban and suburban congestion and sprawl; rapid technological changes including the internet revolution and genome research and the continued deterioration of the environment, both at home and abroad. Each of these trends make some people uncomfortable, and even a few taken together can easily convince large numbers that the democratic state as we have known it is no longer up to its task, that it needs to be replaced by a system able to respond more quickly and decisively, as for example, is currently happening in the courts, where the jury system, formerly one of the bulwarks of democracy, is being increasingly rejected in favor of decisions debated by lawyers and rendered by judges.
Further, the Republican-controlled Supreme Court, by refusing to void the sodomy laws and refusing to extend to sexual minorities the same protections now offered to racial minorities and women, has exacerbated the climate of hate in which these crimes take place. Similarly, Republican obfuscation is at the root of the nation's failure to deal humanely and sensibly with drugs. It's very simple. Any public official who attempts a reasoned consideration of de-criminalization or other such solutions is savaged by Republican attack dogs and driven from office. The same is true for implementing national health insurance, or reducing income disparities – they're dead before they hit the water, as are race relations. Republicans insist there's nothing to talk about, pretending there's no white racism, that race problems have been solved and that anyone who dares to say otherwise is him or herself a racist – end of discussion. On environmental issues, the Republicans consistently block measures that would slow the greenhouse effect, promote conservation, preserve wilderness, and create more livable space. So the fascist forces are directly responsible for heightening social tensions and increasing anomie, thus greatly improving their chances for seizing absolute rule. And the Bush administration has been frighteningly on schedule, making sure feelings of citizen helplessness will increase. For example, it pushed through a bill making it far harder for ordinary people to declare bankruptcy, thus creating a virtual 21st century version of the 17th century's indentured servitude. (It remains to be seen whether debtors' prisons and the workhouse will follow.) The administration has blithely junked rules designed to prevent workplace injuries, safeguard the privacy of medical information, reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2, and limit the presence of arsenic, a known carcinogen, in drinking water. Thus, with just a few strokes of the pen, the GOP contents itself as it makes the world a far more dangerous place, inflaming the insecurities of ordinary people. Bush has also signaled he'll veto a bipartisan 'Patients' Bill of Rights' that might actually give citizens power to sue the mismanaged HMO industry for dollar amounts that could give threats of such litigation teeth. Lawsuits against corporate malefactors are one of the few recourses ordinary people have in a political system dominated by huge conglomerates. The Republicans are clearly determined to deny the injured even those means of redress. In addition, Bush has proposed cuts in programs to provide child care, to prevent child abuse, and to train doctors at children's hospitals – insults to sound public policy which guarantee more physical and mental illness among Americans in the future. And, of course, the administration and the Republican congress continue to push hard to implement a truly disastrous and grotesquely unfair tax cut, one that would guarantee a series of fiscal crises in the future, widening the gap between the rich and the rest of society.
And Ashcroft's “Justice” Department has also done away with the half-century-long practice of review, by the allegedly “liberal” American Bar Association, of candidates for the nation's highest courts – thus further debasing and politicizing the federal judiciary and making it easier for Bushians to appoint right-wing Borkians. In foreign policy, everything the Bush administration has done so far has had the effect of making the world a more dangerous place for everyone, but particularly for the peoples in other nations. The intent, apparently, is to create so much instability abroad that Americans at home will accept the need for a horrendously expensive, unnecessary, and unworkable missile defense system, a return to Ronald Reagan's pricey 'Star Wars' dream, benefiting only the fat cat defense contractors and heavy Republican contributors who'd attempt once again to build it while, of course, taxpayers foot their bill. Look at the record: Bush issued an abortion gag order on foreign health clinics that guarantees thousands of new AIDS cases among the world's poorest. There's a new hot war in the Balkans, but the Bush administration has promised not to intervene; the Middle East is exploding, but the Bush administration has declared that it will take a back seat in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians; in the Far East, Bush has put peace talks with North Korea on hold and slighted the president of South Korea who has, to international acclaim, worked to improve relations with North Korea. The reason? Bush needs “rogue states” to demonize if he is to make a strong case to pay for his 'Star Wars' missile defense program. Bush administration officials have also noticeably revived Cold War rhetoric, criticizing the Russians over arms sales (the United States is the world's biggest arms exporter) and expelling diplomats. The Russian Foreign Ministry has complained that U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his deputy have become “openly confrontational.” In short, the Bush administration is engaged in one of the most cynical exercises in foreign policy since the Nazis dressed concentration camp inmates in Polish Army uniforms, drove them across the border, and ordered them to attack Germany. The reality is that the United States, like the Third Reich before it, does not face a single credible military threat anywhere in the world. There's only one superpower – US. And then there's everyone else. But the administration is trying to convince the public that the world is so dangerous that we need to ring the globe with an orbiting missile defense, an act that even our European allies agree will unnecessarily contribute to instability. As in domestic policy, Republican foreign policy creates actualities that make the world a scarier place by far. As though all that weren't enough, the Bush administration, in the form of the so-called 'faith-based initiative,' has put itself solidly behind rabid religious fanaticism, historically the world's most dangerous destabilizing force. The question is, do ordinary citizens have an effective opposition?
Thus, complaints of media failure to cover the anti-Bush movement, though legitimate, have to acknowledge that the movement itself hasn't given the media much to cover. This is not to belittle the very real achievements of the Oral Majority, democrats.com, and other such groups, nor the possibility that their numbers will grow. But the fact is, protests to date have been small. Secondly, the corporate media steadfastly refuses to listen to opposition complaints of unequal coverage in other areas--for example, during the Clinton pardon furor, it was next to impossible to get the media to look at the previous president's numerous dubious pardons. A serious omission – leaving the nation with the impression that Democrats are morally weak and unscrupulous while Republicans are portrayed as morally upright and straight. Thirdly, and certainly most importantly, the Democratic Party itself simply is not acting as an opposition party should. That's the most serious problem, and unless we understand why, we're liable to be done in by it. There are a number of reasons, I suspect, that the Democratic Party has failed. One most certainly is corruption among its elected officials – bribery by corporate donors, which is obviously common, and probably vulnerability to blackmail as well. Another is the lack of a firm ideology and vision for the country of the sort that is the norm among European parties of the left. Absent such an informing ideology, Democratic legislators often seem to be taking a no more than academic interest in the outcome of various disputes. They themselves, after all, are part of an economically privileged class, many made more so by the political donations they accept. Issues such as income disparities or health insurance simply don't affect them, and it's not surprising therefore that the only real opposition has come from members of the Black Caucus, who, no matter what their social class, still suffer from discrimination. But white members of Congress don't suffer. What seems to motivate them primarily is the desire to stay in office, and to do that they have come to rely almost entirely on corporate money and public opinion polls, polls that themselves are manipulated by the ultra-conservative masters of the corporate media. These polls are used in two ways – the first is to tell the Congress what “the people” want, while the second is to justify Congressional actions by saying that they have been dictated by the popular will. Thus, if the polls – that is the corporate media – say that “the people” want the Congress to give the president a chance, the Congress does so, and justifies its actions by referring to the polls. In point of fact, members of Congress don't know what the people want – they're too far removed from the people to have even a clue. So we need to help them along. That's why I keep urging activists to use voter recalls wherever states permit it. I think many party loyalists fear that doing so would fatally weaken an ally, no matter how poor an ally he or she is, and thus allow another Republican entry. I say we'd best expose these do-nothing Democratic politicians. For example, my own Democratic Representative is backing Bush's so-called 'faith-based initiative', claiming in a letter to me that he'll “watch” the administration to make sure church and state are separate. But once the 'faith-based initiative' takes effect, the line between church and state will already have been erased. There'll be nothing left to watch. At the moment, Democrats in Congress think they can have it both ways: they can cooperate with the Republicans, citing opinion polls that say they must, and still rely upon the loyalty of voters whose deepest beliefs they have betrayed, in the reassuring knowledge that those voters have nowhere else to turn. The only way to convince them otherwise is to start mounting credible recall campaigns and alternative candidates against them. Absent our doing that, the Democrats are going to continue to act like “moderate” Republicans and, I believe, sooner or later, simply end up joining them, thus giving us in name the one-party state that in fact is fast becoming an inescapable political reality. Recently the philosopher and Gay Liberation pioneer, Arthur Evans, warned: “I fear that we may be approaching the end of the democratic era in the modern world. It began with the Glorious Revolution in England in 1689, which included the Bill of Rights and the Act of Toleration. But it may have run its course, just as democracy did in Greece with the rise of Macedonian imperialism, the spread of slavery, and increases in the power of rich international oligarchs.” I would add that should democracy fall, it's likely that historians of the future will see its end as inevitable. But we should be clear. What's happening here isn't inevitable. It's the result of the concerted activities of a group of determined and dangerous men. |
Mr. Bush: 
Speaker Dennis Hastert heads the charge toward fascism in the Congress 
As the decision in Bush v. Gore showed, even the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Rehnquist, is infected 
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