May 31, 2016

The other F bomb

If you are one of those people who are getting weirded out by the current political climate, and particularly with the whole Trump vibe, you're not alone. Recently Robert Kagan, a Brookings Institution fellow often regarded as a neocon published an op-ed in the Washington Post titled "This is how fascism comes to America."  Shortly after that, the NY Times published this piece about how the Trump campaign has helped spark a global debate about the F word.

Thing is, I didn't like it the first time around. In fact, my dad and two uncles spent a good chunk of the 1940s fighting against it. I'm hoping it's a false alarm but this isn't the kind of thing to ignore.

1 comment:

Mary Wildfire said...

I think the threat of fascism is real...but I also think this is being used in an attempt to make people vote for the candidate the entire establishment prefers, but who is just as unpopular as Trump. And it won't work with me--I will not vote for Clinton, I think she is just as dangerous as Trump in a quite different way. Why are Republicans all flapping red flags over Trump? What's the difference between policies he espouses and the ones they prefer? Three things: he opposes the "free trade" policies which would give corporations complete power; he's an isolationist, which could threaten the income stream of the military/security complex; and he's a narcissistic loose cannon, who does whatever the frack he pleases, he is not on the team. Yeah, he also appeals to the fascist element, which exists in any society and swells in bad times, but that is hardly a real problem for the likes of Robert Kagan, whose wife was perfectly comfortable using neoNazis to install a puppet regime in Ukraine.
Clinton is all about continuing the status quo, except she seems to be especially itching for the Commander in Chief seat and command over warplanes and bombs and drones. She would certainly work to get those free trade treaties through, though no doubt she's hoping TTP happens during the lame duck so she can pretend not to have supported it.
Bernie surely will never be allowed to approach the Oval Office, not because he's a scary radical but because he's also not on the team, and is an old fashioned Democrat who would try to bring back the Twentieth Century. I don't think he could succeed, even without the opposition of the entire political establishment, because I don't think he understands the extent of 21st century realities. But the collapse would probably be later and less awful under him.