I couldn't sit thru the whole thing, but between what I saw, the transcript, and the analyses I am a bit amazed at how blatantly fascist - as in "right in ol' Schicklgruber's wheelhouse" fascist - a big chunk of last night's State of the Union speech was.
Not the part about the Leader's iron will or fluffing the Party's program; that's just bog-standard political theater, which is all this silly speech ever is, really, and why I usually don't bother to watch or read much about it. It had more chest-beating than usual but, sheesh, Trump, so, yeah.
No, specifically it was the MS-13 horror stories, the part about how the herrnvolk are endangered by a hidden swarm of dusky, violent untermenschen - and nefarious Auslandische foreign powers - and that only the Leader, and the Party - and only by their being hard, hard as Krupp steel (but fair! Fair, mind you, so long as you're not one of the dusky traitors within!) - can save us from their evil.
The fluffing of the Party's program did have some extra GOP lies how they're not selling the country to their rich pals, but, whatever.
But the stuff about America Awake! to the danger of The Eternal Immigrant was such a pure, uncut Steven Miller hommage to the Fuhrer, vintage Adolf whine in a new orange bottle, that I wonder how many people missed that.
Perhaps we've gotten so used to these speeches promising fierce resistance to the Terrorist Foes that we didn't notice how this one slipped into genuine Silvershirt "domestic-enemies-abound!" territory. Another own-goal for the Phony War On Terror. Thanks loads, guys.
Whooda thunk that when it came fascism would neither be wrapped in a flag nor carrying a cross but in the form of a bloated orange real estate grifter, wrapped in a badly tailored but expensive suit and too-long tie, and carrying a Big Mac. Say what you will about the original Nazis, at least they were snappy dressers.
I'm not sure whether I'm more pissed off that the cousin-marryin' hillbillies foisted these downmarket fascists on me, or at how goddamn downmarket the fascists are. Steve Bannon? Seriously? Dude always looks like he's coming down off a three-day cheap-vodka-and-Red Bull bender. Hell, how embarrassing is it that even his Leader, our orange fuhrer, looks like a divorced car salesman shopping for laxative suppositories at WalMart?
Even our Nazis are low-rent.
Sheesh.
I did not watch it. I was busy flirting with a pair of golf widows. But even if I had not been busy, you could not have paid me to watch.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't tolerate the whole thing, but I never sat thru all of Obama's, or any of his predecessor's, either.
DeleteAnd what I saw was just the standard fluffing outside of the Immigrant Carnage stuff. But that? Wow.
I've always resisted the "Trump is Hitler" meme. It's not that he's not an authoritarian goon. He is (and more like Mussolini if we need a historical fascist) a wannabe "strongman".
This speech hit all the right Nazi notes on the Traitors Within, tho. It was a performance worthy of a Goebbels, and ol' Joe would have been proud of his little orange buddy.
Frankly, I'm tired of reading about Trump or even listening to what he says. There's nothing left to learn about him, and there was never anything to learn from him because he's a know-nothing.
ReplyDeleteOne had to be utterly blinded or stupid to not see in the primaries already that he's a liar and that he was not motivated by a desire to help poor or middle class people. It was obvious from the start that he would serve his (and thus the rich people's) interests only.
By summer of 207 it was utterly obvious that he and his clique were also extraordinarily incompetent, and he himself almost fully incapacitated in the job of POTUS by his psychological issues. I relaxed about Trump a bit back then, understanding that he was too stupid to become Mussolini II.
The people who still seriously believe Trump and believe in Trump today have simply failed an idiocy test. They are at best locked in a figurative cage of aversions and shame.
Years ago I wrote repeatedly about how it's a society most important job to keep dangerous idiots away from above average political power. I estimated the share of dangerous idiots (mostly authoritarians) at about 5-15% back then.
It's dawning on me that this share may be driven up to 30-40% through years of propaganda, which actually fits to some very bad episodes of world history.
Believe me, Sven...not nearly as tired as I am, because the stupid goddamn bastard has a hell of a lot of power over me. Practically every time he opens his piehole something that's going to hurt me or someone I care about or my country in general happens or is going to happen.
DeleteThe problem is that, as you mention, about a third of the US public have voluntarily become dangerous idiots. To them, not idolizing Trump means you hate America. Disagreeing that all immigrants are dangerous Internal Enemies means you hate America. Not fanatically loving God and guns means you hate America.
And, as you point out, that kind of idiocy has been responsible for some of the worst episodes of human history.
By writing abut this here I don't hope to change the "minds" of any of the Trumpendross; they are political enfants perdus. But I do hope that the casual reader, the amorphous middle, will stop and think before they swallow any of this Trumpenbullshit.
Perfect example; this "Nunes Memo" released today. From reading it it's a ridiculous farrago of half-truths and utter nonsense. It tries to make the case that the FBI and the FISA court shouldn't have been suspicious of some joker named Carter Page, who was playing footsie with Russian intelligence types way back in 2013. It fails. At best, it reads like a "motion to dismiss" brief filed by a particularly incompetent lawyer. There's nothing in it that won't sell anyone not in that 33%-idiot demographic.
But...the cable nets and the news websites will refer to it. Pundits will "discuss" it, and the more scurrilous (i.e. the GOP shills) will pimp it like it was something. And a portion of the American public will, inevitably, set it in their minds as "something that happened". They may not swallow it whole, like the wingnuts, but they'll eat enough of it that, like the faux Clinton "scandals", they'll regurgitate it when the name Mueller comes up. And they'll say something like "Gee...didn't he have some sort of grudge against Trump..?" and so Trump gets the benefit of the doubt.
Which is what it's designed to do.
So I try and keep hammering away here what you're pointing out; that these people - not just Trump but all the other GOP stooges - are plutocratic grifters and would-be oligarchs.
Sven -
ReplyDeleteI have personally exiled him to the Mountain of Obscurity - his worst nightmare.
The real problem is that American Politics as we knew it, is busy destroying itself.
ReplyDeleteThe past 50 years of squeezing the working class in favour of the rich has born fruit.
The old parties have lost their credibility and people are willing to support populists of both right and left.
At the same time, the old measures of control (i.e. corporate mass media) have lost a lot of power. Audience sizes of evening news broadcasts are about a third of what they were in the seventies (despite America having many many more people).
The fun side of it. Though I can't even take in much political comedy any more.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAJUZRZBdlM
Why doesn't the U.S. political-entertainment complex come up with a political comedy show that ignores Trump's existence? It would win a yuuuuge audience right away, easily.
I'd love to just ignore these mooks, but...
ReplyDeleteThey have the ability to make my kids' lives vastly more miserable and less promising. Politically, of course, by bringing on the New Gilded Age. But IMO the single worst thing they'll do - are doing - is sidetrack any attempt to bring anthropomorphic global warming under control. THAT has the potential to be a literal world-altering disaster...or, well, something. That's kind of the problem; we can't be sure what will happen. What we do know - of events like the "Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum" suggest that we might be in for a period of extreme change, and change that will require massive changes in human living patterns.
Not that the alternative political groups are all that more wonderful. But the "conservative" radical reactionaries are dead fucking awful. The "liberal" reactions is to slightly take their collective foot off the carbon emission pedal.
The "conservatives"? Floor that sucker - drill, baby, drill!
I'd argue that what really needs to happen is the opposite; a relentless focus on the real horribleness of these people, a constant hammering on their awful policies, the lies they wpew about those awful policies, and the awful people they bring to tell those lies and enact those policies.
I guess the thing that irritates me most of all about this is the "reasons" that the "conservative" voters in my country have for backing these people. The ones that aren't flat-out looney lies - Obamaphones, death panels, Pizzagate, and the like - are ridiculous as matters of national policy. Insane opposition to any sort of regulation of firearms? Hissyfits about crossdressers in bathrooms? Ridiculous stories about nice Nazis? Out-and-out lies about taxation?
I'd argue that the reason that American politics is destroying itself is that something between a third and two-fifths of the American Public is willing to burn the nation to the ground rather than not be able to buy eleven AR-15 knockoffs or let their kid sit next to an out lesbian in a classroom.
As reasons go, those are about as moronic as reasons come.