Comments
GELFAND’S WORLD - True fascism will exist in this country if and when the Trump administration is able to use the criminal justice system to jail its political opponents. The current situation is a kind of incipient fascism, in which the tools of totalitarianism are being flexed, but are, as yet, not totally successful. They are partially successful in that Democratic opponents of Trump are being forced to defend themselves against charges. They are not yet at the level where the prisons are filling with people guilty only of opposing the regime.
Incipient fascism
It is not for lack of trying, as the case of Letitia James shows. Add to that the threats against Senators Mark Kelly and Adam Schiff, as well as ICE running loose in American streets, and we can see the slippery slope that we are on. It is a real and perilous choice for the American people to take: to resist in all possible ways and thereby preserve liberty and democracy, or to succumb to cynicism, doubt, and simple indifference and thereby to let the monsters have their way.
There is a way out, as recent events have shown. It is for good people to say No. At this stage, that is all that is required.
Last week, New York Attorney General Letitia James visited Los Angeles and spoke to a friendly crowd at the Wilshire Ebell Theater. Just that day, a federal Grand Jury had refused to indict her, this being the second attempt by the Trump administration at getting an indictment on that same spurious charge.
Letitia James is famous for a couple of things. The first is that, as Attorney General for the state of New York, she won a civil lawsuit against Donald Trump that resulted in a fine of more than $350 million. The verdict of civil responsibility for his acts was upheld against Trump on appeal, but the amount of the damages was reversed as being an excessively high number. Donald Trump is still at risk for some large amount in fines, whatever that amount may turn out to be.
And to put it in colloquial terms, he is pissed.
And this is where that incipient fascism comes in. To Trump, all things are transactional, which is the now-popular way of saying that to Trump, there is no right vs. wrong, there is only Me vs. You. In this four-year-old way of thinking, if people come after him, then he will come after them. We have, therefore, the fascism of which we speak, now in its incipient phase.
And this leads to the point of this piece, which can be expressed in a simple, short paragraph:
Although the Trump administration is surely the most corrupt in American history, it has now gone well beyond mere theft and bribery, to the point that it is actively fascist. That latter tendency is expressed in its attempts to use criminal law to attack political opponents. This is the way of fascism as demonstrated by the Nazis and Italian Fascists and the violent oppression of the Soviet Union. So far, this incipient fascism has involved going over peoples’ mortgage applications, presumably in the hope of finding something – anything – that could be prosecuted. It’s clear and obvious that Trump is all about revenge, and he has now shown how willing he is to use the tools of classical fascism in this pursuit.
To Trump, there isn’t any difference between what has been done to him (criminal indictments, prosecution, civil lawsuits) and what he is trying to do in return. Of course the difference is that Trump was guilty as hell with respect to those accusations, and was convicted the one time that he went to trial.
If things had only gone this far, the term I used above – incipient fascism – would suffice. But the past couple of weeks show an even more sinister tendency, which is illustrated by threats against half a dozen U.S. senators, including Mark Kelly. The attack involved a Trump administration claim that Kelly and others, by stating that U.S. servicemen should not follow illegal orders, had themselves committed some sort of criminal offense.
All of this is by preface to the main conclusions of the past few weeks, which can be summarized by the following 3 statements:
1) Donald Trump is showing increasing levels of mental decline, and often this comes out in silly ways (see the transcript which I am pasting in at the end of this piece).
2) There is, within this latest trend, a strong tendency towards classical fascism, as expressed through the misuse of government power to subject people to the criminal justice system.
3) Those who resist and fight back have been winning against this fascist tendency, as shown by Letitia James in her legal battles, and by some protesters against ICE raids.
The lesson for all of us is that it is necessary to resist and not to give in to misuse of government power. This is the libertarian side of liberalism, but in this we should be joined by those conservatives who also believe in freedom and limits on governmental tyranny.
The case that Trump is losing his marbles: Take a look at the following quotes from Donald Trump as published in his own Truth Social column, and excerpted by Yahoo. I invite anybody to try to interpret these as the words of a person who is fully aware of the requirements of representing the country and fulfilling the demands of high office:
“The only reason Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Brown (Green turns Brown under stress!) went BAD is that she was JILTED by the President of the United States (Certainly not the first time she has been jilted!). Too much work, not enough time, and her ideas are, NOW, really BAD – She sort of reminds me of a Rotten Apple! Marjorie is not AMERICA FIRST or MAGA, because nobody could have changed her views so fast, and her new views are those of a very dumb person.
“That was proven last night when washed up, Trump hating, 60 Minutes “correspondent,” Lesley Stahl, who still owes me an apology from when she attacked me on the show (with serious conviction!), that Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP FROM HELL was produced by Russia, not Hunter himself (TOTALLY PROVEN WRONG!), interviewed a very poorly prepared Traitor, who in her confusion made many really stupid statements. My real problem with the show, however, wasn’t the low IQ traitor, it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air. THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP, who just paid me millions of Dollars for FAKE REPORTING about your favorite President, ME! Since they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE! Oh well, far worse things can happen. P.S. I hereby demand a complete and total APOLOGY, though far too late to be meaningful, from Lesley Stahl and 60 Minutes for her incorrect and Libelous statements about Hunter’s Laptop!!! President DJT.
What we are seeing in Trump is an increasing loss of self control, leading to all these clues about how Trump actually thinks. In short, he no longer is capable of separating political disagreements from what he perceives to be personal attacks. And to his frenzied mind, all such attacks require a violent response.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
