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"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)
This is what we are in for, for the next four years, at least,
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In the 20th century, the end of Bourgeois-Capitalist Constitutional Democracy in various countries arrived in various ways. Among the several first functional fascist dictatorships, in Italy its ending was announced in 1922 by the appointment as Prime Minister of Benito Mussolini by the King Vittorio Emmanuel III. (Of course, he invented the name "fascism" from an old Roman symbol) and went on to establish a fascist dictatorship that lasted until Fascist Italy was defeated at the end of World War II.) In Germany, Adolf Hitler became dictator in 1933 through a combination of his constitutional appointment as Chancellor of the Weimar Republic by its President Paul von Hindenburg, the Nazi-generated violence of the "Reichstag Fire," and a vote by the Reichstag (the German Parliament) from which the bulk of the left-wing members had fled or been expelled. (See the end of the column for the definition of "fascism" that I use.)
In Spain, fascism was installed by a three-year military campaign, of the Franco-led rebels supported by troops, supplies, and an air arm against the elected government of the Spanish Republic (which was in the end of overthrown). Peron became a fascist dictator in Argentina twice through "popular uprisings" supported by the armed forces. In our own century, Victor Orban became the essential dictator of Hungary through the electoral process and then through the very clever use of the levers of government, once he had gotten hold of them. (That example has much to tell us about what is happening here.) And so, there are various roads to power that have been taken by political figures who become fascist dictators, whether resulting in open dictatorships or simply functional ones with some sort of Constitutional gloss.
As is well-known, the U.S. has been a Constitutional Democracy since its founding in the 1780's, with the first election under the present Constitution held in 1789. A central element of U.S. Constitutional Democracy has been the doctrine of "separation of powers," the is the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judicial. When drawing up, debating, and enacting the U.S. Constitution the Founding Fathers were especially concerned with this separation, creating the traditional U.S. political doctrine of "Checks and Balances." One sign of the beginning of the end for Constitutional government would be a gross violation of the mechanisms of election as defined under it. Another would be the disappearance of the Doctrine of Checks and Balances, with increasing power lodged in the Executive Branch.
The attempted takeover by a supreme Executive Branch was of course staved off in 2020-21. As is very well known, through a variety of very well-constructed legal maneuvers by former President Trump (for example by delay, delay, delaying any possibility of conviction for a federal crime) and his allies, legal and legislative, has resulted in the re-election of Trump as President. (He won by a narrow margin in the popular vote, about 1.5.%, less than 50% of the total. Of course, his legacy-of-slavery-electoral vote margin was much higher: 86.) This time around, as it happens, Trump has been making it very clear that he wants to establish some kid of functional dictatorship, not the "Day One" classic one that he has talked about, but one that would work that way in practice. How so, one might ask?
As noted, one of the bedrock principles of the U.S. Constitution is the Separation of Powers. The Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches are each to stay in their own lanes. Of course, their interests in the legislative, administrative, and judicial spheres do sometimes overlap and certainly they have influence on the other two (sometimes profound influence, like decisions of the Supreme have had on the actions of the other two branches). But traditionally in this country, none of the three has directly taken an action on its own that is obviously a prerogative of one of the other two.
Well folks, this sort of thing just happened. By itself, it is a small matter. But I think that it is a harbinger of things to come. On January 15, 2025, even before he was sworn in as President, Trump told his puppet-Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johson to replace the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Turner. Why did Trump want this? Because Turner is a strong supporter of aid for Ukraine, and Trump, most obviously is not. This action by Trump was not a suggestion. Trump made it clear that it was an order, and Johnson said, "yessir, boss." Trump is clearly taking an action, having a House Committee Chairman removed, which under separation of powers is a function of that separate branch. Obviously, this was not a big step, nor a major breach. But a breach it was, and I think that it represents many more, and much more significant breaches of the separation of powers, at least between the Executive and the Legislative, to come.
As for the relations between the Trump Executive and the Roberts Judicial branch, what might happen remains to be seen. Of course, the Roberts Court threw Trump a huge bone with the "Presidential immunity decision." As I have pointed out in an earlier column, what the Court did was to amend Article II of the Constitution (the one that covers the Presidency) without bothering to go through the amendment process. There is simply no language in that Article that remotely provides for the kind of "immunity from prosecution for a criminal act, whether in the performance of his/her duties or not" that the Court conferred upon Trump (or any kind of immunity whatsoever.) The Court found it somewhere, but not in the language of that clause. And so, the Court might continue to go along the "let's go Trump" line.
After all, it was the Chief Justice, John Roberts, whose Court over time gave us "Shelby" (diminution of protections for voting rights), "Citizens United" (unlimited campaign contributions), "Dobbs" (reversing Roe v. Wade), and the "Presidential Immunity" decisions, which have helped to entrench the Reactionary Right in power in the United States. Roberts has pushed back a little just now, as in letting the New York State guilty verdict and, (as it happened, never heard-of light sentencing in the "hush money" trial) stand, in a 5-4 decision. Where the Court stands from here on, meaning for how long with Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett stand up for Constitutional law (with which Roberts all-of-a-sudden seems to be very concerned), remains to be seen. But if they do, it is only a matter of time before Trump will defy a Supreme Court order. What happens then is anybody's guess.
In my view, as I have said in several columns over time, a U.S. version of fascism is on its way. (For a collection of close to 200 columns that I published on Trump between 2015 and 2021, see my multivolume collection of them published in Amazon Kindle.) So that's it, for now, on Trump. The balance of the column is devoted to a set of short comments on the election, taken from columns just below this one on my Op-Ed News list, plus a few fresh ones (that I will likely ["likely," he says?] come back to in more length in future columns).
A. President Biden's Farewell address, on the incoming oligarchy (I might add, not only in tech, but also in manufacturing, media, petroleum, and so forth) was right on target, but much too late. This is the number one theme that V-P Harris should have been running on (as well as continuing to launch at Trump full-force. She did that on occasion, but not nearly enough.) Historically, rule by an oligarchy (see modern-day Russia) usually means dictatorship. It will certainly mean that here.
B. Trump will definitely try to amend current Federal libel law to rid it of the "actual malice" clause (which means that the entity being sued by a plaintiff for libel must know that it lied when it made the challenged statement, and that knowledge has to be proved, often a tall order). Regardless of whether Kash Patel is confirmed as FBI Director, of course Trump is going to directly use the Department of Justice for his personal battles (two of its top incoming deputies are present Trump lawyers). As The Atlantic says, Trump is poised to make the DOJ into his "personal law firm." C. Biden's "oligarchy" speech has been compared to Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower's "military- industrial complex" speech. The "military-industrial complex" was developing at the time, to-be-sure. And some think that it was, for example, responsible for the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy (because he had indicated that if re-elected in 1964, he was going to withdraw U.S. troops from Viet Nam, and in his famous "American University" speech of June, 1963 he indicated that he was leaning towards taking up Soviet Prime Minister Khruschev's offer of "peaceful co-existence." However, the military-industrial complex was not, and least not yet, organizing to take over the government in toto and destroy its basis in the U.S. Constitution, as the current group is. They were focused on specific policiesD. The incoming President has created an entirely new government department, "The Department of Government Efficiency," for which no legislative authorization can be found (see Article I of the Constitution). It has already been announced that, most ironically, it will be given space in the Eisenhower Office Building. More importantly, it will be funded (from somewhere) and it will have some kind of decision-making authority (derived from somewhere). I have noted on Twitter that from the original DOGE's Palace, in Venice, led the "Bridge of Sighs," to a prison from which there was no exit. Is there possibly a metaphor here?
E. A terrible campaign was run by V-P Harris (or whoever ran it for her). The Biden-Harris Administration Achievements (which Biden summarized briefly in his speech), starting with the conquering-of-COVID for which Trump had done little other than pressing forward with the production of the vaccine (which was VERY important but many other mitigating steps could have been taken), continuing through infrastructure act, and dealing with gun violence and climate change, for openers, were monumental. But you would not, for the most part, know it from Harris' speeches. While some proposed modest changes to the tax code were mentioned frequently, the major measures already done were hardly mentioned at all. And as I have noted in previous columns, race was the Trump card (plus mysogny and xenophobia). Harris hardly mentioned them at all.
F. Nor was "Project 2025" mentioned much after the Democratic National Convention. It proposes to completely re-structure the Federal government, in ways that are, for example, clearly un-Constitutional (done by Executive Branch fiat) like essentially repealing the Civil Service Act of 1883, as amended, without bothering to go through the legislative process (see "Schedule F").
And so, we will end it here, for now. Except to say that a major attack on traditional U.S. constitutional government, featuring first and foremost the ending of the separation of powers, curtailing the rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, and changing the concept of citizenship built into the 14ht Amendment (again by fiat) has already started. I fear that few persons, either in government at the Federal, state, and local governments, or in the "Fourth Branch," that is the Fourth Estate in its original French (that is "The Media" in current terminology), except in isolated sectors such as MSNBC (which may well be bought by Musk[!]), are ready for it.
Addendum: A recent study showed that if a significant chunk of voters who did not vote for Harris because of the single issue of the Biden-Unconditional-Support-for-Israeli-Gaza-Policy (who also did not vote for Trump) had voted for Harris, she might well have won. I should note that while I have been a long-time critic of Israeli Expulsionist policy (Click Here, recognizing the dangers facing our Republic from a second Trump Administration, some of which have been detailed in this column, I voted for Harris.
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Note: For some years now, I have been able to post my columns on my Face-book page. You'll never guess what didn't happen when I tried to do so this time around. So, we still have F-B fact-checking. It's just of a different sort.
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Definition of fascism used by SJ: --There is a single, all-powerful executive branch of government, in service of a capitalist ruling class, that controls, for the most part, the functions of production, distribution, finance, and exchange. There is no separation of the principal governmental powers: executive, legislative, and judicial. There are no independent media. There is a single national ideology, based on some combination of racism, misogyny, religious bigotry and authoritarianism, homophobia, and xenophobia. There is a political party supporting the movement. There is a state propaganda machine using the big and little lie techniques. There may be a full-blown dictatorship, a charismatic leader, engagement in foreign wars, and the use of the mob/private armies to enforce governmental control."
(Article changed on Jan 19, 2025 at 11:49 AM EST)
(Article changed on Jan 19, 2025 at 11:52 AM EST)
(Article changed on Jan 19, 2025 at 11:57 AM EST)
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