I went looking for progressives, and found only
Democrats. And proto-fascist Democrats at that.
With only mild exaggeration, those statements
represents my recent, frustrating experience of visiting self-styled "progressive"
Facebook pages to promote progressive initiatives, for example, RootsAction's
timely petition to Obama to keep the government's hands off Ed Snowden and let
him find political asylum. To my horror--and the word is NO exaggeration--one of
the first responses I received is that Ed Snowden is a traitor for betraying "our
nation's secrets." These three words speak volumes about how far our nation
has traveled down the road toward fascism, and I intend to give them the
closest scrutiny.
An apt message for Obama .progressives. by Lydia Tremont
An apt message for Obama .progressives. by Lydia Tremont
Now, bear in mind, this atrocious comment, which
instantly provoked a comment strongly supporting it, was posted on a
PROGRESSIVE site. With the word "liberal" already successfully poisoned as "the
L-word," it's hard to find a word for the genuine, democracy-supporting left
that doesn't scare away the mainstream. Granted, in the right moods and with
the right audiences, I like to consider myself a radical, but just try selling THAT
term to the frightened-little-bird mainstream--whose support, sadly, the left
needs to win. But many people style themselves progressives simply for not
being Republicans, and--what's far worse--for being Obama supporters. As a supposedly
progressive Democrat holding the nation's highest office, Obama has successfully
pimped out the term "progressive" and made it consistent with the worst
authoritarian proto-fascist type of whoring.
And in the process, turned many Democrats into
unwitting proto-fascist "johns."
The harshness of my wording may shock--especially as
applied to Democrats--but as reflecting my real alarm, it does NOT strike me as
excessive. As we're facing potential outright fascism, someone has to proactively
take the lead in calling a spade a spade. The idea of Ed Snowden being a
traitor for betraying "our nation's secrets" disturbed me deeply, reflecting a
mentality--among supposed progressives, mind you--that's the most promising soil
for fascism. For those three little words place "our nation" on a distant,
idolized pedestal or altar, to be worshipped and defended at all costs, instead
of carrying the ONLY realization worthy of our nation's Founders and proper to
a democratic citizenry: that "our nation"
means We the people--precisely you and me.
"Our nation's secrets" are your secrets and mine,
and we should be angry as hell that OUR government--without our consent and,
indeed, without our knowledge--is prying into them. I NEVER consented to this,
just as I never consented to "our" government, on lying pretexts, attacking and
slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis with whom I had no quarrel.
Given how little this government already represents me (as opposed to
billionaires and global corporations), it's hard to imagine ANY pretext on
which I'd allow it to do the amount of unwarranted snooping--"unwarranted" in
both senses of the word--it's doing. Ed Snowden is a hero of democracy for
giving me the KNOWLEDGE (as opposed to mere suspicion) that allows me to
protest.
As an avid reader of The Federalist Papers (and also the reactions of Hamilton, Madison,
and Jay's anti-federalist opponents), I know just how fond our nation's
Founders were of the term "responsibility" in its eighteenth-century meaning.
Virtually everyone--both those for and those against the newly drafted
Constitution--were concerned with keeping U.S. government "responsible," in
other words, answerably directly to the people or at least to some
counterbalancing body that provided a check on its arbitrary power. For it was
precisely against the type of arbitrary power represented by a monarchy that
they had just fought a revolution. And no one had more success in promoting the
American Revolution than Thomas Paine, who had the novel, radical of making his
pro-revolution pamphlet Common Sense a
diatribe against the outworn, oppressive system of monarchy. Precisely for its
lack of "responsibility."
Our Founders thought in terms of "tyranny" rather
than fascism, and they probably would have lambasted the increasing amount of
arbitrary power invested in the executive branch under both Bush and Obama as a
slide into "irresponsible" monarchical tyranny. Just Congress's abdication of
its Constitutional responsibility to declare war--to say nothing of the
prerogatives granted the executive branch under the USA PATRIOT Act--would have
horrified them. Indeed, it's a sick joke that Obama's a trained Constitutional
lawyer--though deeply fitting that Glenn Greenwald is one--for Obama (unlike
Greenwald) has almost zero sense of the mentality of our nation's Founders.
Obama's reign is far closer to the arbitrary, "irresponsible" power of King
George.
If I speak in terms of fascism rather than tyranny,
it's because Obama's means of oppression require developments in technology,
institutions, and ideology unavailable in the time of King George. For example,
the "joint-stock company" (the infant corporation of its time) certainly
profited greatly from a close relationship with government, but it had nothing like
the global span, the overwhelming control of the press, and the incestuous
revolving-door relationship with government it now possesses. Mussolini's
purported working of corporations into the very definition of "fascism" is much
more to the point. As is the overwhelming use of modern mainstream media as
agents of propaganda and ideological control--whose successful use is starkly
reflected in the number of DEMOCRATS, self-styled "progressives," willing to
lend ardent support to Obama's authoritarian, regressive regime. And of course
modern mass media and standardized products helped destroy local character and
homogenize whole nations, thus paving the way for the jingoistic worship of
the nation-state and its militarism essential to modern fascism. I found it
quite telling that the same man who spoke of Snowden betraying "our nation's
secrets" referred to himself as a "patriot."
How far removed this modern proto-fascist "patriotism"
is from the mindset of our Founders, who viewed patriotism as the
liberty-loving vigilance of independent-minded citizens deeply suspicious of
government! For me, the closest thing we've seen to the spirit of our Founders
is the Occupy movement, or the civil disobedience of activists standing up to
pernicious, anti-democratic impositions of corporate will like the Keystone XL pipeline
or the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Or, for that matter, the whistleblowing on government
malfeasance by real patriots like Bradley Manning and Ed Snowden. Obama's
condoning of brutal crackdowns on these patriotic dissidents by his
surveillance state, and his savage prosecution of these patriotic whistleblowers
by his Justice Department, tells us everything we need to know about the real
nature of his regime. You simply can't attack the common good for corporations'
benefit without eventually cracking good citizens' skulls, or spying on their
every move. And what's tragic is that self-styled progressives are fully
supporting him--letting themselves be turned into "model fascist citizens."
For real progressives--and simple lovers of democracy
of any party--I recommend continuing this conversation at the Time to Restore
Democracy Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/WhoseVoiceOurVoice?fref =ts.
1
1
1
