I don’t own a television, but I did “tune” into President Obama’s State of the Union address the other night via streaming video on my computer. I didn’t watch very long – I quickly tired of the unending applause and shots of Pelosi and Biden jumping up and down, as if on cue, to rouse the audience to more standing ovations. Today, I read the entire address at the Minneapolis Star Tribune site in less than 20 minutes and wondered why it took an hour and five minutes to deliver the address. It must have been all that applause.<\/p>\n
So what was my opinion of the address? Not that anyone is paying attention to my ideas, but I think the State of the Union is pretty sorry and Obama didn’t do much more than issue rhetorical platitudes. The only bright spot in the speech for me was when he criticized the Supreme Court for its recent ruling that corporations have the right of free speech. I particularly didn’t like the part where he said he was going to freeze discretionary spending starting in 2011, but said absolutely nothing about the out-of-control military spending in this country.<\/p>\n
I’m becoming interested in the idea of hubris<\/a> and nemesis<\/a> and in that spirit, I’m offering an essay by Eli Zaretsky<\/a>, who was born in Brooklyn, New York. He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1960 and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1978. His books include, Capitalism, the Family and Personal Life<\/em> and Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis<\/em>. He has been a professor of history at Eugene Lang College, part of the New School in New York City, since 1999.<\/p>\n A storm has been building in this country since Bush took office in 2001. Today, we are more indebted, have fewer civil liberties, and are more unhappy than ever. Partisan bickering and finger-pointing are rife and no solutions to our troubles appear to be at hand. Mr. Zaretsky has identified some points to watch. As you read his points, keep in mind that Adolf Hitler’s rise to power did not involve any violence at all. He was elected to office and consolidated his power through legal means. I don’t know how nemesis is going to manifest itself in this country, but the scenario that Mr. Zaretsky outlines could be one possiblity. If you would like to learn more about what he is writing about, I can’t suggest a better source than Dave Neiwert’s blog<\/a>. <\/p>\n Personally, since I am interested in social justice, I am praying for the opposite of the trend identified by Mr. Zaretsky. But I fear that the followers of Palin, Beck, Robertson, and Limbaugh have the upper hand in what passes for political discourse in this country. If the economy does not improve markedly soon (and I see little possibility that it will do so), it is entirely possible that we will soon be living in a country with startling parallels to Germany in the 1930s.<\/p>\n This essay, by Eli Zaretsky, appeared on the Tikkun Daily Blog<\/a> on January 23, 2010.<\/p>\n If I were Barack Obama, I would be frightened right now, not so much because of the likelihood that there would be serious Democratic losses in the 2010 election, or even a strong challenge to my re-election in 2012. No, I would be frightened because I would feel that I was in danger of losing control of my party, of my authority in government generally, and of the respect I had among the American people. I would feel \u2014 if I had my pulse on the nation \u2014 that the country was in an unstable and volatile situation and that things could go pretty haywire pretty fast, and I wouldn\u2019t be sure if I could control them. I would be frightened that I had taken on a job that was beyond my capacities, if I were Barack Obama.<\/p>\n The fact is that there are proto-fascist elements in America today, and I don\u2019t mean the Tea-Party group or any easy, rightwing target per se. I say \u201cproto\u201d fascist because I don\u2019t want to be alarmist, and because I don\u2019t want to use the term \u201cfascist\u201d as a meaningless insult. There are, however, situations when proto-fascist or extra-legal authoritarian elements do seem to surface, and this is one of them. In what follows, I want to cursorily list a few of these elements and then say a word about what has brought about the present situation.<\/p>\n 1. The anti-Congress mood:<\/strong> One of the most marked aspects of societies that move in authoritarian directions is contempt for Congress or Parliament. Although a certain amount of this contempt is typical and normal in a democracy, the present situation is extreme. Furthermore, it is not hard to see the reason for it. The blatant service of both parties to special interests, not just in the health care episode, but in TARP is unprecedented. The idea that Congress would spend a year working on health care, come up with the kind of bill that it did, and then not even pass it is amazing. The idea that it would abet the President in handing the country\u2019s checkbook to the leading banks, without getting anything in return, is even more amazing.<\/p>\n 2. Contempt for the President:<\/strong> For quite a while now, it has been clear that the President has very little real support in the country. His polling among African-Americans remains high, and a certain type of wonkish liberal supports him, as do such figures as David Brooks and Ross Douthat, who use their \u201cadmiration\u201d for his supposed \u201cthoughtfulness\u201d as spin for their rightwing agenda. However, from the moment he took office he lost the support of the rest of his base, the antiwar folks, the \u201cLeft,\u201d however defined, young idealists and the like, even though, understandably, they were reluctant to criticize the first black President. The truth is, however, that he is a weak President, unable to connect emotionally to the ordinary workingman or woman, and this makes for further instability.<\/p>\n 3. The Supreme Court<\/strong> is in the hands of a fanatic group of five, with a passionate and unstoppable agenda. The decision on corporate campaign financing is only one example. It is not merely the content of the decision, it is even more the legal opportunism, the drive to turn a small sliver of opportunity into a big, epoch-making decision, the refusal to honor or even really consider precedent, etc. all of which threatens the idea of a nation under law. We already saw the Supreme Court behave in an extra-legal way in installing Bush in the 2000 election. Once again, one of the core elements of stability in any modern democracy, namely the courts, leads in the direction of instability.<\/p>\n 4. Scapegoating of the Left:<\/strong> One of the strongest bases of a stable democracy is a responsible Left committed to liberal principles and democratic means, but attempting to articulate and bring into politics the interests of the weakest and most deprived members of the society. Contrariwise, one of the elements making for instability is the scapegoating of the Left, their marginalization from the national consensus. In the US, of course, this marginalization dates back to the seventies and eighties, and led to the transformation of the Democratic Party, which many hoped Obama would reverse, but which he deepened. The new factor, however, is the revival of a Left sentiment and a Left consciousness. Watch for liberals blaming the Left for the defeats of Obama, as one of the main signals that the country is on a dangerous path.<\/p>\n 5. National Decline:<\/strong> One of the main causes of authoritarian and extra-legal political developments is a country in decline, or trying to reverse some apparently unfair international developments. The United States today is in danger of developing this kind of \u201cdecline\u201d mentality. Even when it was far stronger (relatively) than it is today, it operated as a bully, regularly lying to the American people, and using force to get its will without regard for justice, or the \u201cdecent opinion of mankind,\u201d as it used to be called. One of the things that made Obama attractive was the idea that he recognized this, and that he would help lead an orderly retreat, which is what the U.S. needs. But that, however, requires that he be strong. He is now far too weak to do that and, besides, we have seen in his Afghanistan decision that even when his Presidency seemed solid he was going to defer to the established powers, like the Pentagon.<\/p>\n 6. The Corporate Elites:<\/strong> The US today has the greediest and least public-minded capitalist class of any country in the world. Yes, there might be exceptions that we could argue about such as the oligarchs in Russia in the nineties, or the comprador<\/em> classes in various stages of Latin American history. Nonetheless, the fact remains, basically, as I stated it. Most Americans, I am sure, would be shocked to learn that in European countries, both Western and Eastern, in China, India and Brazil, and even in Russia, there are relationships and norms that more or less govern the behavior of capitalist corporations. Only in the United States, are greed, grasping, and exploitation celebrated and so-called \u201cclass struggle\u201d or \u201cPopulism\u201d mocked. Once again, a key element making for stability, a capitalist class that has a sense of responsibility for the national interest is missing, leading to further instability.<\/p>\n In raising these considerations, I am not predicting which way the country will go. I have no idea which way it will go. I do think, however, that some awareness of the dangers that face us is salutary.<\/p>\n Finally, I want to raise a last question: could it have been different? Of course, it could have. The United States has an extraordinary history of progressive reform and change and the 2008 election was potentially a transformative moment, as the election of the first African-American President seemed to suggest it would be. For reasons that remain unfathomable to me, Obama moved in a wholly different direction, and with every step he took he became weaker, and the enemies of a stable democracy became stronger. As to the future, we shall see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don’t own a television, but I did “tune” into President Obama’s State of the Union address the other night via streaming video on my computer. I didn’t watch very long – I quickly tired of the unending applause and …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1731"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1734,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731\/revisions\/1734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Proto-Fascist Elements in America Today<\/h3>\n