Robert Kuttner’s Insightful Comment about American Fascism

25 November 2015

Nutcases showing up at the American political forefront — are indicative of a subtler phenomenon that ProPublica’s Alec MacGillis pointed to

Of this, Professor Robert Kuttner wrote:

Alec MacGillis, of ProPublica, writing in the New York Times Sunday Review, observes that for the most part, the poor aren't defecting to Republicans -- they are not voting at all.

This problem goes far deeper than better techniques for getting out the vote. It reflects a massive decay of civil society, a deep disinterest and contempt for government and politics, one that often seems richly earned.

This is also the soil in which fascism grows . . . . a strongman can suddenly seem the solution to people's inchoate frustrations with their own lives and the irrelevance of politics.

[T]he quiet desperation is such that the crazier the strongman's pronouncements, the better.

Cue Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz. Figures like these channel the rage and alienation, not a serious discussion of remedies.

Already a fascist nation

Thanks in part to the Supreme Court’s constitutionally inane decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) — the United States is already a fascist nation, at least insofar as the term is properly defined. Fascism is a blend in which government and corporations trade favors at the public’s expense.

American fascism can be described as self-serving collusion between (i) essentially bribed government leaders, (ii) corporations, and (iii) the wealthy elite. This assemblage configures government institutions to do its will(s), which in most instances boil down to extracting loot from (or gaining advantage over) everyone else.

A nicely abbreviated definition of this form of totalitarian tendency goes like this:

Fascism is an ultra conservative political ideology combining a totalitarian state with big business. It is not necessarily racist . . . .

Fascism distinguishes itself from communism and nationalistic totalitarianism via government's focused connivance with business titans at the People's expense.

As Kuttner implies, things could get worse

A fascist state in which the Military Industrial Complex (for example) fosters permanent war for profit — as the United States now does — is perhaps less completely insanely evil than one run by rabid maniacs like Hitler’s Germany was.

Hence, Kuttner’s warning about misdirected public anger and demagogues.

Dictatorship is not the imminent threat

It is not that leadership-misfits like Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz (to name just a few) could force government bureaucracy to radically change its inertially guided directions. Astute observers of American government know that getting it to move in new directions is difficult.

See, for example, Michael Glennon, National Security and Double Government (2014) — reviewed here.

The difficulty instead is that these demagogues’ poorly thought out and evidenced philosophies could encourage myriad others in government to act upon their own delusions. Just as Hitler’s Germany did.

Given that the United States is already prone to militarist and corporatist excesses, I do not think that this example is out of reasonable bounds.

Under the right conditions, unfettered insanity can sweep populations. These passions, funneled and focused by totalitarians at the top, become globally more dangerous than the frequently hypocritical American superpower (arguably) already is.

The moral? — Professor Kuttner’s concern is legitimate, but perhaps unfixable

I am not optimistic that the political and social conditions which fostered Kuttner’s observation can be changed soon enough to avoid tumult.

Expecting the public to object successfully, without resorting to violence under conditions when all legal avenues of accessible and effective protest have been largely suppressed by plutocratic America, seems excessively optimistic.

It is not as if American law and government do anything to support plutocracy-resisting labor unionism, among other forms of public self-organization. Nor is that disaffected voters can expect their votes to have even the slightest direction-giving effect on national and sometimes even local governments. Big Money buys most leadership.

The American plutocracy and a retrogressive majority on the US Supreme Court have arguably assassinated meaningful American democracy. What is left is a pain-inducing charade.

The extent of our society’s fall — from demonstrating even a pretense of engaged social seriousness — is symbolically captured by the band of predominantly violent, bigoted and totalitarian-inclined nitwits who now command the 2016 presidential election stage.

I make no pretense toward a capacity to foretell the future. But I do suggest that our downhill roll into the Morass of Moral Baseness seems likely to continue. Sane people everywhere have reason to be afraid.

A powerful United States led by air-headed ignorami and/or unconstrained lunatics would be a fearsome thing.

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Robert Kuttner’s Insightful Comment about American Fascism