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America First [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-01-17
…and the Leader Evermore
This article first appeared in the Medium publication Coping with Capitalism on Nov. 21, 2024.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me. Martin Niermöller, theologian
The American descent into fascism is now complete.
The soft coup. Velvety smooth, wasn’t it? Engineered by property threatened with poverty. What should have been expected? Hail the new Leader. The ‘more than you can take?’, Leader. Power extending its pale arm through the curtain to set the story right once and for all time. Their prince will soon be seated on this golden throne.
Oh, we’ll still call it a democracy, but as we’ve been reminding you so often of late, it’s never really been a democracy.
What should we all expect now?
Prophecy is tricky business and is not my bailiwick. Predicting things can be a lot easier, particularly when Power telegraphs its intent most especially through the new legislative vanguard we still call the Supreme Court.
PEACE
First, there is this item of global peace. A peace promised to quiet the great guns in Gaza and Ukraine and the mouths of opposition. Netanyahu has made no secret he has delayed signing a ceasefire until his pal was in charge. Expect something dramatic like the 1981 release of the hostages from Iran.
Next up, Zelensky will be forced to the negotiating table. US aid now a thing of the past, he must look to the rest of his alliance. Expect them to pressure Ukraine to a peace officially ceding the Crimea and a chunk of what’s been taken in the Donbas. Russia may stretch this out in hopes of collecting more land, but will ultimately agree to its more conservative land grab and to the empty security promises made to Ukraine. Russian military may push for peace, to rebuild and to stage something grander. The only wild card here is the tenacity of the Ukrainian people and the heroism of their leaders.
These are victories designed to broaden the new American dictator’s power. It is his desire to proclaim himself the prince of peace. You know? …Our savior.
NEW FRIENDS
Fascists and want-to-be dictators around the world will be emboldened. These modern axis powers congregate without a common ideology other than how their national politics enrich and empower the narrowest of elite, most especially number one - themselves.
Like a brother once articulated to me, there were only something like 21 Nazis that really mattered. If you were #22, well, and if it was expedient, you might find yourself in some dark alley with a bullet in the back of your skull.
That’s for who and what these bastards play for.
A globe with ever more dictators of heightened power will not be a world of peace, but a world being divided up for slaughter – as Naomi Klein described the Security Age in which we live – a world of vast red zones and tightly held green zones.
As Capitalism is a global system of economics propelled by consumption, it extracts finite natural resources from the planet and monetizes them. Fossil fuels are turned into energy and waste. As we are witnessing today, scarcity and waste is the real byproduct of this behavior.
Yet, most dire scarcity is down the road. Industrialized agriculture actually produces surplus. It is the disparity of wealth and the capitalist’s transactional demands that is actually beneath the poverty and want the climate crises only exacerbates.
Power will use this false scarcity to justify hoarding, price gouging and austerity for the masses. Should we expect the rationing of Soylent pellets – red, yellow and maybe even green in our zones of red?
CORPROTOPIA
After decades of judicial precedence, 2024 saw the 40-year-old Chevron v Natural Resource Defense Council overturned by the Supreme Court. This heralds the end of the regulatory state. Business will be given even more free reign to further decimate the environment, exploit workers and endanger consumers. Wall Street will have a big party hailing an economic boon. Oh look, Jamie Dimon is filling up his dance card.
Once the Leader proclaims himself the prince of peace and the emperor of Wall Street, he will be positioned to wage his first war. The real war.
The struggle to make America in the image of the Leader.
Remember, it’s America First.
That’s right. I’m talking about you.
For such an ambitious, really audacious plan this is the sort of PR coup needed.
OLD ENEMIES
America will look to itself and the nefarious enemies within. This also, they have made clear. An opening salvo? Look again to our judges originally seated foremost to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority, but in our desperate times operating to exploit the majority through a tyranny of an autocratic minority. What we call Power.
Another 2024 ruling, City of Grants Pass v Johnson, has essentially criminalized homelessness in America. This is another large stride towards the criminalization of poverty in America. Prepare to find yourself securely in your own ghetto sometime soon. To advance this agenda, the homeless poor may be herded into the same places they try and take our immigrants.
Eventually, these places concentrating America’s enemies may be open ghettos or entire cities. Black and brown people, Jews, LGBTQ+, “socialists”, and, of course, women, should expect reduced rights, their voices to be drowned out, and outright oppression.
Revenge Inc. will be open for business. This for all the privileged elite in open contempt of how they have been victimized by minorities and the powerless, now’s their chance to right these wrongs. Give them a sucker punch for me, willya?
More prisons will create more ways to enrich the billionaires. One should never forget that slavery has never been completely outlawed in this country. Isn’t that a pretty present for our masters?
THAT’S RIGHT, CHRISTMAS IS BACK!
America’s labor movement has a lot to look forward to – particularly if you heard the banter about firing striking workers between the incoming dictator and his new billionaire buddy X Æ A-Xii’s poppa.
What about all that spending? Well, there’s a new department of the government coming to find the best ways to eviscerate the virtually non-existent welfare state – Obamacare, food stamps, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, public education, and the postal service. Nothing like bringing great minds to this exciting project.
More from our Supreme Court in 2024, Snyder v the United States, now legalizes bribery to government officials…as long as the payoff is made after the favor and not before. Not only does this approve of the hanky-panky perpetuated by at least two justices of this highest court, but it provides a big hole in our national defense against corruption.
Crooks don’t need such a gaping hole, just a little one to wriggle through, but the Supreme Court has given a big fat present (remind anyone of anything?) to the incoming bevy of crooks to our government. Hey, isn’t this capitalism at work?
Replacing career bureaucrats with cronies will spread this corruption like a terminal cancer in the American system. It’s like the abandoned Audi on the freeway. First the hubcaps are gone, then the wheels, next the drive train, radio and bucket seats and finally all that’s left is a hulk on cinder blocks.
Recall, the Leader and his followers have nothing…really nothing, but contempt for our government. Their “party” has long made it their mission to paralyze our legislative branch to freeze out potential new laws that generally only make for more spending, more calls for taxes on the wealthy, more regulations and more of all the things they abhor.
Why be concerned about filling essential cabinet positions with competency? Rather, let the department whither and die under the thumb of a sycophantic lackey.
One might ask themselves if this derision is a reflection of the contempt these people have for democracy – particularly as it has manifested in America with our pluralistic, multi-cultural “Union”. Their love is reserved for themselves and the exploitative system of economics that ensures their place atop the pyramid.
The flag may not be changing, but what it represents sure seems to have.
So, these same forces of Power enshrine the rights of capital and the corporate world. Their greatest wish is the privatization of all that is public. Sell offs of public lands and/or valuable resources contained under these lands. Access to fossil fuels relatively easy to extract no matter the consequences to our environment and our lives. Privatization of the postal service. Privatization of the national security vetting process (paving the way to sell off national security secrets – hey they’re worth something too). The dismantling of public education starting with the elimination of the Department of Education. No more taxes going to grubby inner-city kids, we can now have a two-tiered education system. Just look to New Orleans for the model. How wonderful will that be? Maybe we can buy that second private jet after all….
Raise your hand if you believe this incoming President, our Leader, didn’t try and illegally tilt this election. That would be incredulous. He has tried to lie and cheat every step of his career, why would he not try and manipulate things in the most pivotal moment in his life?
Break the law? Why worry? He’s above it.
SOLVING OUR PROBLEMS
Should we expect violence, most particularly heartless violence? What do you believe? Conservatism generally is not an innovative impulse, but relies on tried-and-true methodologies. Most important is divide and conquer, deception and distortion and, of course, violence in all its forms: coercive violence, stochastic violence, brute force violence, sexual violence, the violence of indifference, and industrialized violence and death.
How to categorize likely hundreds of thousands of deaths from COVID caused during his first term as President of the United States? Violence of subterfuge? Certainly not indifference, but another way to quietly “thin the herd”?
Fascists can innovate within their realm of interest. An example might be innovating methods to exterminate and dispose of more people more efficiently.
Our Leader is special in this regard. He stated once that he could shoot someone dead on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Now, this figure is the great deceiver and a two-bit hustling conman, but he spoke a great truth that day. A truth we are only beginning to grapple with particularly as we realize we haven’t really been taking him and his movement seriously for far too long.
Now we can see that not only can he get away with it, but he can have the Supreme Court sanction the murder. In this year’s appropriately named T-p v the United States, the Supreme Court sanctioned any crimes, including murder or, one might note, treason a President might commit carrying out their executive duties. One might further note that, for many, treason against this country is even more egregious than murder. Many, many Americans have given their lives to protect this democracy, so to have a sitting President of the country responsible for attempting to overturn the electorate’s decision must be viewed as among the most heinous crimes in all of American history.
Of course, now we can see beyond this decision. This Leader can, in essence, shoot someone in broad daylight and this very fact can, not only be sanctioned by the highest judges of the land, but can propel him back to the highest office of the land. A thunderous truth indeed.
Are we done underestimating this man yet?
YES, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM!
You and you and you and you are the problem. Have you realized that yet? What does that mean?
When they come for the immigrants, what do you do? Rally round the oppressed and targeted and join in their defense now? When you are unable to place your body in between the force of oppressive Power and its victims, speak out and do your part anyway.
We must stand together. We must defend one another. We must recognize our differences are small compared to what should be bringing us together. We must realize that they wish to divide us to make us easy and willing victims who feel alone.
This government will make it a priority to dismantle our nation and its democracy. We must stand together to defend America, to defend one another.
You may have read the plan I have proposed or others including the use of tactical boycott.
Why not boycott Tesla to motivate the divestment of Twitter (X) — formerly the most powerful PR platform in the country — and boycott Amazon’s Black Friday and possibly another day before Christmas to encourage divestment of the Washington Post — one of two important sources of mainstream investigative journalism?
Better ideas or improvements are welcome. This is taken directly from the Black Radical Tradition. Look to those experienced in defending democracy for guidance and center the voice of the unheard. Leave room for these voices. Listen deeply and act.
Our real struggle has begun.
We must Unite to Resist.
This is our only true hope.
Recommended Reading
Anything of the Black Radical Tradition, Ethnic Studies, African American History, and the American Labor Movement.
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections by David Daley
Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi edited by Kali Akuno and Ajamu Nangwaya.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein (add her prelude No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies for a more complete vision).
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