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From this Financial Professional: How to write about this Fascism so my clients can/will listen? [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-20

As a Financial Professional, I send out an email to my clients each week, sometimes chatty, but always with tax information.

It is difficult to write about political subjects, even when they need to be written about, specifically issues of civil liberty, which are not always economic-based.

The difficult task is that I have clients who are Republican. I have clients, of course, who voted for Trump. AOC even had constituents who voted for Trump, so I have to tread carefully.

How do i talk about Fascism without using the word “Fascist” or “Fascism”? How do I write about the dangers of what is happening to this country when some of my clients watch Fox and are told that they like what they see?



This week, after mentioning deadlines and midwest tornados and such, before writing about tax credits, I added some thoughts:

Speaking of tornados, I remember watching a TedTalk given by Tony Robbins 20 years ago, with CEOs of Google and Fortune 100 companies in the audience, as well as a former VP of theUnited States. At one point, Tony raises his hand and asks, “How many of youhere like surprises, say ‘Aye!’”

Most say “Aye!”

He replies, “You like surprises you want .” The audience laughed.

“The ones you don't want you call ‘problems’….”

I was thinking about this line, realizing that many of us, if we had the chance to rule the world, would institute new laws, or ignore others, either from the right or the left, depending on our point of view. Bill Maher, for example, as part of his act, frequently announces, “New Rule!” and explains what he would enforce if he was an authoritarian dictator and could just put in that new law. It's the same with "Larry the Cable Guy," from the other side. “Gitter Done!” is his tag line.

I'm in the Financial Services and tax business, so I will refer to the taxes you pay and who decides how they are spent.

What's true with the dictates of Authoritarian rule, whether suggested by a comedian or implemented by fiat, is the same as with surprises. As with surprises, we like the ones we want. The ones we don't want we call problems….

I had a Rabbi who grew up in Argentina during the junta. When he was a teen, a city bus stopped. Men in plain clothes came on the bus, took someone, put a bag over their head, handcuffed them, took them off the bus, into an unmarked car, and drove away. The passengers, immediately afterwards, our Rabbi told us, reassured themselves that this person “Must have done something.” This was, of course, a rationalization, a hope against fear, that this was a surprise that they wanted, instead a problem.

It is easy to see the deportation of a Palestinian with whom we disagree as a surprise we want, rather than a problem.

It is easy to see the deportation of a gang, justified by a retroactive “Declaration of War” against a “Gang” - not even a country - declared by a President, not by Congress - as a surprise many of us want, because no one likes gang members. Few of us will see that as a problem.

Our tax dollars are intended by Congress to fund Medicare. Most of you are not on Medicaid, so it is easy to see the cuts to Medicaid, and the withholding of Medicaid benefits, as a surprise that we want, rather than a problem. Unless you need Medicaid. Or you work for a not-for-profit that helps people, that is funded by Medicaid. Or you know someone who is dependent on Medicaid. But maybe that is their problem, not yours.

It's easy to ridicule DEI and attempt to remove all mention of DEI - much easier to do than to justify removing the mention of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion - it's harder to justify when it's spelled out. It's easy to ridicule and disparage DEI, especially if you believe that you are not someone who benefits from that. And then, in removing references to DEI, the Department of Defense took down their webpage on Jackie Robinson. Oops. They had to put that one back up. That was not a surprise we wanted. That was a problem.

There is a poem which many of you know titled “First They Came,” by Pastor Martin Niemöller. It starts:

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist….

It doesn't matter who they come for first –Communists, Palestinians, Venezuelan Gang Members, because we like surprises that we want.

As a Jewish American, I knew very well tha tthe fourth group mentioned in the poem are Jews. He did not speak out, because he was not a Jew.

The next lines famously end the poem:

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me

We like the surprises that we want. We like or at least rationalize other surprises, hoping that they wereones we would be at least okay with.

The surprises that we don't want can be bigger problems than we can possibly imagine.

Remember that these are your tax dollars thatunelected people are deciding that they have the authority to override Congressand decide what gets funded and what does not.

There are 3 Branches of Government in this land I was born and raised in, which I love dearly. We do not have a “Constitutional Dictatorship.” Congress and the Judiciary are separate Branches intentionally. The question remains: what happens if the Executive Branch simply ignores the other two Branches and simply “Dictates” what is law and what is not? What is allowed and what is not? What should be funded and what should not? Who can be deported, Green Card or not? Citizen or not?

Even if they pay their fair share of taxes?

The answer is that as long as we like the surprises that we want, it is not our problem.

After all, they probably won't come for us. Or you. The services they want to cut probably won't affect you, unless it does, in which case that is a problem. But where do we draw the line?

And, where, in that poem, are we now? Where, in the poem, are you now?

Tony Robbins also has a line, about how it'simportant to "defeat the monster when it's little."

"Hmmm, as he likes to say. “Something to think about.”

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