Originally Posted by
B Butler
Well, no. The bad guys in the last crisis were worse than the bad guys in this one. Government of the rich, for the rich, by the rich still won't be gassing and burning Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals. Nor with they return to the values of the crisis before that, with minorities in chains serving as out and out slaves.
It would 'only' be a new form of serfdom, probably founded on personal debt that could never be paid off but would be passed down as a perverse inheritance as if genes for sickle-cell anemia. A fellow like Sheldon Adelson could do very well in America while Jewish small businessmen find themselves ruined as trusts and cartels drive them into irrelevance. The super-rich need no middle class except as brutal enforcers, cowed propagandists (preachers and teachers), servants (such as physicians), and such professionals as accountants and engineers.
America now undergoes a class struggle much unlike any that Marx could have ever foreseen -- between the super-rich on one side (big landowners, tycoons, and executives) and the middle class. In good times the super-rich tolerate a middle class that can buy real estate, make investments, establish businesses, and collect desirable stuff. At times the super-rich want to show them who the real bosses are -- so that they must sell off what they got so that they can first keep up appearances (while going deeply into debt, as for student loans) and then then sell their last treasures during a panic for bare survival, at which time they become proles.
Just look at the core support for Barack Obama -- it is heavily the non-white, non-Anglo, non-Christian part of the middle class. It recognizes how much it has to lose.
This doesn't mean government of the rich, for the rich, by the rich isn't a problem. I'd suggest that government of the rich, for the rich, by the rich has been part of many crises. It's a base problem of humankind. Humans strive for territory, resources and dominance. In most any era, the problem might be seen as some individual or group being too successful in fulfilling these drives. Marx might have seen that problem in terms of class struggles. The Enlightenment philosophers might have seen that problem as a lack of equal rights. Religious people might have seen it as the selfish and greedy drifting too far away from God's will.
Of course. Tycoons, executives, and big landowners can be as brutal thugs as Al Capone or Lepke Buchalter. At their worst they have pretensions to superiority that nobody can laugh at, and when they have complete control of the government they can be stopped only by proletarian revolution or apocalyptic war. Just think of Hungary in World War II -- the most vicious antisemites, leaders of the Arrow Cross and Nazi-like organizations, were almost all aristocrats. Hungarian Jews formed much of the middle class, and by dispossessing the Jews and having them carted off to Nazi murder camps those aristocrats could find plenty of 'abandoned property' to be bought cheaply.
Of course antisemitism is not a cornerstone of the American Hard Right, but the middle class is the target of the rapacious desires of a ruling elite that wants everything. Note well that Barack Obama does unusually well not only among the black middle class, but also among the Latino and Asian parts of the middle class. Such people can read the writing as poor white people can't. Poor white people are being used badly and they don't have a clue.
But the core problem is that humans are too human. For long millennia, greed was cost effective. The individuals and groups who out competed the others in the pursuit of territory, resources, wealth, political power and similar prizes simply had more babies than the downtrodden. It was and remains a darwinistic survival of the most vile.
As the Gordon Gecko character in Wall Street put it, "Greed is good". Gain as the result of service to humanity offends few people. Capitalism was unobjectionable when it pioneered new ways of making life easier and fuller. Even at a low level, one must recognize that nobody would ever work in a smelter or a coal mine except out of the desire for gain except under the threat of death. When greed impoverishes multitudes while enriching a few, capitalist greed becomes objectionable. John D. Rockefeller may have had his faults, but he at least brought America and the world energy of unprecedented cheapness. The current 'vulture capitalist' is almost pure vice.
And such is apt to continue to be unless cultures and values systems build in an imperative that there has to be a check on the powerful, that there must be a significant element of the culture that prevents the few from lording over the many.
Democracy was supposed to do this. It has the potential to do this. Still, while money can buy advertising time and media focus, government can be bought. One might not be able to fool all of the people all of the time, but one can fool over half of the people most of the time.
The great hazard is that the checks and balances of our system that wise people imposed upon our political process to prevent the rise of a despotic executive, of a legislature that legislates away the freedom of the people or judicial process that best resembles a lynching are being short-circuited for the advantage of ambitious, ruthless, rapacious people, and judicial process that best resembles a lynching. For two centuries we had political leaders who, even if they knew how to dodge those checks and balances dared not do so. (If anyone wants to know what a system without checks and balances looks like, then look at the old Soviet Union, whose founders believed that 'socialist revolution' would be enough of a guide to good government. In view of the great bloodletting of the Soviet Union, there needed to be checks and balances upon the Party Boss in practice responsible to nobody).
Irresponsible power is the bane of political freedom. Citizens United established irresponsible power for anyone capable of funding an Orwellian propaganda in the form of political campaigns and then flood the airways with such stuff, especially through front groups aligned with a political party that has adopted the agenda. If the chosen pols of someone with deep-pockets funding can get a majority of congress, then the objective of government goes from serving geographic constituents to serving economic constituents who may be hundreds of miles away. Such is government representation of economic interests instead of the People. It is analogous to taking a children's story and turning it into pornography -- even if the characters of the original story are still identifiable. You do not want to take your children to that.
That's one key values shift that's got to be pushed.
But no, this crises's bad guys aren't fascist. They are a distinctly different flavor of ugly.
The villains are particularly ugly in this stage of American history because they are Americans. It was easy for almost all Americans to unite against the Axis Powers who offended every value that Americans cherished. Even those Americans who loved German and Italian culture found Nazism and Italian Fascism particularly loathsome as perversions of the virtues of old and established countries. As for the Confederacy -- the Confederates were largely gentlemen and had only one political vice.
Really, let's grow past the Republicans = Fascists while Democrats = Communists meme. It's bad and it's wrong. Talk real.
The more apt comparison to the American Hard Right may be with the Falangists of Spain nearly 80 years ago. Which part of America is Catalonia and which part of America is Basque Country? It is clear what part of America is the reactionary, traditionalist part that chafes under any attempt to introduce modernity. The geographic divides are sharp.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
