By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – August 21, 2009
The GOP is in trouble. The Obama Administration has
generally referred to that fact only in passing, although now is now doing that
with a bit more frequency. However,
(well-known to our readers here) it is the Bush/Cheney policies that for the
most part have lead our nation into the fix in which it presently finds itself.
Some of these policies, such as the matter of “free trade,”
in reality nothing more than the free export of capital that has lead to the
massive de-industrialization that we have experienced over the last 20 years,
were unfortunately presaged by Bill Clinton. But for the most part they are Republican-type policies,
whether implemented by the Democrats or not. Indeed there were many policies, foreign and domestic, and I
do not have to review them here, which have lead to very bad outcomes all
around. In fact, it is hard to find one Bush/Cheney policy that has lead to a
good outcome.
So what is the GOP to do? Obviously it cannot promote
Bush/Cheney policy as the solution to the problems those policies created. Thus
certain leaders, from time-to-time, have said "we have to come up with new
solutions." The problem for them is that their ideology doesn't permit
them to do that. This is because,
as again is well-known to TPJmagazine readers, none of the necessary solutions,
some (but not all) of which are being pursued by the Obama Administration, fit
at all into the GOP playbook.
OK. So they can't come up with anything new that present
alternatives to present Obama/Democratic Party policies that might actually
solve problems. And so, as is well-known to everyone, they have become the
Party of NO to any Obama/Democratic proposals. On the stimulus package: their
solution, tax cuts for the rich and the big corporations. It happens that they didn't work for
the original Bush Recession in 2001-02, so why should they work now? Bush got
the nation out of that one by the classic right-wing stimulus package: military
and tax-cuts-for-the-rich deficit spending. On global warming and climate
change, their solution is again NO. Either there is no global warming and
resultant climate change, or there is and let's do a bunch of things that are
known either not to work or make things worse, like "drill, baby,
drill." And then there is health care reform, for which they have offered
no alternatives to any of the package of plans that various Democrats have been
offering. So they have been attacking that package with increasing vigor and
with an increasing separation from reality, with "just say NO," and
nothing else.
They lie through their teeth, in multiple examples. It is not just their non-Congressional
leadership, such as Savagely O'RHannibaugh, that does it. Their Congressional
leadership, to say nothing of the likes of Newt Gingrich, is piling on with the
lies. A couple of weeks ago it was, for example, Sen. Grassley, until recently
one of Pres. Obama's favorite Republicans on health care, who was echoing
Palin's looneyness and more importantly the use of the Big Lie Technique (right
out of Mein Kampf) on the "death panels." Of course Savagely
O'RHannibaugh fires up the violent protestors. But the Republican Congressional leadership, current, such
as Boehner and McConnell, and former, such as Dick Armey, do it too. (Armey is in fact one of those who has
been actively organzing them, to the extent taht that activity became too
embarrassing even for the lobby firm that has his intials in its name.) And now some of those angry
right-wingers are carrying guns into town hall meetings, or trying to. So what
is really going on here?
What is really going on here is that the GOP has given up
planning to win elections by contesting on policy. What is really going on here
is that the GOP has recognized that its rock-solid far right-wing base, the
Palin Faithful and then some, will never amount to much more than about 35% of
the electorate (which is about the same number as the Nazis got in the last
free election in Germany before their takeover). What is really going on here
is that the GOP has recognized that the racism, which has carried it to so many
election victories since Nixon initiated the Southern Strategy in 1968, is also
running out of steam as a way to win national elections. It totally failed them in the recent
one, obviously. So they have begun
to think of other routes back to power.
Racism is still a major part of their strategy, but now it’s
a major tool for organzing their minority, not for winning over a majority. What is working extremely well for them
now is the classic fascist tool of the Big Lie Technique: tell the same lie
over and over again, as loudly as possible, and people will come to believe it. The massive drop in Pres. Obama’s poll
numbers over the totally false claims that the GOP is screaming about with
increasing ferocity is a testament to their success in using it. They have always used it, of course,
from Reagan’s anti-Medicare ads in the 60s (it will lead directly to Communism)
to the Swift-boating of Kerry, but now it is absolutely at the center of what
they are doing on health care.
The word "fascism" has been given many
definitions. My short one (and I've got a really long one too!) is:
"Fascism is a politico-economic system in which there is: total executive
branch control of both the legislative and administrative powers of government;
no independent judiciary; no Constitution that embodies the Rule of Law
standing above the people who run the government; no inherent personal rights or
liberties; a single national ideology that first demonizes and then
criminalizes all political, religious, and ideological opposition to it; the
massive and regular use of hate, fear, racial and religious prejudice, the Big
Lie technique, mob psychology and mob actions to achieve political and economic
ends; and total corporate determination of economic, fiscal, and regulatory
policy." Of course one thinks immediately of Bush/Cheney, but that is old
news.
Total fascism has never come to a country peacefully.
Violent repression of dissent is always at its center. In addition to organized
armed force, it always relies on a loosely organized mob of one kind or another
to take advantage of crisis situations and set the stage for the armed takeover
of the pillars of the state. Thus what is going on now, most likely not yet
consciously organized for that end in too many quarters, is the beginning of
the setting of the stage and the training of the civilian troops.
Underlain by race, of course, is a total rejection of
President Obama's leadership, a total rejection of the results of the election
a little more than six months ago, the encouragement of violence and not just
by some lunatic fringe. Lou Dobbs called for the execution, by a "stake
through the heart," of former DNC Chair and Governor of Vermont, Dr.
Howard Dean. (One notes with irony that Don Imus lost his job at CBS for
calling the members of a women's basketball team "nappy headed ho's."
Dobbs calls for the murder of a leader of the other side and that is met by a
screaming silence at CNN corporate.) And that's just one example. Is a fascist
revolution being actively plotted now? Except on the Far Right (currently)
fringe, I doubt it. But as the Southern Poverty Law Center has just reported
the Far Right militia movement is growing by leaps and bounds, fueled by racism
and hate. But if the GOP keeps going in the direction it is currently goping,
there is the armed force for a potential fascist takeover, at the right time. Rihgt now, on the side of Constitutional
government, who and what would oppose that armed force, should it come to that?
The GOP is of course against health care reform because it
would severely hurt the profit-making prospects of the sickness care insurance,
pharmaceutical, and hospital supply industries. But there are Democrats who
hold to that opposition to reform or the same reasons. (And for the time-being, at least, the
Obama Administration has been able to buy off Big Pharma.) So that's not the only reason that the
GOP is desperate to prevent reform, at least a reform that is meaningful. If
Obama manages to get something passed with a public option and a couple of
other critical elements, the GOP's electoral prospects go into the toilet for a
number of elections to come. They know it and people such as Sen. Jim
("Gay Teachers Should be Banned from the Classroom" [yes, he took
that position as a candidate]) DeMint and Bill Kristol (who took exactly the
same position in opposing the Clinton Health Plan) know it. And what does that mean? Why the
interests of their major corporate supporters (see my BuzzFlash Commentary
"Who Does the GOP Serve?") are
significantly damaged.
What does that leave? Why some crisis of which they could
take advantage (sound familiar?), of course. And they are beginning to prepare
for that possibility (and in some quarters may be preparing the crisis itself
as well), even if only subconsciously so far. What better way, then, to prepare
their potential civilian troops than the current battle over the very complex
and highly personal, emotional issue of health care reform?
The German people had an excuse for letting a minority
party, enabled by a splintered opposition, hell-bent on establishing a
fascist dictatorship unlike anything the world had ever seen, succeed: the
world had never seen anything like it. In the United States, facing a
splintered opposition, there is a minority party that certainly seems to be
hell-bent on (eventually) doing the same thing. If that event does come
to pass, the US population will, however, have no similar excuse. Oh yes,
the advance title for the forthcoming book from that Hitler-in-heels with a
smiley face, the ex-governor of Alaska? "My Struggle," which
translates into German as "Mein Kampf." 
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This column is based in part on a Commentary of mine that
appeared on Buzzflash.com on August 14, 2009. A commentator on that article said: “Your assessment is
extremely insightful. BUT, WHAT TO DO??? How much time do we have to respond?
What should our response look like? How do we avoid the failures of 1930's
"sane" Germans? Please, surely action is required of us. What? When? How?
Who?” I will be addressing that
central question over time in this space and on BuzzFlash, where my
Commentaries appear for the most part three weeks of every four.