Fascism comes to America

American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Decline of the west, Extremism, ,

 

It was not that long ago that I said, American is not fascist. That position is becoming more and more difficult to uphold.

Right now the Republicans are split between those who believe, based on plenty of evidence, that the rioters in the Capitol were guilty of sedition  and Trump’s fervent supporters, who think the riot was  justifiable as a way of denouncing Trump’s fraudulent defeat. In other words, they are split between people who believe what they saw in plain sight, and those who worship at the throne of Trump.

As Stephen Colbert said, “evidently, the only thing scarier to Republicans in Congress than a violent mob is the fear that the mob might not like you anymore.”

Perhaps the best example of impending fascism was the election of QAnon conspiracist Marjorie Taylor Greene to the American Congress in the last election. She was elected in one of the safest districts for Republicans in Georgia. It was another example of the America system that ensures the only way a person can win the Republican nomination is to move to the extremes and then when that is secured there is no contest in the safe ridings. It helps produce polarization. Republicans always win in her district in other words.  Sort of like Steinbach, that always votes Conservative, no matter what. Or at least has done so for many years.

Stephen Colbert said she has the “the homicidal vote on lockdown.” Recently it was revealed that she indicated  repeatedly on line that she  indicated support for executing Democratic politicians.  Here is a transcription of one of her engagements with a supporter on Facebook. One of her supporters asked Greene whether as follows about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama: “now do we get to hang them?” And Greene replied, “Stage is being set.  Players are being put in place. We must be patient.” Greene, like her mentor Trump, did not bother being subtle or discreet. Other posts indicated she thought Nancy Pelosi was a traitor and helpfully pointed out that treason was punishable by death.

It is little wonder that on January 27, 2021 the Department of Homeland Security, still with its acting head appointed by Trump, and  not exactly a left-wing organization, issued a bulletin for the first time of “a heightened threat environment across the United States…from homeland violent extremists.”  The extremists are driven by “objections to…the presidential transition, as well as perceived grievances fuelled by false narratives.” The Department made it clear that they see violence aimed at overturning the election of Biden as terrorism. That should not be  surprising.

Colbert asked: “will the GOP finally take a stand against the man who legitimized fascism?” Colbert has not been shy about using the F word to describe Trump. Those are strong words. Are they over blown?  In the light of what happened in the American Capitol who can say that?

That is not all. Newly elected Greene has for awhile denied the school shootings in places like Newtown. Guess what?  She was recently appointed by the Republicans to the House Education Committee. That is like the Gaddafi regime in Libya being appointed to the UN Committee on Human Rights. Only yesterday she was voted out of that post  with only 11 Republicans voting in favor of her ouster.

In 2018, before she became a Congress woman, Greene posted this on Facebook during the California wild fires that devastated that state:  “the real and hidden  culprit behind the [California fire] was a laser from space triggered by some nefarious groups of people.” Not only that but they were Jewish. Greene and other QAnon supporter are resurrecting the old Nazi conspiracy theory that the world is run by a cabal of Jewish bankers. This longtime QAnon adherent is now in Congress and Trump has said she is a “future star of the Republican Party.”

Who continues to think that saying Fascism is on the rise in America is far-fetched? Who continues to think that because Trump has left the White House all is in order?

 

How many of us have blood on our hands?

Epidemics/Pandemics, Freedom, Human rights

 

I read a disturbing article in the Winnipeg Free today by Melissa Martin. It brought home the situations in our Intensive Care Units (‘ICU’). I wish all Manitobans would read it. Especially those who have been reckless about endangering others and our health system by their careless and selfish attitudes to Covid-19.

Martin pointed out how our ICUs are being stretched to the limit. The nurses there, particularly those temporary and poorly trained extender nurses who don’t normally work in ICUs, told her a little bit about what life was like in the front lines of this war. The stress is nearly unendurable.

First, there is the stress of working in life or death situations without proper training.  One of the nurses said she has been “gripped by constant anxiety.” She was an experienced nurse, but she was not experienced or trained to work in an ICU until she was called in as an “extender nurse.”  Manitoba was forced to increase its ICU capacity by 50% because of the steady influx of patients. As Martin pointed out, “Still, pressure on ICUs remains high: as of Monday, 102 patients were in critical care, including 38 with COVID19-related illness. Before the pandemic, the province had 72 total ICU beds.” Normally, nurses like her who move to an ICU get months of training including hands-on learning. She got one day’s training! Then she is put in charge of patients whose lives are at risk! Think about that stress for a minute.

She called it a “steep learning curve.” The nurse said that every day in December when she went to work, she cried. As Martin reported, the nurse “often felt as if she was left to fend for herself. It wasn’t for lack of support from the regular unit staff; it’s just they had too many demands on their time to take her fully under their wing. That made worse the uncertainty of navigating medications and devices with which she had little experience.” I sometimes thought I had a high-pressure job. That was nothing compared to this pressure! Unsurprisingly, the nurse said, “my mental health has taken a nose-dive.”  You think?

The nurse said,

“The extenders I’ve talked to, it’s mostly been negative experiences,” Isabelle said. “They’re not happy. They’re anxious. They’re nervous they’re going to be placed in a situation where they’re not comfortable.”

 

Another of the nurses pointed out she understood why others could not help her. Everyone in the ICU was overwhelmed. As a result, even though she was not properly trained, she had no choice to deal with the problems. Her superiors were also overwhelmed. This was particularly acute because they lost some staff during that time. As she said,

“They couldn’t really monitor everything I was doing… It’s not for lack of people trying to support me. It’s just been this overwhelming surge of acuity like we haven’t seen before, and also this reduction in staff.”

 The nurse explained what it felt like to work under such conditions. She compared it to war conditions! Here is what she said,

 “COVID was spoken of as a war. It was, “We’re fighting COVID, and the front-line people, they’re our soldiers.’ But I didn’t know we were going to staff this army with like, three people. I’ve never seen that level of excellence we’re talking about. I’ve only seen people in war, and in suffering.”

 

I feel profound empathy for anyone who had to work under such war-like conditions. As Martin explained that nurses felt it in different ways. During the peak nurses saw as many as four patients die in one shift. Each emptied bed was filled swiftly by what Sarah called a “conveyor belt” of incoming COVID-19 cases, a new set of lives hanging by a thread. Those deaths were made even harder by the fact, in most cases, families were not allowed in the building.

Understandably some of the nurses feel they have been treated badly. They have been treated badly. The ones to blame here are not the health care officials who supervise hospitals in horrendous circumstances. They are dealing with a new coronavirus. The ones to blame are Manitobans! Ordinary everyday Manitobans who have been treating Covid-19 cavalierly and negligently are to blame. People who have not been treating the disease seriously and following the Manitoba health guidelines. That includes many of us. Not just the Christians from my own community who have been selfishly putting their own need to join in religious services with their fellow congregants, but definitely those. Is exercising our “right” to ignore health guidelines and our right to religious freedom more important than protecting our health care workers and the patients they are trying to save? We all could have done better and made the jobs of health care workers easier. As a result of our actions they  are incredibly stressed while they try to save lives. Many of us have blood on our hands!

Patriotism as fascism

American Fascism, Trump, Trumpism

 

I heard Trump is saying he will start a new party and he wants to call it the Patriot Party. That has a ring to it doesn’t it? Yes I think it has the ring of fascism. Bill Maher said there was something “brown shirty” about it.

Oscar Wilde said “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

Nesrine Malik, an astute observer of politics offered a

“rule of thumb: the more that “patriotism” is invoked by a country’s political elites, the less healthy its political culture will be. From McCarthyism in the US to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the imperative to love one’s country has often been used as pretext for persecution and submission.”

I don’t have a problem with love of country. I love my country. But I don’t love it blindly. I reserve the right to criticize it when I think it has gone astray. I don’t want to sacrifice my critical judgment to love of country. I don’t believe in love of country right or wrong. I don’t like patriotism that has been weaponized. As Malik added,

“What has passed for patriotism for too long in this country is, in fact, chauvinism: an attitude that defines itself by who it excludes, rather than who it brings together…Sometimes loving your country involved kicking up a fuss. It means telling the uncomfortable truth about a government that is letting its people down.”

Malik was talking about her country—England. But it applies just as well to any country. Particularly to mine. And yours.

Sometimes patriotism really means fascism.

When Reason sleeps tyranny follows

American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Death of Truth, Decline of the west, reason

 

Goya, the famous Spanish painter was well known for dark art.  No one ever accused him of seeing only the sunny side of life. Goya inscribed one of his works with the following words: “The sleep of reason brings forth monsters.” I find that profoundly true. If we give up reason, we open ourselves up to nightmares, and much worse.

Voltaire, the father or the child of the Enlightenment, and one might say a Fundamentalist Enlightenment thinker, said it best when he said,: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” I would put it this way, “If I can get you to believe something without any evidence it is true, I can convince you to kill your friend.” Voltaire also understood that when truth was no longer respected there was a slippery slope to tyranny. That is why reason is so important. Reason is our best defence against tyranny. Credulity is our worst enemy.

 Historian Timothy Snyder, an expert of European fascism recently said, “Post-truth is pre-fascism.”

Tyranny is one of the worst monsters born out of the sleep of reason. The tyrant knows he is safe when he can convince people to believe the absurd.

 

Manitoba Board Chair one of Entitled People

Epidemics/Pandemics

 

Brian Pallister refused to criticize Wayne McWhirter the Tory appointed chair of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority who we learned had escaped Manitoba to go to Arizona. McWhirter has been a Conservative donor. That helps one to get appointed to a board. Clearly, he was one of the entitled people.

Premier Pallister did say he was disappointed in the chair but asked us to “give him a break” because he was “basically a volunteer.” This was contrary to Manitoba Health Guidelines that people do not travel except for necessities.  It was not contrary to any Manitoba health order however.

First, it is not true that he is a volunteer. As a member of a Manitoba board, he is paid a salary though likely not a princely one. He also gets paid more than ordinary board members as board Chair.

Secondly, and much more importantly, during a health pandemic public trust that people are being treated fairly is crucial to encouraging people to “buy in” to volunteer restraints such as avoiding travel because the province can’t possibly police such conduct. When elites give themselves license to avoid such restrictions, as many have now done,  it naturally leads to resentment by the minions who think the elites impose rules on them and then don’t follow those rules. This can seriously undermine Manitoba’s efforts to get people on board voluntarily and do the right thing. When people like McWhirter ignore the pleas from health authorities to stay home, many Manitobans will want to do the same thing. What McWhirter did was to erode public health and safety. As the chair of one of Manitoba’s most important Health bodies it showed very poor judgement on McWhirter’s part.

Personally, I think McWhirter should be dismissed from the board to show Manitobans that we do take such actions seriously, even if McWhirter does not.

 

F bombs

American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Decline of the west, Extremism, Trumpism

F bombs

 

For quite some time I was reluctant to call Donald Trump and some of his followers fascists. That was then; this is now.

After the attack on the Capitol when after Trump’s urging the mob invaded the Capitol and while chanting “Hang Mike Pence” over and over again, I started to re-think.  When CNN reported that many of the rioters were intent on catching police officers and killing them, I began to change my mind. Some of the rioters in the Capitol said, they “were invited here by the president.” Now, that I see Republican leaders in Congress sucking up to Trump again and once more endorsing his phoney claims of a stolen election in order to keep his base of supporters fired up, I think “fascist” is the right word to describe them.

It reminds me of what happened in Germany in the 1930s when the Nazis who had been elected used the fire in the Reichstag to begin hunting Jews and curtailing freedoms. We must always remember Hitler and the Nazi’s were elected.

Fascists is what they are. The only question is how many of the Trumpists would go that far. It seems to me a lot of them were willing to go that far.

Free Speech in a pandemic

Democracy, Epidemics/Pandemics, Freedom, Human rights

 

I have seen in many places, including Steinbach, and on TV reporting, at Trump rallies, and even the rampage on the Capitol, signs that say things like this:

“mask free zone,” or “No Masks,” or “The media is the virus.”

Statements like this are dangerous in a health pandemic. We are entitled to free speech, but are we entitled to make blatantly false statements that contradict all available science to such an extent that public health measures are compromised and lives endangered? How is this different than shouting “Fire” in a dark and crowded theatre when there is no fire? How far does free speech go?

 

Too many people forget that free speech is important but not absolute.

 

Wisdom from Dr. Fauci for Steinbach

Death of Truth, Epidemics/Pandemics, reason

 

On CBS Sunday Morning we were rewarded with a wonderful interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci, probably the most trusted man in America. He was so trusted Donald Trump did not have the guts to fire him even though his fans at a rally chanted “Fire Fauci,” over and over again. He told them to wait until after the election, hinting that then he might have the courage to fire Dr. Fauci. The only reason they chanted that is they did not like what Dr. Fauci told them. Particularly, they did not like what he said because it contradicted everything their spiritual leader Donald Trump had said about the coronavirus pandemic. That’s what Dr. Fauci always did—he told truth to power as he saw it.

He never shied away from doing that. And make no mistake the message he always delivered was not as rosy as Trump wanted it and that is why he did not like the message, and as he usually did, why he wanted to fire the messenger. But in Dr. Fauci’s case Trump just did not have enough courage to do that. It might have made the 2020 presidential election even more lop-sided against him than it already was.

On the show they showed a number of views of Dr. Fauci.  Some considered him a saint. Some considered him a hero. Others considered him a disciple of Satan.  Dr. Judy Mikovits who unfortunately has garnered a lot of interest on the internet, said, “I believe Dr. Fauci has manufactured the coronavirus.” Not exactly the voice of reason.

It is not surprising that in a country as divided as the United States that there would be such diverse views of Dr. Fauci. Dr. Fauci said this about this issue:

“This is a dramatic example of the divisiveness in our country.  We have had a complete distortion in throwing out the scientific facts and evidence and a certain part of the country believed the ‘hoax’ aspect, the ‘fake news,’ aspect. The other half was longing for clarity, longing for facts, longing for truth.”

 

While some people see Dr. Fauci as a saint, others threaten his life and that of his wife and children. He can’t go for a walk with his wife without armed federal guards. 3 of his children are routinely harassed. As he said, “My 3 daughters are constantly harassed by the crazies.”

As Dr. Fauci said,

“The US had more than 400,000 fatalities as a result of Covid-19. Proportionately, based on its population the US ought to have about 80,000 fatalities. In other words, the US has 5 times the deaths from Covid-19 that it ought to have!”

 And not only that, as I keep reminding—and the US is the richest country in the world!

 

Dr. Fauci acknowledged there were many reasons for this but he emphasized one:

“You can’t have mixed messaging. You cannot have the politicization of public health messages. The idea that wearing a mask or not became a political statement. That makes it beyond difficult to implement good public health measures.”

 American public health officials were put in an impossible position.

Donald Trump on national TV with Dr. Fauci beside him said this about Hydroxychloroquine a drug that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for malaria treatment,  but not for Covid-19 patients except for experimental studies: “It may work; it may not work. I feel good about it. That’s all it is just a feeling.” Instead of reason he opted for feelings. And more than 70 million Americans thought that was all right. Coming from the president of the country with a legion of fanatically loyal followers this is an extremely dangerous thing to say. I would go so far as to say it was gross negligence. People believed him and risked their lives. Perhaps some died as a result.

As Dr. Fauci said, “the partisanship has been poisonous.” Health issues should not become political footballs. Health issues should be determined by the best science available not feelings.

As Ted Koppel the CBS interviewer said, “In 4 years, from the top, science has been constantly undermined. That is an epidemic of sorts and there is no vaccination for it.”

To this Dr. Fauci added, “We have to show by example that being united is much better than being divisive.  Divisiveness has really failed and it has failed in every single way.” 400,000 deaths instead of 80,000 deaths in the richest country in the world makes that pretty plain. Americans or Canadians don’t need more freedom, as groups like the Church of God Restoration claim. They need to respect the science and each other. They need to listen to reason, not feelings.