*Do Americans Have the Will to Battle A Wealthy Rightwing Authoritarian Movement?

[appalachiablue]

- Daily Kos, By Thom Hartmann, Dec. 31, 2021. - Ed.

When fascism reared its ugly head in Europe and Japan in the 1920s, it signaled a coming war. As a newer and slicker form of that despotism rises here in America, it may well bring the same type of crisis.

- We stand on the threshold of momentous change in this nation. While it’s rarely discussed in this frame, the next two elections will almost certainly determine what form of government we’ll have for at least a generation.
Will America become more free and democratic, or will we devolve into a 21st century form of Trumpy fascism?

The Democratic Party is institutionally committed to America finally realizing a republican form of democracy, rejecting gerrymanders and voter suppression while embracing the kind of “maximum participation” ease of voting seen in every other advanced democracy in the world. Three significant pieces of legislation to reverse the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and protect the integrity of the vote have passed the House and if Democratic Leadership (looking at you, Biden and Schumer) can get them through the Senate there is a vastly improved chance for the survival of our form of government. Additionally, most federally elected Democrats support strengthening our democracy by ending the filibuster in the Senate & adding at least Washington, DC as a new state (with high support for Puerto Rico as well).

But do Democrats have the will and power to fight a battle against financially well-armed rightwing billionaires and their predatory and polluting industries? Not to mention taking on today’s GOP version of Mussolini’s Blackshirts, the volunteer civilian “tough guy” militias that initially roamed around Italy beating up Jews and lefties? The Republican Party, having openly given up on democracy, is trying through gerrymandering, voter suppression and election rigging to seize and hold control of our nation against the will of the majority of America’s voters. Calling it a “slow motion insurrection,” the Associated Press reports how the GOP is taking over election systems across America with the explicit goal of refusing to certify elections that they lose in 2022 and 2024.
- “Never in the country’s modern history,” the AP notes, “has a a major party sought to turn the administration of elections into an explicitly partisan act.”

In the process, the Republican Party has put fascism on the ballot in 2022 and 2024.



- From 1925, Mussolini styled himself 'Il Duce' (the leader). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini

Benito Mussolini pioneered this system back in the 1920s, synthesizing it out of the most corrupt eras of the declining Roman Empire, and named it after the fasces, the ancient symbol of that empire. A single thin stick is easily broken. But when you bundle a dozen or more of them together & wrap them with a leather strap, they are collectively unbreakable with enormous effort. When Mussolini put forward the fasces as the symbol for his new Italian movement, however, the bundle of sticks he had in mind weren’t the people: they were Italian corporations & the wealthy elite who owned & ran them. As the dictionary notes, the system of government 'Il Duce' reinvented was called fascism and prescribed merging the interests of giant corporations & their leaders with the power of the state.
It is, literally, “the merging of state and business leadership…”

Such a merger was explicitly rejected by the Founders of this nation and the Framers of the Constitution, who had just fought a war against Britain and its largest and most profitable corporation, the East India Company. Thomas Paine said it best: we created government to serve We, The People first and foremost. "individuals themselves,” he wrote in The Rights of Man in 1791, "entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.” As the Declaration of Independence says: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” But even in the early years of our republic those who’d accumulated great wealth tried to step in to take it over to promote their own interests. Retired President Jefferson laid out in an 1816 letter to Samuel Kerchival what today would be considered a blistering attack on corporate power: “Those seeking profits, were they given total freedom, would not be the ones to trust to keep government pure and our rights secure. Indeed, it has always been those seeking wealth who were the source of corruption in government. … I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.”

Corporate power has always been influential in America, but 5 “conservatives” on the Supreme Court elevated it to a near-Mussolini level in their Citizens United decision, opening the door for the GOP to embrace an Americanized version of Mussolini’s idea:...



- Fasces on the flag of Mussolini’s “National Fascist Party.”

- Continued,
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/12/31/2072020/-Do-Americans-Have-the-Will-to-Battle-a-Wealthy-Rightwing-Authoritarian-Movement

[ShazamIam]

1. They have with the help of the media been getting away with the theft of the nation

every since Nixon stole the poverty war funds for his rich developer buddies. It now includes theft of the nation's soft infrastructure via privatization including the administration of Social Security and Medicare. Leases are being used to gain control of public owned lands.

The political analysts are preparing you, it is over by pretending it is going to happen in 2022 with the loss of the House & Senate once again to the Republicans, who will then remove Biden.

End of story of the glorious revolution of 1776.

[pwb]

2. Our Unions may have a say in that.

Bring that fight pukes.

[Skittles]

4. the ones leaving the country certainly do not

I will stay and fight.

[The Unmitigated Gall]

6. As will I.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

5. I can't speak for all Americans,

but this American does have the will to fight facism.

Semper Fi.

[jaxexpat]

7. Eyes on the road, hands on the wheel, soldier.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

9. Soldier? SOLDIER?

How dare you call me a soldier!!! LOL, just kidding, but, never call a Marine a soldier, thems fightin' words.

[jaxexpat]

10. Oh, I'd forgotten.

At my age, I just can't remember all the important Marine nuances I've learned watching NCIS. How's it going? The road treating you alright? Wife and I put off road trip for past 2 years due to uncertainty. We've gone back and forth to Kentucky but no month-long exploration. Generally, I find the traffic hasn't changed much in last 10 years or so because I'm not sure it could really get any worse. Seems pretty hard to find folks who drive "defensively" but those pushing the limits of their equipment are too common. I drive I-95 at least twice each week and it's always an experience.

I won't wear you out with this anymore today. Stay safe, dude. Between the blind old people and the pocket rocket jockeys you need your concentration.

[marie999]

8. The difference here is the fascists love the 2nd Amendment.

[shrike3]

11. No. n/t