Article 43
Fascism
Tuesday, September 26, 2023
Lend-Lease Act of 2022
In May 2022 the U.S. Department of Defense REPORTED:
President Joe Biden signed into law the “UKRAINE DEMOCRACY DEFENSE LEND-LEASE ACT OF 2022.”
The act authorizes the administration, through fiscal year 2023, to lend or lease military equipment to Ukraine and other Eastern European countries. The act would exempt the administration from certain provisions of law that govern the loan or lease of military equipment to foreign countries, such as the five-year limit on the duration of the loan or the requirement that receiving countries pay all costs incurred by the United States in leasing the defense equipment.
A few months LATER:
President Joe Biden has signed the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act into law allotting $816.7 billion to the Defense Department.
The act authorizes the full fiscal year 2023 budget request for the European Deterrence Initiative and extends and modifies the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. It authorizes $800 million in fiscal year 2023, an increase of $500 million above the initial budget request.
More importantly, the act expresses the sense of Congress that the United States’ commitment to NATO is ironclad, and emphasizes the importance of maintaining a unified response to Russia’s unjust war in Ukraine and other shared security challenges, according to a release on the Senate Armed Services Committee website. The Senate release also stressed that the U.S. must continue to assist Ukraine in its fight against the unjust and unprovoked attack by Russia.
The act looks to provide long-term aid to Ukraine especially in waiving restrictions related to contracts for munitions to support Ukraine or to increase DOD’s stocks of critical munitions. It also provides multi-year procurement authority for certain munitions.
The budget for fiscal year 2023 ENDS IN A FEW DAYS - September 30, 2023. Will the billions government is throwing at Ukraine end?
At this time of the year, the millionaire rulers of our country feign the government is broke, and threaten to shut it down.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s political theater to scare us and move more money away from public spending, and into the hands of corporate America and the military - expanding inequality, suffering, and sorrow for the people they claim to represent.
Today, world war three is knocking on our planet’s poor thanks in no small part to President Biden not opting for peace talks with Russian President Putin.
So I’m guessing billions more U.S. $$$ will be slotted to kill others - more money will be poured into into the Russia-Ukraine war, fear of China, and more money taken out of the safety net, ie: the mouths of starving, homeless, disabled, poor, and down-on-their-luck Americans.
And while the Federal Reserve raises interest rates resulting in you and I paying more for just about everything - lying thru its teeth that too much money is floating around - it pumped $300 BILLION in to the economy to save the rich from loosing a little of their wealth.
US government pays billions in uninsured bank deposits to Silicon Valley oligarchs and venture capital firms
Other countries are building fallout shelters (like WE HAD in the 60s) for their citizens.
eg FINLAND:
Most of the time, this is a family-friendly sports centre. Above ground, the only visible clue to its second identity is a small orange and blue triangle on the wall by the entrance that states: “VAESTONSUOJA SKYDDSRUM, or “defence shelter”. In the event of an emergency, the arena would revert to being the Merihaka bomb shelter, a subterranean living quarters where up to 6,000 people could exist for weeks, or even months.
How prepared ARE WE:
The United States and its citizens are not currently prepared for the after effects of a nuclear disaster of any type, whether an air missile from another nation, an attack on the ground from a terrorist or terrorist group, or some kind of accidental detonation. Instead of just lording over us for ever, however, the billionaires at the top of these virtual pyramids actively seek the endgame.
Section Bad Moon Rising • Section Dying America • Section Fascism •
View (0) comment(s) or add a new one •
Printable view • Link to this article •
Home •
Thursday, June 15, 2023
Screwing Unvaccinated NYC Teachers
UFT Bumps Up NYC Teacher Salaries on Backs of Retirees and the Unvaxxed
While arm of AFL-CIO fights for unvaccinated workers in New York, UFT completely abandons unvaxxed educators
By Michael Kane
Teachers For Choice
June 14, 2023
NYC educators will now be getting a significant raise plus financial incentives on the backs of retirees and fired unvaccinated teachers and educators. ACCORDING TO LABOR REPORTER BOB HENNELY over 3,700 teachers have had their employment status “upended” over the vaccine mandate from 2021 (that number is worse for teachers aides) and over 250,000 retirees are set to lose out on their medical benefits over a controversial for-profit Medicare Advantage scheme.
The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) headed by Michael Mulgrew has actively worked to stop unvaccinated workers from getting their jobs back. This is perfectly symbolized in the Unity Caucus, run by Mulgrew, blocking TEACHERS FOR CHOICE on Twitter.
While the UFT discards its unvaccinated members, many other unions have fought for reinstatement and rehiring, working with city council members (like Joann Ariola and Vickie Paladino) as well as with independent attorneys in the courtrooms. Both the firefighters and police officers unions (while not perfect) have fought for their fired brothers and sisters and have assisted the attorneys I work with to get New Yorkers their jobs back.
In addition the New York State Public Employees Federation, AFL-CIO, (PEF) has been assisting my attorney, Sujata Gibson, in her case against the state-wide vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. PEF represents over 50,000 healthcare workers in New York. Their General Council, Edward Greene, has filed two affidavits against the vaccine mandate that has led to thousands of rank-&-file healthcare workers being fired for declining covid vaccination. (Both affidavits are downloadable as pdfs at the end of this report)
Where is UFT General Counsel Beth Nolan when it comes to Kane v. de Blasio in federal court for 20 months? Where is she regarding the new TEACHERS FOR CHOICE COURT CASE backed by ChildrenҒs Health Defense being heard in New York State Supreme Court?
Many attorneys have told me UFT actively negotiated away our fundamental rights. Great work Mulgrew and gang!!
More Stats on Displaced NYC Educators
On top of the 3,700 displaced teachers, 15% of teachers aides and paraprofessionals lost their jobs over the same timeframe, according to Hennelly. Much of that loss was due to the vaccine mandate as well, though it is unclear what the precise number is. Nevertheless there is no question the vaccine mandate in NYC Schools cost the system thousands upon thousands of competent professionals which has exacerbated an already tragic shortage of competent educators in NYC.
Hennelly REPORTS:
The announcement (of NYC teachers raises) comes amidst a national crisis in teacher retention in the aftermath of the pandemic. According to a survey last year done by National Education Association, 55 percent of teachers in a national survey said that they were thinking of leaving their profession.
That same year, New York Stare Comptroller Tom DiNapoli reported that 2.5 percent of the city’s 77,160 teachers had left between June of 2020 and June 2021, in the first year of the pandemic. Close to 3,700 teachers employment status was upended over the city’s mandatory vaccination policy. [emphasis added]
The attrition rate was exponentially higher for teaching assistants, 15 percent of whom left over the same time frame. Similar retention challenges have been documented across multiple civil service titles.
Section Revelations • Section NWO • Section Dying America • Section Fascism • Section Workplace •
View (0) comment(s) or add a new one •
Printable view • Link to this article •
Home •
Tuesday, May 30, 2023
Democracy Hollowed Out Part 51 - The End of Free Speech That Will End America
[T]he 85-page briefing, titled THE GOOD CENSOR admits that Google and other tech platforms now control the majority of “online conversations” and have undertaken “a shift towards censorship” in response to unwelcome political events around the world.
- Democracy Hollowed Out Part 35 - Censorship, February 2023
Free speech and expression protect us from the most powerful actors on the planet: corporations, the State, and a growing plethora of international bodies. Ultimately, we need radically decentralised social media that is more immune to their capture. Our safety depends on it.
- Twitter Files and the Virality Project, March 2023
“The most effective way to counter the potential negative effects of hate speech is not through censorship, but rather through more speech,” SAYS FORMER AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION (ACLU) PRESIDENT NADINE STROSSEN, noting that suppression and censorship often lead to more harm.
- Free Speech vs Hate Speech, May 2022
---
‘The Official Truth’: The End of Free Speech That Will End America
By J.B. Shurk
Gatestone Institute
May 29, 2023
Summary
· [M]edia polling from Harvard-Harris showing that Americans hold almost diametrically opposing viewpoints from those that news corporations predominantly broadcast as the official “truth.”
· Americans have correctly concluded that [with the “Russia Hoax” and suppressing reported influence peddling in Hunter Biden’s laptop ] journalists and spies advanced a “fraud” on voters as part of an effort to censor a damaging story and “help Biden win.” Nevertheless, The New York Times and The Washington Post have yet to return the Pulitzer Prizes they received for reporting totally discredited “fake news.”
· “Under the current approach to journalism, it is the New York Times that receives a Pulitzer for a now debunked Russian collusion story rather than the New York Post for a now proven Hunter Biden laptop story.” - Professor Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Law School, Twitter, May 15, 2023.
· The government apparently took the public’s censorship concerns so seriously that it quietly moved on from the collapse of its plans for a “disinformation governance board” within the DHS and proceeded within the space of a month to create a new “disinformation” office known as the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which now operates from within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Although ostensibly geared toward countering information warfare arising from “foreign” threats, one of its principal objectives is to monitor and control “public opinion and behaviors.”
· As independent journalist Matt Taibbi concludes of the government’s resurrected Ministry of Truth: “It’s the basic rhetorical trick of the censorship age: raise a fuss about a foreign threat, using it as a battering ram to get everyone from Congress to the tech companies to submit to increased regulation and surveillance. Then, slowly, adjust your aim to domestic targets.”
· Democrat Senator Michael Bennet has already proposed a bill that would create a Federal Digital Platform Commission with “the authority to promulgate rules, impose civil penalties, hold hearings, conduct investigations, and support research.”
· Effectively, a small number of unelected commissioners would have de facto power to monitor and police online communication. Should any particular website or platform run afoul of the government’s First Amendment Star Chamber, it would immediately place itself within the commission’s crosshairs for greater oversight, regulation, and punishment.
· Will this new creation become an American KGB, Stasi or CCP empowered to target half the population for disagreeing with current government policies, promoting “wrongthink,” or merely going to church? Will a small secretive body decide which Americans are actually “domestic terrorists” in the making? US Attorney General Merrick Garland has gone after traditional Catholics who attend Latin mass, but why would government suspicions end with the Latin language? When small commissions exist to decide which Americans are the “enemy,” there is no telling who will be designated as a “threat” and punished next.
· It is not difficult to see the dangers that lie ahead. Now that the government has fully inserted itself into the news and information industry, the criminalization of free speech is a very real threat. This has always been a chief complaint against international institutions such as the World Economic Forum that spend a great deal of time, power, and money promoting the thoughts and opinions of an insular cabal of global leaders, while showing negligible respect for the personal rights and liberties of the billions of ordinary citizens they claim to represent.
· If Schwab’s online army were not execrable enough, advocates for free speech must also gird themselves for the repercussions of Elon Musk’s appointment of Linda Yaccarino, reportedly a “neo-liberal wokeist” with strong WEF affiliations, as the new CEO of Twitter.
· In an America now plagued with the stench of official “snitch lines,” censorship of certain presidential candidates, widespread online surveillance, a resurrected “disinformation governance board,” and increasingly frequent criminal prosecutions targeting Americans who exercise their free speech, the question is not whether what we inaudibly think or say in our sleep will someday be used against us, but rather how soon that day will come unless we stop it.
If legacy news corporations fail to report that large majorities of the American public now view their journalistic product as straight-up propaganda, does that make it any less true?
According to a SURVEY by Rasmussen Reports, 59% of likely voters in the United States view the corporate news media as “truly the enemy of the people.” This is a MAJORITY VIEW, held regardless of race: “58% of whites, 51% of black voters, and 68% of other minorities: - all agree that the mainstream media has become their “enemy.”
This scorching indictment of the Fourth Estate piggybacks similar POLLING from Harvard-Harris showing that Americans hold almost diametrically opposing viewpoints from those that news corporations predominantly broadcast as the official “truth.”
Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda?
Drawing attention to the divergence between the public’s perceived reality and the news media’s prevailing “narratives,” independent journalist Glenn Greenwald DISSECTED the Harvard-Harris poll to highlight just how differently some of the most important issues of the last few years have been understood. While corporate news fixated on purported Trump-Russia collusion since 2016, majorities of Americans now SEE this story “as a hoax and a fraud.”
While the news media hid behind the Intelligence Community’s claims that Hunter Biden’s potentially incriminating laptop (allegedly containing evidence of his family’s influence-peddling) was a product of “RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION” and consequently enforced an information blackout on the explosive story during the final weeks of the 2020 presidential election, strong majorities of Americans currently believe the laptop’s contents are “real.” In other words, Americans have correctly concluded that journalists and spies advanced a “fraud” on voters as part of an effort to censor a damaging story and HELP BIDEN WIN”. Nevertheless, The New York Times and The Washington Post have yet to return the Pulitzer Prizes they received for reporting totally discredited “fake news.”
Similarly, majorities of Americans suspect that President Joe Biden has used the powers of his various offices to profit from INFLUENCE PEDDLING SCHEMES and that the FBI has intentionally refrained from investigating any possible Biden crimes. Huge majorities of Americans, in fact, seem not at all surprised to learn that the FBI has been caught ABUSING its own powers to influence elections, and are strongly convinced that “sweeping reform” is needed. Likewise, large majorities of Americans have “serious doubts about Biden’s mental fitness to be president” and suspect that others behind the scenes are “PUPPETEERS” running the nation.
Few, if any, of these poll results have been widely reported. In a seemingly-authoritarian disconnect with the American people, corporate news media continue to ignore the public’s majority opinion and instead “relentlessly advocate” those viewpoints that Americans “reject.” When journalists fail to investigate facts and deliberately distort stories so that they fit snugly within preconceived worldviews, reporters act as propagandists.
Constitutional law scholar JONATHAN TURLEY recently asked, “Do we have a de facto state media?” In answering his own question, he notes that the news blackout surrounding congressional investigations into Biden family members who have allegedly received more than TEN MILLION DOLLARS in suspicious payments from foreign entities “fits the past standards used to denounce RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA patterns and practices.” After Republican members of Congress traced funds to nine Biden family members “from corrupt figures in Romania, China, and other countries,” Turley writes, “The New Republic quickly ran a story HEADLINED ‘Republicans Finally Admit They Have No Incriminating Evidence on Joe Biden.’”
Excoriating the news media’s penchant for mindlessly embracing stories that hurt former President Donald Trump while simultaneously ignoring stories that might damage President Biden, Turley CONCLUDES:
“Under the current approach to journalism, it is the New York Times that receives a Pulitzer for a now debunked Russian collusion story rather than the New York Post for a now proven Hunter Biden laptop story.”
Americans now evidently view the major sources for their news and information as part of a larger political machine pushing particular points of view, unconstrained by any ethical obligation to report facts objectively or dispassionately seek truth. That Americans now see the news media in their country as serving a similar role as Pravda did for the Soviet Union’s Communist Party is a significant departure from the country’s historic embrace of free speech and traditional fondness for a skeptical, adversarial press.
Rather than taking a step back to consider the implications such a shift in public perception will have for America’s future stability, some officials appear even more committed to expanding government control over what can be said and debated online. After the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in the wake of public backlash over First Amendment concerns, halted its efforts to construct an official “DISINFORMATION GOVERNANCE BOARD” last year, the question remained whether other government attempts to silence or shape online information would rear their head. The wait for that answer did not take long.
The government apparently took the public’s censorship concerns so seriously that it quietly moved on from the collapse of its plans for a “disinformation governance board” within the DHS and proceeded WITHIN THE SPACE OF A MONTH to create a new “DISINFORMATION” office known as the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which now operates from within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Although ostensibly geared toward countering information warfare arising from “foreign” threats, one of its principal objectives is to monitor and control “PUBLIC OPINION AND BEHAVIORS”.
As independent journalist Matt Taibbi CONCLUDES of the government’s resurrected Ministry of Truth:
“It’s the basic rhetorical trick of the censorship age: raise a fuss about a foreign threat, using it as a battering ram to get everyone from Congress to the tech companies to submit to increased regulation and surveillance. Then, slowly, adjust your aim to domestic targets.”
If it were not jarring enough to learn that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has picked up the government’s speech police baton right where the DHS set it down, there is ample evidence to suggest that officials are eager to go much further in the near future. Democrat Senator Michael Bennet has already PROPOSED A BILL that would create a FEDERAL DIGITAL PLATFORM COMMISSION with “the authority to promulgate rules, impose civil penalties, hold hearings, conduct investigations, and support research.”
Filled with “disinformation” specialists empowered to create “enforceable behavioral codes” for online communication - and generously PAID FOR by the Biden Administration with taxpayers’ money - the SPECIAL COMMISSION would also “designate ‘systemically important digital platforms’ subject to extra oversight, reporting, and regulation” requirements. Effectively, a small number of unelected commissioners would have de facto power to monitor and police online communication. Should any particular website or platform run afoul of the government’s First Amendment Star Chamber, it would immediately place itself within the commission’s crosshairs for greater oversight, regulation, and punishment.
Will this new creation become an American KGB, Stasi or CCP - empowered to target half the population for disagreeing with current government policies, promoting “wrongthink,” or merely GOING TO CHURCH? Will a small secretive body decide which Americans are actually “domestic terrorists” in the making? US Attorney General Merrick Garland has gone after traditional Catholics who attend Latin mass, but why would government suspicions end with the Latin language? When small commissions exist to decide which Americans are the “enemy,” there is no telling who will be designated as a “threat” and punished next.
It is not difficult to see the dangers that lie ahead. Now that the government has fully inserted itself into the news and information industry, the criminalization of free speech is a very real threat. This has always been a chief complaint against international institutions such as the WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM that spend a great deal of time, power, and money promoting the thoughts and opinions of an insular cabal of global leaders, while showing negligible respect for the personal rights and liberties of the billions of ordinary citizens they claim to represent.
WEF Chairman Klaus Schwab has gone so far as to hire hundreds of thousands of “INFORMATION WARRIORS” whose mission is to “control the Internet” by “policing social media,” eliminating dissent, disrupting the public square, and “covertly seed[ing] support” for the WEF’s “Great Reset.” If Schwab’s online army were not execrable enough, advocates for free speech must also gird themselves for the repercussions of Elon Musk’s appointment of Linda Yaccarino, reportedly a NEO-LIBERAL WOKEIST” with strong WEF affiliations, as the new CEO of Twitter.
Throughout much of the West, unfortunately, free speech has been only weakly protected when those with power find its defense inconvenient or messages a nuisance. It is therefore of little surprise to learn that French authorities are now prosecuting government protesters for “FLIPPING OFF” President Emmanuel Macron. It does not seem particularly astonishing that a German man has been sentenced to three years in prison for engaging in “pro-Russian” POLITICAL SPEECH regarding the war in Ukraine. It also no longer appears shocking to read that UK Technology and Science Secretary Michelle Donelan reportedly seeks to imprison social media executives who FAIL TO CENSOR ONLINE SPEECH that the government might subjectively adjudge “harmful.” Sadly, as Ireland continues to find new ways to punish citizens for expressing certain points of view, its movement toward criminalizing not just speech but also HATEFUL THOUGHTS should have been predictable.
From an American’s perspective, these overseas encroachments against free speech - especially within the borders of closely-allied lands - have seemed sinister yet entirely foreign. Now, however, what was once observed from some distance has made its way home; it feels as if a faraway communist enemy has finally stormed America’s beaches and come ashore in force.
Not a day seems to go by without some new battlefront opening up in the war on free speech and free thought. The Richard Stengel of the Council on Foreign Relations has been increasingly VOCAL about the importance of journalists and think tanks to act as “primary provocateurs” and “propagandists” who “HAVE TO” manipulate the American population and shape the public’s perception of world events. Senator Rand Paul has alleged that the DHS uses at least 12 SEPERATE PROGRAMS to “track what Americans say online,” as well as to engage in social media censorship.
As part of its efforts to silence dissenting arguments, the Biden administration is pursuing a policy that would make it UNLAWFUL TO USE DATA and datasets that reflect accurate information yet lead to “discriminatory outcomes” for “protected classes.” In other words, if the data is perceived to be “racist,” it must be expunged. At the same time, the Department of Justice has indicted four radical black leftists for having somehow “WEAPONIZED” their free speech rights in support of Russian “disinformation.” So, objective datasets can be deemed “discriminatory” against minorities, while actual discrimination against minorities’ free speech is excused when that speech contradicts official government policy.
Meanwhile, the DHS has been EXPOSED for paying tens of millions of dollars to third-party “anti-terrorism” programs that have not so coincidentally equated Christians, Republicans, and philosophical conservatives to Germany’s NAZI PARTY. Similarly, California Governor Gavin Newsom has set up a Soviet-style “SNITCH LINE” that encourages neighbors to report on each other’s public or private displays of “hate.”
Finally, ABC News proudly ADMITS that it has censored parts of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s interviews because some of his answers include “false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines.” Essentially, the corporate news media have deemed Kennedy’s viewpoints unworthy of being transmitted and heard, even though the 2024 presidential candidate is running a strong second behind Joe Biden in the Democrat primary, with around 20% support from the electorate.
Today, America’s mainstream news corporations are already viewed as processing plants that manufacture political propaganda. That is an unbelievably searing indictment of a once-vibrant free press in the United States. It is also, unfortunately, only the first heavy shoe to drop in the war against free speech. Many Chinese-Americans who survived the Cultural Revolution look around the country today and SEE SIMILARITIES everywhere. During that totalitarian “reign of terror,” everything a person did was monitored, including what was SAID WHILE ASLEEP.
Section Dying America • Section Fascism •
View (0) comment(s) or add a new one •
Printable view • Link to this article •
Home •
Documentaries - Never Again Is Now Global
Holocaust survivors, children of survivors and grandchildren - as well as German freedom fighters - express their shock at today’s fear-mongering and divisive dictates that are reminiscent of the prelude to the Holocaust.
[Episode 1. Here We Go Again On Steroids] The surviving generation of the Holocaust sounds the alarm on the weaponization of medicine. Is history repeating itself?
[Episode 2. Anyone Who Wants To Start A War Has To Lie] Once you see a lie, you can’t un-see it. Survivors and their descendants recognize the weapons of deception and fear mongering propaganda.
[Episode 3. Breaking The Veil Of The Real Conspirators] As patterns and parallels are identified, we begin to see the continuity of genocidal operations. The same powerful family dynasties and corporate entities behind it all, come into clearer view.
[Episode 4. This Time Around Were All Jews] Today’s false narrative, the suspension of freedom, coercive medical dictates, and violation of human rights are not limited to Jews. Today’s genocidal agenda targets the global human population.
[Episode 5. Never Give In - Never Give Up] The Holocaust was facilitated by sheep-like mass obedience to illegitimate authority. Those who resisted by falsifying their identity, by jumping off the trains to Auschwitz and joining the partisans - had a higher survival rate than those who obeyed!
Section Revelations • Section Dying America • Section Fascism •
View (0) comment(s) or add a new one •
Printable view • Link to this article •
Home •
Sunday, May 28, 2023
Extinction Age Fascism
There can be no question that this is correct; since fascism is only a particular form of modern monopoly capitalism under certain conditions, and the whole of monopoly capitalism is in fact a fetter on the development of the productive forces, such that the most general characterization of monopoly capitalism is decaying capitalism, and increasingly decaying capitalism.
- The Question of Fascism and Capitalist Decay, Marxists Internet Archive, 2006
Fascism happens when a society falls into sudden, fresh poverty. In particular, when it holds debts it cant repay - and the result is widespread economic stagnation. A feeling of discontentment and hopelessness become pervasive. SOCIAL BONDS FRAY. Trust collapses. A society is hanging together by a thread. Elites, whose status and prestige will be lost if they admit they’ve mismanaged society, don’t - and so the VICIOUS CYCLE OF POVERTY AND DESPAIR SIMPLY THUNDERS ON.
Soon enough, in the vacuum, a DEMAGOGUE ARISES, who blames the economic woes of the true and the pure on those it’s easiest to scapegoat. Long-hated, powerless minorities. “We will be Great Again!” he cries. “All you must do is annihilate the subhumans.” His flock - long ignored and derided by elites as the cause of their own problems, now have someone else to blame, to demonize. Those who they’ve hated for generations, usually, anyways. Bang! The fascist spark is lit. The rest is history.
- Fascist Implosion, 2020---
You Call It “Florida,” I Call It “The Problem of Extinction Age Fascism”
What Do Politics Gone Haywire in an Age of Extinction Look Like? Take a Hard Look at Florida, and Then the World
By Umair Haque
Eudaimonia
May 27, 2028
America’s got a problem. A Ron DeSantis problem. And we need to talk about it. What do I mean by that? It’s not what you think. Well, it’s not just what you think, really. I mean it in a bigger way. If you wanted an example of what negative, ruinous politics look like DURING THE AGE OF EXTINCTION, take a hard look at Florida.
DeSantis’s abuses of power are by NOW WELL ESTABLISHED. A classic demagogue right down to, LOL, book bans. Criminalizing TEACHERS, DOCTORS, PARENTS. Attacking KIDS. Building parallel institutions - RECONSTRUCTING universities, CONSTRUCTING special police forces. The list goes on and on.
But the problem here is bigger than that. Much bigger.
DeSantis is 44 years old. He’s not going to win the next election. But he’s going to be around, a plague on America, for the next half a century. At some point, given enough backing from crackpot billionaires, a gullible media, and what we’re going to discuss next҅he very well could win. Imagine that something happens to Trump, who’s getting well up there in years. Whos the GOP front-runner then?
But it’s not even time scales that are the issue. It’s that DeSantis’s formula is working. It’s a template of regressive politics, modern day fascism, and it’s working all too well. Extinction Age fascism? Look no further than҅Florida.
HOW LONG DOES FLORIDA HAVE? Its anyone’s guess, given current rates of warming and sea level rise. Certainly, within the next decade or two, things will get difficult. Very, very difficult. Already, INSURING A HOME is problematic, expensive, if you can find someone to insure it at all.
And yet PEOPLE ARE FLOCKING TO FLORIDA. Why is that? Because of DeSantis’ formula. He’s cut taxes to the bone. Florida’s a handful of states with no state income tax.
Why does that work? Think about it. Time are tough. Incredibly tough. Real incomes are falling. Prices are SKYROCKETING. That, too, is an Extinction effect - climate change means we’re now running out of food, water, clean air, at a civilizational level, and so of course a relentless, never-ending inflationary wave is hitting us. That $5 or $10K you can save on state income tax? It’s a big deal, to most Americans. And so it’s not just people who are moving to Florida. It’s BUSINESSES, too. DeSantis knows he can attack Disney because, for example, plenty of hedge funds have moved in, as have health “insurers.”
DeSantis has made Florida economically attractive. At least in the short term. In an Age of Extinction, every penny you can save counts. Now, of course, it hardly takes a genius to see the problem that arises next: without a tax base, good luck having working infrastructure. And so Florida has some of the NATION’S WORST - from schools, to dams, to drinking water and so forth. But the long run doesn’t matter in this form of negative politics. It’s just about amassing power, now.
As people move to Florida, of course, there’s the threat of demographic change unseating a figure like a demagogue. But that threat’s often a hollow one, because - well, think about why those people moved there in the first place. For the short term gains. So if someone comes along and says, hey, I’m going to raise your taxes, so we can have decent infrastructure, and by the way, I’m going to undo all those book bans, how many votes are they really likely to garner?
This is how negative politics works. The economic short-termism goes hand in hand with the ... fascism, more or less. I don’t know what else, really, to call book bans, criminalizing teachers, “dont say gay,” and all the rest of it. It’s textbook neo-fascism, really, especially when you understand that the, uh, LOL, Nazis, BEGAN THEIR ATTACKS ON CIVIL SOCIETY IN MUCH THE SAME WAY.
So. Florida shows us a template of negative politics in the Age of Extinction. It goes like this. Hook people - who are growing poorer, fast, as inflation bites, and real incomes fall - with low, low taxes. Meanwhile, corrode institutions, norms, and values, scapegoat innocents, do the whole fascist shuffle down into the abyss. And trust that by and large, people will look the other way. After all, you’ve made a bargain with them: you;re going to give them those low taxes, and theyre going to let you do your thing.
Meanwhile, while this dance of folly goes on, nobody’s planning for the inevitable, which is, LOL, in a place like Florida, ALREADY HAPPENING. Good luck getting insurance on that new home. But what does it matter? Remember, youҒre just in it for the short term.
The effect of this kind of bargain on a society is inimical. Once youve hooked people, you amass power, and your ability to enact your regressive agenda only grows. The threat of demographic change isn’t much of a risk to you, the demagogue, because you know as long as you offer people the economics they want, they won’t challenge you much on social issues. So as people move in, and businesses do, you’re seen as more of a leader, you get more dark money, more influence, more airtime, and so on. You rise in stature and in power as a demagogue.
Does that make a little bit of sense? Let me try to put that in context. History’s not going to care very much about Florida, but those moments when it does remember it, it’s going to be to teach a lesson. Here was a place that was one of the most threatened by climate change. And instead of acting, in a positive way, a constructive one, it reacted. It chose negative politics. It was seduced by a demagogue, who used implosive economics to consolidate the political power to enact a regressive social agenda. It was consumed by hate, bigotry, rage, and supremacy, instead of doing anything - anything - about the threat that wasn’t just looming, but on its shores. And despite all that—people and businesses poured in.
All thats a warning. To the rest of us. About just how desperate and cruel and crazy these times really are. You’d think that all of that - all of it, from climate change to not being able to insure against it to the outright bigotry and hate - would stop people from heading to Florida’s shores, but you’d be wrong. History’s going to chuckle at that. It’s like watching people’s head straight into the maw of the dragon, into the jaws of the lion, into the cyclone. But this is where we are.
Now. The problem is that this formula, as insane as it is, works. You can see it working. People and businesses are pouring into Florida. Despite the risks and costs of - well - everything. And as it works, it’s likely to spread. That’s the real Ron DeSantis Problem. Not even really the man himself, as weird and creepy and gross as he is, not to mention his, LOL, friends. It’s that he’s cracked the code on a negative politics in the Age of Extinction.
So what happens if it does spread, the DeSantis formula? You see, it’s easy enough to see it doing just that. Demagogues across America, or even the world, LEARNING THAT THEY CAN LURE PEOPLE IN with an artificially sweet economic deal, using those population flows to consolidate power, using that power to advance ultra regressive, neo-fascist agendas, to please the fanatics and lunatics, who have now been given badges, guns, titles, powers of immunity, and to “investigate,” to punish, to criminalize.
Let me go back to the “artificially sweet economic deal” part, because it’s the linchpin of this mess. Contrast DeSantis with, for example, Biden. Biden’s INVESTING HEAVILY in making America a leader again, in clean manufacturing, energy, SEMICONDUCTORS. To do that, he’s raised taxes on the WEALTHY and on business. And nobody cares. Americans DON’T APPRECIATE IT ONE BIT. They like Biden about as much as they like a washed up celebrity - they’re by and large negative, verging on indifferent. Meanwhile DeSantis might earn scorn and ire - but in political terms, he’s doing pretty well. Not against Trump, but in the sense of having cracked a code, unearthed a formula, that consolidates his own power. His ability to abuse it.
That’s an artificially sweet economic deal, of course, because all Floridians are really doing - LOL, new ones and old ones - is deferring costs, which get more ruinous every day they’re put off. Insurance is hard to come by precisely because nobody much who’s thinking this through wants to pay the costs of what’s obviously on the way, from sea level rise to hurricanes to failing energy grids to heatwaves to ruined harvests.
Those costs will have to be paid, and at the point when they have to be, even in the extreme form of mega-weather, these population flows will probably reverse, fast. But by then, a figure like DeSantis will have leveraged his way to power at a national level as he’s doing now. The artificially sweet deal - it’s staggering costs will be paid by the average Joe and Jane, and its benefits reaped by demagogues.
Meanwhile, as all that happens, all those regressive policies will be solidified. Hey, I don’t like it, shrug, but wheee - I’m on my jet-ski!! I’m not paying any taxes!! Never mind reality’s going to come crashing down on this fantasy shortly. By then, the demagogues will be pushing this kind of hate and bigotry at a national level, because, like I said, the template works.
And that is the real problem here. Let me try to crystallize it as clearly as I can. We are now in the Age of Extinction. And something perverse is happening. Instead of the center rising, the far right is ascendant, even making inroads into Canada, Sweden, Finland, Italy, bastions of social democracy (well, maybe not anymore.) Why is that? DeSantis is the one who’s figured out the template and formula best and first. People are getting poorer. Hook them with an artificially sweet economic deal. Theyll look the other way while you do your dirty work. They might fret here and there, but nobody will seriously challenge you, because, well, that deal is just too sweet. Maybe a lot of those suckers will even get radicalized along the way, and end up hating all those “groomers” and “pedophiles.” Either way, you’re free to implode democracy. The danger is that the rest of these fanatics figure all this out, and start to copy DeSantis. Then we have a global negative politics in an Age of Extinction, and that is a very big deal indeed. So far, were not quite there - we just have angry people putting fairly incompetent demagogues into power. But DeSantis is way, way ahead of the rest of them - which is why he’s got all these new friends, like billionaires buying platforms for him to announce Presidential runs.
This is the trap politics in an Age of Extinction falls into. Is falling into. As people get poorer, theyre lured in with fantasies that nobody much will have to pay for anything, and things can go on as they were. Erasing your own tax base is one way to deal with the problem of permanently falling living standards thanks to climate change - but it’s not a very good one, because, LOL, it wonҒt work for very long. But itll work for long enough. Long enough for the demagogue. The lunatics and fanatics backing him. The bigots and supremacists who want to implode democracy. As people get poorer, they’re seduced like this - and ultimately, they turn on one another. In that process of implosion, demagogues surf the chaos, and peace, prosperity, nonviolence, equality, truth, liberty җ they all become distant memories.
The problem, in other words, isn’t just DeSantis. It’s the code he’s cracked, for a negative politics in an Age of Extinction. In any sane world? Florida’d be one of the world’s heaviest investors in figuring out how to develop, at light speed, everything from clean energy to green agriculture. But in this world? It’s one of the globe’s foremost laboratories for 21st century authoritarianism, for Extinction Age fascism, for demagoguery, lunacy, extremism, and folly. Think about that for a second, because history will, now and then, and chuckle. Those guys were facing all that - and they did what?
Section Dying America • Section Fascism •
View (0) comment(s) or add a new one •
Printable view • Link to this article •
Home •
