Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] facism gaining ground in US

[Tom Lord]

[Some (really) cool tech posts will follow later today and in days
following but here's a wrap up of the issue that started this thread:]

    > From: nadim <address@hidden>


    > To throw some gas on the flammes I'd say:

    > - moving an election date because of an imminent ("real") danger
    > has IMO nothing to do with fascism. 

True, but that isn't (the totality) of what was proposed and is being
explored.

Pierce made a big deal that the original news article claims that EAC
(an executive-branch set of political appointees concerned with the
administration of elections) would get the power rather than the DHS
(an executive-branch set of political appointees concerned with
oversite of the federal police and coordination of regional police and
first-responders generally).  Why EAC vs. DHS would be significant is
beyond me but it may be immaterial anyway: most reports these days
(citing sources beyond the EAC memo) report that DHS is doing the
groundwork for having this power itself.  "Groundwork" here means
things like having think-tanks of lawyers think through how such a
power can be constructed for DHS in a way that makes it bulletproof
against legal challenge.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
has, according to these reports, assigned taxpayer-funded lawyers to
the task of figuring out how to win the power to suspend elections for
the DHS.

This is King George, stuff.   This is the kind of thing we have
declarations of independence and revolutionary wars about.

Most people around my age who I've spoken with on the matter report
a similar experience:  roughly around 12 or 13 years old we had to 
take a mandatory "civics" class in school.   That class teaches 
basic like the separation of the federal government into three
branches (a form of checks and balance;  a separation of powers
between differently-interested groups within the government).  It
teaches the structure of the legislature and reviews the processes by
which laws are passed, enforced, and adjudicated.

It would make a perfectly fair, perfectly good question on the final
exam for the class to ask the following test question:


        * President Doe has asked congress to pass a law 
          which allows the president to suspend elections
          under any condition he defines as an emergency.
          Do you think such a law would be constitutional
          (why or why not)?   If such a law were passed and
          enforced anyway, how would that change the 
          system of checks and balances in government?

Some good answers (adjusted for this list) would include the
highlights:

       1. As a law, it would (or should) be ruled unconstitutional
          because (among other problems) it violates Article II 
          Section 1 Clause 4 of the constitution:

             "The Congress may determine the Time of
              chusing the Electors, and the Day on 
              which they shall give their Votes; which
              Day shall be the same throughout the United 
              States"

          along with Article II Section 1 Clause 2:

            "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the
             Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors,
             [...]"

         The first clause reminds us that the authority to determine
         the date of Elector vote-casting in a presidential election
         is up to congress: they may not cede that power to the
         executive branch without a constitutional amendment.

         The second clause reminds us that the date of the general
         election, the election we're talking about postponing, is
         _not_ the date under the control of congress.  It's not under
         the control of the president.  It's up to the states.
         Non-USians may not be aware of our indirect form of
         presidential elections: citizens vote for which "Electors"
         from their state will get to vote in the presidential
         election;   the Electors are the ones who actually cast votes
         to elect a president.  We don't vote for president: we vote
         to pick who will get to vote for president.

         In short, President Doe's proposed law would (a) seize for
         the executive branch of the federal government a power that
         actually belongs to the states (the choosing of Electors);
         (b) make that seizure by confusing this power with a similar
         power (to regulate the voting for President) that actually
         belongs to the legislative branch of the federal government:
         it's just error compounded upon error.

         (The role of the federal government in state-run elections is
         made more complicated by judicial interest in "social policy"
         and by, for example, amendments XXIV, XV, and XXVI to the
         constitution -- but these do not seem to legitimize Doe's
         proposed law at all.)


       2. Such a law, if passed and enforced, would undermine the
          system of checks and balances in several ways, including:

           a. It would claim, for the federal government, powers
              which are constitutionally reserved for the individual
              states.   

           b. The specific powers claimed pertain to the _legitimacy_
              of the federal government: in the face of a challenge to
              its power, this law would give the executive the
              authority to side-step the process by which it might
              otherwise be removed from office.

              It would empower an unpopular executive, faced with
              near certain defeat in an upcoming election, to 
              suspend the election.

Those are fancy answers: I should get an "A" grade in my 7th grade
civics class (and be suspected of cheating).  But they are answers
that a lot of 7th graders could, in fact, give (in their own words).

_Children_ know what the right thing is here but our current
administration?  Well, word is, they've got a team of lawyers looking
for loopholes; taxpayer money spent by the federal executive to
explore how to grab a power that any 7th grader worth his salt could
criticize.  (It'd be swell but a whole other huge thread to point out
the hypocrisy of the right who, on an issue like abortion rights, call
for an (absurdly) literalist reading of the constitution and decry the
common-sense reading found in some court decisions they don't like ---
while at the same time they invent out of whole cloth new realms of
the "wartime powers" of the executive and pay laywers to find a
work-around for that pesky little USian habit of holding elections.)

-t

p.s.: 

  I recently read an anecdotal report of a survey: "only" 41% of USian
  high-school students (~14-18 y.o.) could name the three branches of
  the federal government.   The survey was presented in a kind of
  "look how far we've fallen" kind of light.

  I tend to find such surveys unworthy of credulity but let's assume
  that this shocking statistic is true.   I'm shocked -- I'm shocked
  because if true, that survey is _great_news_.

  We're doing _damn_well_.  Any such survey will always poll a little
  bit low.  Some students will lie to the survey taker or deliberately
  blow of the questions and therefore appear to not know what they
  really do know.  Students who really don't know have a harder time
  faking that they know.

  So, "41% answered correctly" sounds to my ears like "about 1 in 2
  know the right answer".    That already is pretty impressive.

  Of the half that don't know: I wonder how many "passively know".
  For example, if the question wasn't:

        1. Name the three branches of the federal government.

  but was:

        1. "Checks and balances" is about (pick one)
           a. making sure the scales in grocery stores are accurate
           b. making sure no one group has too much power
           c. Olympic gymnastics

  I think that you'd do much better than 41%.  A trickier one might
  be:

        2. What are the three branches of government? (pick one)
           a. Republican, Democrat, and Green
           b. Federal, State, and Local
           c. Judicial, Executive, Legislative

  In other words: it may be only 40% who can and would bother to
  do well on a survey but my sense is that we're doing much better
  than that in terms of who is qualified to think about these issues
  -- assuming they have any reason to find them important.

-t

Further replies:

    > - IMO the US has been a fascistic state for half a century! 

1954.  Hmm.  20 or 30 years off, I think.

I'd say: _almost_ right.   We went into WWII a poor and largely rural
nation with some hot-spots of industrialization.   We emerged a 100%
industrialized country with a generation of kids many of whose parents
were absent for (and often since) the war.   We had a _huge_ economic
boom in which home-ownership skyrocketed, college enrollment (often
government subsidized) exploded, and, after the war, the corridors of
power were filled largely by strapping young men whose character had
been formed in the military culture that won the war.

At "the top", especially in government, the Enlightenment still
persisted (amidst the usual population of cynics and crooks).  The
longest-lived and best-loved politicians could take ideological
positions, sure, but beneath that was a strong undercurrent of
pragmatism: in the back rooms, these guys debated civilly and
ultimately all sought to work out compromises.  One gets the
impression, reading about some of the great politicians, that they
were humble: the leaders, on all sides of each issue, stuck to their
ideological guns in public speach but, in day-to-day work, just
assumed that the weird twisted compromises that came out of that would
likely be better than (or at least less harmful than) anyone could
have come up with on their own.

I place the break sometime around 1972 -- around the downfall of the
Nixon presidency.  The nearly-orphaned generation of WWII kids was
older now and challenged the military culture that had carried us
through the war.  That uprising cost us, by some measures, in the war
against pseudo-communist totalitarianism.  There was already, by that
point, serious concern among many: "Will America _ever_again_ be able
to defend her interests in combat?  Or will a disorderly and
communist-influenced popular uprising make us weak?"  The federal
government responded to that fear with surveillance and harassment of
its own citizens -- horrors which, it seems, we're only _beginning_ to
learn the full extent of.

Consider that context: the failed war, the unrecognizable children,
the breakdown in quasi-military order to all of (privileged) society,
the shoring up (by some accounts, including the CIAs) of Soviet power
--- and then the right-wing president gets impeached.

That's where the break occured.  Poor mister Nixon, by most accounts,
pretty much lost his mind at that time (wouldn't you?  after your
little stunt against the opposing party -- a break-in that you
otherwise thought of as having all the seriousness of a slightly nasty
fraternity prank -- blew up in your face and turned you into the first
criminal president of the US, a guaranteed place in history as the
first Officially Recognized Crook to hold the office)?  His staff, at
that point, made (the imo credible rumours say) quiet arrangements to
protect the country from him: any military orders he might give, for
example, should be run by the rest of the staff before being obeyed).

The way the break played out is signficant too: it was all on tv.  A
leadership accustomed to military-style rule was suddenly confronted
by very public, very intense unsubordination.  Carter's eventual
election was hardly a surprise.

It was in that time, and for those reasons, that the right became
organized.   It was during the 70s, in reaction to the crashing and
burning of the nixon administration, that private funding exploded for
right wing think tanks and strategizing teams.   The impact of this
new spending and attention was very far reaching: it hit everything
from universities to political party leadership.   These guys built up
everything from theoretical ideological frameworks that could float
debates in the corridors of academia to practical voter alliances by
winning the hearts and minds of, for example, television-based
evangelical fundamentalist "christian" commentators.

The 1970s were, my sense is, the decade when the gloves came off (on
one side).  As one commentator I read put it (sorry, actual reference
misplaced): that was when the right stopped being part of the Grand
Debate and started instead trying to win the Big Fight.

>From that point forward (most noticably starting with the Reagan
campaign) the right became:

        1. Highly organized with a very small number of leaders
           calling most of the critical shots, even across a lot
           of organizational boundaries.

        2. Single-mindedly focussed on accumulating all the power.
           Bill Clinton puts it most gently (my paraphrase): "It makes
           sense if you think of it from their perspective:  they
           thought ``we are right and everyone else is wrong -- it is
           for everyone's good if we have all the power -- we are
           simply the most virtuous ones: we _deserve_ all the power
           and society as a whole will suffer unless we obtain all the
           power.   By Any Means Necessary.''"

           It's at this point in history that you see, in their public 
           statements, a "dumbing down" of the rightist message to
           America to such an extent that I, for one, would call it
           "flat out, cynically motivated lies".

It's also at about that point in history that the commercial practice
of marketing moves from a crude idea into a mature art.  The think
tanks could come up with a political program but now, at this point in
history, there was a sudden inflection in their ability to "sell" that
message.

A bunch of rich rightists seeking to seize power wouldn't have been
very interesting but for the fertility of the field in which they
found themselves.   The WWII vets are, at this point "young seniors"
-- the elders of society.   As a group, most of them remember the
great depression -- one of the most traumatic and formative events in
USian history.   They remember the ramp-up to war and the war itself.
They were called upon to make unimaginable sacrificies and arranged
their world-view accordingly.   Here are some anecdotes I've heard
from WWII survivors:

        I was on a battlefield in Germany where we had lost.
        I was trapped on the field when the Germans took the
        ground and swept over it looking for survivors: I had to play
        dead for a couple of days.   I had to shit and piss my pants 
        because I couldn't move.   That probably saved my life because
        it made me look more like a dead person.

and:

        I was stationed in London, one of the army core of engineers.
        We had to clean up after bombings.   I remember cleaning up
        a factory and pulling the arms and legs of young women out
        of the rubble.   It made me sick.

and, looking at an old photo of young men in uniform:

        This one died.  And that one died.  And this other one died.

They went through the depression, and then that.   And then they got
home and, through various provisions of a nascent welfare state, got a
house and a small yard and some college classes (or help setting up a
little business or finding a good job).   They got a _refridgerator_
and maybe a _dishwasher_ and could afford a new dress every year for
their kid in school.   They had faced down the dragon, been stripped
of civilization for a brief period, displayed great persistence and
courage -- and now were modestly rewarded with the newly reformulated
"American Dream".   This was a generation _primed_ to develop a
misplaced and fierce loyalty to _anything_ that would give them a
comforting framework in which to make sense of it all.  They were, as
a rule, driven mad by circumstance.

As if that weren't a fucked-up-enough situation, on top of all of
that, you've got during the years between WWII and 1972 a resumption
of the civil rights movement, the final chapters of the civil war
against slavery.  So, in at least half the country, in addition to a
generation traumatized by WWII, you've got a generation reliving the
trauma of the civil war!

And, as if that weren't a fucked-up-enough situation, you've got 1968:
the year of the first international, live, satellite transmission of
TV.  Not _only_ are the unrecognizable half-orphened kids taking to
the streets, but now, for the very first time in history, that happens
live and on tv and the action in one city triggers a sympathetic
response in another.  Having just lived through the End of The World
in the form of WWII, that generation was now watching, in the
unfamiliarly exaggerated tones of TV, a violent and global challenge
to the little island of sanity that had emerged after WWII.

It's a cliche, in the US, among casual leftists that: your grandad
_loved_ Reagan; you can't even talk to him about it.   This is the
same unrelenting, do-or-die loyalty and dedication that won WWII --
only now displaced, since the war is over, and (arguably) misplaced,
in a figurehead of the newly-think-tank-driven/newly-marketed-right.

And as if that weren't a fucked-up-enough situation: after WWII you
have a _large_ US military and intellegence system empowered by 
intensive breakthroughs in technology, including the commoditization
of global travel and communication.   It is not clear to me that these
organizations ever stopped fighting WWII -- I think they saw only a
break in hostilities.  Having been built to take control of the world
(in order to prevent a complete breakdown in civilization) they never
stopped persuing that task, albeit what with all the new toys, they
made many profound mistakes along the way.  This is a slight
exaggeration on my part.   Nowadays, whenever I meet somone planning
for the military, there is a roughly ~50% chance that their attitude
is "This is really a horrible and horific job.   I take it because
_someone_ will take this job and I think I can bring some sane
responsibility to it."

George Bush Senior is, it would seem, the last WWII vet to be elected
to the presidency.   There is considerable continuity in staff between
the Nixon administration and his.   There is considerable continuity
in staff between his administration and his sons.   It's not too
exaggerated, in my view, to see the current administration as one that
is still fighting WWII.   It's from that perspective that I can
understand something like "The Pre-emptive War" doctrine as less than
entirely insane ("confused"?  almost certainly;  flat out "insane"?
not so clear).

Where does all that leave us?  Especially in the context of a little
news item about DHS seeking the power to suspend elections?


    > - I'm afraid that there are few US citizens ready for a discussion with 
    > ,say, europeans because they (most often and there are great exception) 
    > are on the defensive all the time (I wonder why).

I'm afraid you mostly see our "public" face.   There is a lot more
proto-solidarity there than you might think.  Your job is to turn that
into _actual_ solidarity.

I suggest: when confronted with a "defensive" USian, indulge that
person.  Seek out a way to appreciate their perspective which, for a
first approximation, you could regard as "safe civilization from
collapse."   Deep down, I think, you'll find nothing but common
values.   Above that: lots and lots of tactical disagreements, some
(obviously) rather serious.

Most USians have never lived in or visited Europe or any of those
parts of the US that have a classical European culture.  Many USians
are still assuming that civilization is a Fight rather than a
Debate-Between-Meals.  You might say something like "Yes, those people
are wrong, but I think we'll get further if we play along with them
and seduce them into being better rather than attacking them and
forcing them to not be bad" and a USian who is not taking you
seriously will just here "We should let Hitler take Poland -- it's not
that big a deal."

I think that the liberal perspective on world affairs has to be sold
to the military culture as "JuJitso" (a deliberate mangling of the
name of a school of martial arts I'll disrespectfully baudlerize for
this explanation).  Minimize your effort.  Redirect your attackers'
energy against themselves.  This is the clever way, in contrast to the
brute-force way of "boots on the ground; bombs in the air" way.  This
way has the virtue that a _potential_ threat, which is never
actualized, fades away in history as just that:  a potential threat
that never materialized.  



    > - Want to compare with europeans, let's start comparing bombs amounts and 
    > usage, attentats, terrorist activities, support for fascistic states, 
    > military support, falsness, comitment to ideas that are only because of 
    > the financial aspect (we can skip Irak (you  can't even fool yourselves 
    > anymore on that one)), etc ... As a side point, do you know that many 
    > europeans coutry teach about the US history and political system 
    > (including France). While we are on that point let's compare the 
    > educational system.

That's another good tack to (tactfully) take with USians:  

       facist is as facist does

When logic fails, you can at least say: "Something has gone wrong in
the reasoning here, I think, because the result is absurd.  That's the
same result as the bad guys would reach.   Are you _sure_ you want to
align yourself that way?"

There's a mythology that someone like Hitler had his evil ideas (which
he did) and somehow, by virtue of cult of personality, turned those
ideas into policy.   It's not that simple, of course.   Hitler was a
commodity component: easily replaced with an alternative.   What some
USians are missing is the realization that ideology and policy are
only indirectly related -- that realpolitik dominates.

Along those same lines, appeal to creativity:  "Surely we can think of
a better solution."


    > Two very important points:

    > (sorry I don't have the source) , 70% of the europeans think that the 
most 
    > dangerous man in the world is Bush (I am and that's because I think he is 
    > a fascist).

It's funny what we have to conclude a facist leader _is_, given some
historical examples.

It seems we have to conclude that a facist leader is a fellow
suffering poor self-esteem, one who is easily manipulated by his
cadre, one who is floated to the top precisely because his cadre see
him as a powerful mouthpiece --- facist leaders are tragic figures:
tragic because in spite of a strong dedication to the abstract _idea_
of True Values, the leader is ultimately the pawn of an out-of-control
bureaucracy, the leader's _confusions_ and _insantiies_ rather than
solid beliefs coming to dominate.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not an apologist for, say, Hitler.  I'm not
saying "deep down he was a nice guy".   Rather, I think that Hitler
was an Average Joe with a mix of sanity and outright insanity, but a
helluva speach giver, and like all good Method Actors, best motivated
to give a good performance by being rendered completely confused about
the import of the performance.   Heck, it was the personal choices of
thousands of members of bureaucracies that turned Hitler from
"offensive nutcase" into "antichrist".

Bush (junior) is a, and please pardon the biggoted appelation here,
Bush is a pussy and a dunce.  This goes way, way back to his
high-school days and probably earlier: he was on the low-end of
verbally clever; he's not an athelete; he like[sd] a good beer; he
never glommed on to any intellectual persuit as his calling.  Through
the persuit of his life in high-school and college he's a guy who's
given a "Gentleman's C" -- a pass.  He's the kind of guy who, until
the past few years, most of his "class peers" would look at and say
"Well, he's kind of a loser but we don't kick him out because at least
his loyalty is in the right place.  Jeezus Christopher, do you know
his father is?"  And what happens to those guys in that upper-class
culture?  If they're lucky, like bush, they develop their social
skills.  They become charming drunks (and later/lately, charming
"reformed drunks").  They represent the least of "us" (the privileged)
and so when they can stand up and present a decent representation of
"our" views --- as the least of us, speaking of the highest of us, we
take care of them.  In the corporate world, I might have said "Well,
Bush is kind of dumb.  But man, he's a leader -- able to rally people
around a soundbite.  I say we make him CEO but, at the same time, make
sure that the CTO and VP-of-engineering and VP-of-marketting have all
the real power.  Don't worry -- bush will play:  he'll be loyal to
such an executive."

As for what happens to the internal psychology of a Bush when he
arrives in a position of power --- that's harder to say.  My hope for
humanity _and_for_him_personally_ is that these days, he's feeling a
bit abused by his staff, a bit embarassed, and a bit demoralized.
>From there, he can make huge personal progress.  And from there as
well, he can damn well throw the election with just a few careful
gaffs.  At his core, I think, is a good hearted but horribly confused
person.  Simply exposing, even to a slight degree, his realization of
that fact would be one of the highest realizations of his deepest
values i can imagine; and it would (thankfully) kick the election to
Kerry (no prize but a far less abused candidate).


    > The states doesn't rate very well when it comes to the respect europeans 

It varies.   Your "surprise" experience of me ("oh, maybe not
everybody over there is crazy") is not all that uncommon.  It just
doesn't show up on TV that much.


    > (those I know and talk with) gives them. Many think you have what you 
    > deserve but most make the diffrence between the US policies and the 
people 
    > making the US. You (the people) think you stand for something good and 
    > have values, most (of us) belive you but it's getting harder. Not because 
    > the people are doing things that are wrong but because they support the 
    > governement that do things that are wrong and when you don't support 
them, 
    > they get done anyway.

Thank god for TV and the internet.  The Internet is mostly useful,
these days, because of its influence over TV!

On the "social network" (vs. the "scientific"-polling network, though
even there to a degree):  America is waking up and feeling
paradoxically embarassed.

Embarassed because: clearly, we shouldn't 'a gone and done did it.

Paradoxically because: um.... we may very well have "fixed" the middle
   east. We'll know for sure in about a decade.  We fixed it for the
   wrong reasons, with the wrong intentions, with bullshit
   expectations about the outcome and the costs -- but the situation
   on the ground has changed profoundly.  We're going to sacrifice and
   take many lives.  We'll have millenia to contemplate whether there
   was a less destructive path.  But.... things might in general wind
   up better once this settles out.  (This is, in my view, a big
   danger.  I'm confident that there _was_ a better and less
   destructive path.  A good medium-term outcome might cover that
   realization up.)


-t