Any resemblance to Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini is entirely accidental
I've been pretty disappointed by the plethora of articles that I've read about what a Trump Presidency will look like.
My thesis is pretty simple: President Trump and his Republican allies in Congress as well as at the state level will go a long way towards making America into a fascist and perhaps even theocratic state.
Why? Because government will no longer be able to restrain naked capitalism.
[Note: I realize that there’s been a lot written about Trump’s possible trade and other foreign policies. I’m going to ignore those issues here. I think the destruction of The American Republic is a sufficiently substantive subject for one Diary. Let me also add that there’s been a lot of meritorious discussion about the rise of the alt-right, the threats to freedom of the press and so forth. All of that’s important, but I’m going to stick to policy here for the most part.]
***
When I became a minor county party official here in a red state, I was asked to make a few remarks.
What I said was pretty simple: being a Democrat is not about specific social issues such as gay rights, gun control, or even reproductive rights, but rather about DEMOCRACY itself.
The role of government is be a representative of the people, against the otherwise unopposed nature of free market capitalism. Unchecked free markets have a tendency to destroy themselves, and the societies in which they're embedded.
You can think of this argument as the mirror image of why capitalists oppose communism. Communism tends to concentrate economic power in the hands of a small number of party apparatchiks, which means it devolves into something little better than fascism.
If you really believe that concentration of economic power leads to concentration of political power, then you must also oppose unrestrained capitalism (sometimes called Libertarianism).
The role of government is to stand with the people to protect workers, consumers, the environment, anyone else who can't help themselves (such as children), and even markets themselves.
That's right, I said "markets" - because when capitalism is unbalanced by government, then wealth concentrates to such an extent that political power is held by a few. You can call them "robber barons" if you like. Once political and economic power become monopolized by a handful of families and individuals, then there can be no free markets. The entire country becomes one big "company town."
And there can be no true democracy, civil rights, human rights or even free markets in a company town.
Capitalism without restraints tends to make all nations -- regardless of their history and culture -- into fascist dictatorships. Viz., oligarchies in which a small number of very rich people and families control everything, and the rest of us live as little more than their effectively-indentured servants.
That's exactly the direction in which a Trump Presidency will take us. How far, and how quickly, remains to be seen.
But what's not presently in doubt is WHY and HOW.
Read More
