So I’ve had a few weeks now to ruminate on recent events - kept my own counsel, tried (and largely succeeded) to contain my white-hot anger, resentment and disgust while keeping foul language around the house at a minimum. I’ve also studied other’s reactions penned here and elsewhere while following ongoing developments, and found myself with a renewed appreciation for that eminent 20th century philosopher, Thumper Rabbit from Disney’s “Bambi”, whose quote has been incessantly ringing in my ears of late:
“If you can’t say somethin’ nice, then don’t say nothin’ at all.”
I’m nevertheless compelled to offer some thoughts as I depart this soap box for what will likely be an extended period of time - principally to preserve my cardiovascular and mental health; indeed, it’s been a pretty rough eleven months, and not likely to improve anytime soon.
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I’ll begin my observations with a quote by someone from a time when fate made him a subject matter expert:
“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force.
Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease; (however) against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one's prejudgment simply need not be believed - in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical - and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.
For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will (should) we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous”
These were the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Lutheran theologen and pastor who was an active opponent of Nazism and involved in the German resistance movement. He was arrested and sent to Buchenwald in 1943 and on 09 April 1945 he was executed at Flossenbürg concentration camp just 2 weeks before it was liberated by U.S. forces.
Obviously he knew what he was talking about. And the price he paid for that acquired knowledge was his life.
There are so many parallels for what is currently happening in the United States of America’s politics and what was happening in Germany in the 1930s with the ascent of Nazism and Hitler’s rise to power that it seemed impossible just 40 short years ago. And yet we’ve arrived at this dangerous point in time, apathetic to the deadly and expensive lessons of history.
Many academics and pseudo-intellectual media luminaries argue that the two are unrelated; that the times and circumstances show no common secant between them. However, similar to post-WW1 Germany, as the German people suffered skyrocketing crime, rampant hyper-inflation and contracting availability of goods, services and employment, Americans (and, in fact, most of the world’s people) have suffered similar financial and quality of life difficulties in the post-pandemic recovery. As Germany’s woes were initially the result of oppressive conditions implemented by the Versailles Treaty and prejudicial treatment of German goods in post-war international trade, American economic pain was directly attributable to corporate capitalist greed attempting to recover profits and shareholder value lost during the 2 year pandemic. Adding to the similarity, as Hitler chose to deflect blame by targeting Jews and other ethnic minorities for Germany’s problems, conservative republican fascists in the U.S. protect capitalist corporate greedheads by blaming immigrants for America’s troubles instead of their decades worth of tweaking the tax codes in favor of the mega-rich corporations and the neocon gunsel’s lazzis-faire neglect of public health. Consequently the same identical components of the dark sides of human nature have come into play once more- all of which have been exhaustively documented on other web sites and news outlets by myriads of punditry.
You can’t throw a figurative rock in any direction without hitting one more opinion on how a convicted criminal and rapist like Trump could have been impossibly granted another term as a U.S. president, and why Kamala Harris didn’t prevail; to the Media, it’s just another “post-game analysis” dog and pony show instead of the slow-motion political train wreck that only kills the passengers instead of the railroad executives. While their unabashed disinformation campaign certainly had a major hand in it, there were so many other variables that the focus groups, advisors and strategists either ignored or missed altogether. There isn’t enough room for discussing all of it here - and there are many others who evidently are willing to deep-dive into the details without regard to the fact that their analyses now have all the significance of someone counting grains of sand in an attempt to ascertain the size of a beach. So human nature consequently comes into play, laced with all the anger, disappointment, fear and loathing which in turn leads to the usual finger pointing that accomplishes nothing - except to deepen America’s decline into diving headlong into turning itself into the world’s most humiliating intellectual, spiritual and political ghetto.
As I see it, there are two significant matters in play here that deserve priority consideration. The first was correctly identified by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his observation on human stupidity - Americans have been “dumbed down” by media, distractions and their slowly-eroding standard of living for at least 3 decades, so the incubation period for easily-accepted fascist support and “normalization” has had very fertile soil in which to germinate.
But the second matter involves an almost unthinkable personal decision that needs to be made, and in order to intelligently consider it, a couple of emotional and traditional “givens” need to be discarded immediately -
- America is NOT simply a continent with “fruited plains”, “purple mountain majesties”, “amber waves of grain”, unlimited exploitable natural resources and several national parks: it is instead the PEOPLE who are America… they make the rules, they till the earth, they blend multiple cultures from their countries of origin, they go to war, they buy groceries, they live, they have sex, they produce babies and then they die and are replaced by new generations. Theirs are the political and quality of life conditions they create; as the people go, so goes “America”.
- America’s “Character” is NOT measured in terms of industrial output, agricultural tonnage, employee efficiency, oil and steel exports, weapons production, or taxable gross income: instead, character is defined by how the people care for each other in terms of neighborhood support, community outreach, family involvement and education untainted by secular ideology, political influences or opinionated nepotism — but perhaps most importantly of all: who they choose to protect, manage and govern themselves.
Which is to say, regarding Point Number Two: they don’t place any realistic value on “character” - at least not much anymore. Between social media “influencers” looking for a fast buck with almost no labor-induced sweat, political disinformation, neocon fascist psyops, individuals focussing on single-issue politics, racial resentment, people having to work 3 jobs and sell blood plasma in order to afford rent, groceries and gasoline - and the general population’s overall fascination with declaring how “American” and “patriotic” they are in spite of their full knowledge that foreign individuals hostile to to America actively promote and fund their fascist neocon candidates, the country should have commenced it’s second civil war 6 years ago… but hatred, mistrust and greed has only intensified, turning America into a large tract of land occupied by willfully ignorant and desperate “sovereign citizens” - not that “Shining City On A Hill” so sanctimoniously declared by George Bush. Party loyalty has morphed from fanaticism into cultism, and finally blossomed into mass cultural stupidity, as Bonhoeffer observed and described.
So: what to do? How are we expected to answer this onslaught?
I get a lot of non-specific emails these days from well-meaning luminaries that admonish me to “never give up”, “join the fight”, “get involved” - or my favorite one of all: “RESIST”. Trouble is, I’ve been doing most of those things for over 50 years now with 34 of those last 50 years being drowned out by John Birch republicans, Lyndon LaRouche head bangers, rabid evangelical christo-fascists and upward-creeping Klanners- and now we have Nazis joining their party. So when somebody tells me to “RESIST”, my gut interpretation of that command engenders what my grandfather’s uncles and contemporaries were doing in Italy and France in the 1940s… yet it now appears that by today’s standard, unless you can eliminate Nazi fascists by hosing them down with a Thompson 45 or a B.A.R. in a computer game, we should instead be merely contented with letting them have their run of First Amendment Rights abuses to destroy the country’s moral integrity under an emasculated, do-nothing justice system.
52 years ago I qualified as a marksman with the M14, the M1911A1 and the M16 in the Navy, and I’m still a fair shot with my .308 semi. I WILL defend my wife and my home should the need arise… but see, here’s the other problem for me: it should have never gotten to this point in the first place. It should have never even occupied a single moment’s thought in my (or anyone else’s) mind. We were supposed to have adjudicated that “fascism” matter on the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific theater 80+ years ago. All of it was well-documented for everyone to watch and study (hell, coverage of WW2 was in all the newspapers, people…). Hollywood even made a bunch of movies and teevee shows about it. And today the terror, sacrifices and bloodshed of those events that produced some of the most expensive lessons the human race would ever experience now mean almost nothing to an apathetic nation.
So by the time life in this country gets so odious that it will have become impossibly putrefied and dangerous, there will still be that big chunk of survivors who will get annoyed and intemperate when their computer game or teevee show is interrupted by a uniformed official knocking on the door and takes a member of the household into custody to go downtown for questioning after they were observed by a MAGA disciple complaining about the price of eggs and lettuce.
That said, what is that second matter involving an almost unthinkable personal decision?
Is the United States of America really worth saving anymore?
Regrettably, no. I don’t think so. At least not right now. The outcome of this past election has demonstrated that doing so has become a waste of time, energy and mental capital to even attempt it; Bonhoeffer correctly observed that attempting to approach stupidity with reason is dangerous — and mostly results in the exact opposite of the desired outcome. This particular passion play will have to run out of steam on it’s own volition. Maybe in a few years after the orange führer’s appointees destroy the health care system and Social Security, the economy collapses from the forthcoming international trade and tariff wars and a lot more people die from neglect and abject poverty (perhaps even surpassing Trump’s 1,315,000 - odd deaths from COVID-19) then it’s possible the remaining survivors in the herd will have finally figured it out, put down their bongs, turned off their teevees and come out of their hovels brandishing a new-found respect for the value of the vote and the Golden Rule… but I don’t hold out much hope for that. People have to desperately want something with a sufficiently rabid hunger before they actually bother to pursue it. And right now, in terms of the general population, that just isn’t there.
