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    American fascism and musical chairs

    By David Seaton on Thu, 09/16/2010 - 11:09am |
    weeping Beck
    I've had a few comments on my last post from people who didn't really see any similarities between today's America and Germany and Italy of the 1920s and 30s.

    I'm sorry if my previous  post on American fascism wasn't as clear as I would have wished. When I talk about fascism in America I do not envision torch-lit parades of brown shirted skinheads giving the roman salute. Anything America is going to do is going to have a distinctly American flavor. I am saying that we are already there.

    What you see is what you get. American fascism has already arrived and we have to deal with it.

    We have to ask ourselves why people like Glen Beck, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin are having such success communicating (ideas?) that any level headed person can easily identify as absurd, abominable, horseshit?

    Why is what these creatures serve so widely consumed?

    Because with limited menu choices, many people, faced with eating cold reality straight out of the can, would rather gulp down steaming horseshit, that's why.

    Why is that?

    What it all boils down to in the end is that the party is over, but nobody want to go home.

    The era of phenomenal growth that has lasted for over 200 years, since the Industrial Revolution began, is drawing to a close. It is literally running out of gas.

    From now on the world will operate more and more in the "zero-sum" mode, which is going to be like old fashioned musical chairs.

    In the Industrial Revolution version of musical chairs the music hardly ever stopped and the system kept adding more and more chairs: anybody who didn't have a chair now could dream of having one in the future or at least dream of their children having chairs someday. Who cared if some had more chairs than others? Everyone was going to have some sort of chair sooner or later.

    That seems finished.

    Now we are going back to the classical game of musical chairs, the version we used to play as school children, where they take away the chairs when the music stops and the music stops often. You remember how it goes, more and more people are left standing.

    In this new version of the old game we are playing, a few still are sitting and they are afraid that those standing will start thinking about taking their chairs away from them and sitting on them.

    This has to be avoided at any cost.

    What are the political consequences?
    *
    If people really understood that there wasn't going to be future abundance on its previous scale, that it was going to be like in a lifeboat, or like the buried miners in Chile, with only so much water and so much food, survivors would demand, as in a lifeboat, that the provisions be shared equitably. This would mean that people with huge fortunes would have to take an enormous haircut, as their abundance would have to be shared out... they don't like that idea one bit.

    They don't want anybody else to like that idea either and that costs a lot of money to pull off.

    The key phrase would be, "if people really understood". So it is important for those who own the chairs to keep the chairless from thinking, from understanding what their situation really is.

    This is especially difficult for Americans to come to grips with, as America's whole culture, both the real everyday one and the Hollywood mythical one, are built around the idea of limitless horizons and unlimited opportunity. There has always been a lot of unreality in this, but it is the foundational myth and emotionally a very sustaining one, especially for Americans now going through a rough patch. It will be very difficult, perhaps impossible, for most Americans to face the new reality soon and to think clearly about its implications.

    That is what the Tea Party, Fox, etc is all about: keeping people from thinking straight. The idea is to play on people's emotions: fear, hate, racism, xenophobia, just to keep them from doing the math. The Teabaggers, Beck, Gringich and Fox are often criticized for not making any sense... this is not a failure of communication or an error on their part... that is the object of the exercise: to make rational thought difficult or impossible due to emotional overload. This is a slippery slope that usually leads a country that travels it into more emotions,  more war and less and less cool headed thinking.

    This is the world that readers in their teens and twenties are going to spend the rest of their lives trying to make habitable.

    We are already there.

    Cross-posted from: http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

    Comments

    David, while I think that the parallels between early 20th century fascist movements in Europe and current movements in America are not entirely without merit, I still haven't come across such an analysis that gets the economic piece right.  I think it's very questionable that, as you claim, we've reached the end of growth.

    Modern economic growth is a very recent phenomenon historically.  Here, you 200 year time frame is more or less apt.  The question is why you think that era has ended.

    Current economic theories of growth generally credit technological innovation with sustained increases in output per worker.  As long as technology improves and output per worker increases, will we have genuine increases in productivity.  Is there a reason that you believe this has ceased to occur?


    by DF on Thu, 09/16/2010 - 4:28pm

     

    "As long as technology improves and output per worker increases, will we have genuine increases in productivity.  Is there a reason that you believe this (growth) has ceased to occur?"

    Economic growth for the economy has been viewed as having a result of an increase in the standard of living of it’s the Countries inhabitants.

    In the past 30 to 40 years as technology has improved productivity and the fruits of this increase has gone to the investors and not to the workers. It has reached the point that a small percentage of the individual own most of the assets of the Country and the employees in our society are not enjoying the fruits of the increase in output.

    A continuation of the trend of technology increasing output per worker by stagnating and even taking away income from the workers will cause a disruption in the society. 

    The concern is that Fascism will be the next logical step by the elite and powerful to keep the whole pie for themselves.


    by Thinking (not verified) on Fri, 09/17/2010 - 12:55am

    What I'm trying to point out is that growth and distribution are two different things.  The economy can grow without the working class receiving their share.  In fact, that's exactly what has happened in America over the last several decades.  Output per worker has increased while consumption per capita, which economists generally used to track economic well-being, has decreased.

    I'm not at all arguing that this hasn't happened.  Quite the contrary.  But I don't think there's any benefit to making an argument based on growth that doesn't hold based on the facts when the argument is actually about economic inequality.


    by DF on Fri, 09/17/2010 - 3:13am

    In support of the fascist parallel, I would cite the actions of police at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis/St Paul and of police working privately at the GOM Oil Spill.


    by Donal on Thu, 09/16/2010 - 5:35pm

    David, I think the best way to get your point about american fascism is to point out there really isn't a fearless leader at the apex of the tea-bagger movement. Beck, Palin, et al, are the cheerleaders tea-baggers look to for guidance. And that guidance is nothing more than american myths tea-baggers hold near and dear but is laced with messages that steer them  in the direction the messengers need public support. So if we need to invade a Iran for some strange reason, the myth with message will have already been issued and absorbed, and the public will be more than willing to support whatever military actions are deemed necessary for whatever reason. It's really all about the imaginary myths about america that aren't true but are held dear to tea-baggers much like their bibles and religion. All you have to do is prove the myths are false, which is relatively easy to do, but the tea-baggers would be all over you as if you were trying to prove the bible wasn't the word of God. They're wrapped tighter around their myths than a double helix strand of DNA


    by Beetlejuice on Thu, 09/16/2010 - 7:41pm

    Why is what these creatures serve so widely consumed?

    I think there is a growing consensus that the era of "phenomenal growth" has ended. I won't argue against the musical chair idea because that experience is happening to a lot of people right now. But instead of anchoring the idea to a direct relationship to the overall scope of the economy as described by economist, I wanted to try and answer your question of consumption in terms of market demand.

    The group being served has already invested heavily in Denial of Scarcity futures. Their problem is that they don't like what their years of having the upperhand in policy has brought about.

    The country has become what they voted for. They won. They don't recognize themselves in their own product. So the appeal of the Hysterical Right is the narrative of theft.

    "The things that I chose to happen would have brought the good things promised if I hadn't been ripped off."


    by moat on Sat, 09/18/2010 - 7:29pm

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