Fascist Takeover of America - Two More Players
Why American freedom and democracy are under siege
Image by Sabrina Belle from Pixabay
Here're two more groups who want what I'm calling neo-fascism to overturn American democracy.
(The "original" fascism of Mussolini and Hitler is a totalitarian system forcing everybody in a nation to support the dictator - in a united, coordinated effort.
(In many ways, the modern American (and there are similar groups in Europe) versions are anti-fascist. They seek to destroy the legitimacy of our government. What's frightening is, many of them are still highly authoritarian. They intend to replace our current democracy with a dictatorship. And "authoritarian" is pretty much what we mean these days by "fascist.")
All fascists are dictators, but not all dictators are fascists.
3. Far-Right "Christian" Fanatics
(I put the word Christian in quotes because I don't believe the hatred and intolerance they claim is "Christian" fairly represents the actual teachings of Jesus. I don't want to turn this into a religious discussion. Just check out: Matthew Book 22, Verses 35 - 40. Jesus said love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus also said "all" the law and the prophets hang on those two commandments. NOT "some" of the law, but ALL of the law. And he said nothing about it’s okay to hate people for their race, their sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin or anything else today's religious neo-fascists don't like.)
When I read THE HANDMAID'S TALE by Margaret Atwood many years ago, I thought, there's no way the modern United States is going to become a fundamentalist religious dictatorship - a Christian theocracy.
Now, I'm not so sure.
I hope I'm wrong.
But this group has become quite powerful. Just last year, they got Roe vs Wade overturned, eliminating the right to abortion . . . despite the will of the majority of Americans.
They believe what they call "God's will" outvotes American citizens.
I must also point out that MOST Americans of faith support the Constitutional separation of church and state.
The so-called Christians I'm writing about here want to ELIMINATE that separation.
In short, they want to overturn the current government and replace it with a dictatorship by religion.
Like Iran.
What an inspiring role model, right?
What's interesting - their level of hypocrisy and lying is awesome.
They support Donald Trump, as they've been supporting Republicans since Ronald Reagan.
Never mind that he's an egotistical, power-hungry adulterer and rapist.
He doesn't even pretend to be religious.
Yet these power-mad self-righteous bigots don't care about their own principles.
They just want power.
And Trump sucks up to them.
Not because he gives a flying fish about "Christian" (or real Christian) values.
But because he plays up to anybody with votes, and these groups control a lot of votes.
For details, see:
These people may be total, absolute ruthless hypocrites, but they're frightening as hell.
If they get their way, kiss the Constitution - and its guaranteed rights - goodbye.
After all, these people believe God gave them the right to crush freedom and everybody who has different ideas.
You disagree with God?
Obviously, you're from the devil, and deserve all the punishment you get.
Look at Speaker of the House Mike Johnson
Even though Johnson is a rightwing religious fanatic, the Republicans in the House of Representatives of the United States of America voted him to be their speaker - just two heartbeats from the presidency.
I said before, a vote for a Republican Congressional Representative - no matter how "moderate" or "reasonable" - was a vote for Kevin McCarthy, who is to blame for Trump's current powerful role in the party.
Recently, however a revolt in the MAGA wing gave McCarthy the boot.
Then all those so-called "moderates" and "country club Republicans" teamed up with MAGA to elect a rightwing "Christian" fanatic.
On a "prayer" Zoom call with a rightwing "Christian" network, Johnson went on and on, whining about how sinful modern America is, and how it deserves God's judgment.
"The culture is so dark and depraved that it almost seems irredeemable at this point."
He basically said, America and Americans are doomed to Hell unless God shows us mercy.
He said church attendance in modern America for the first time has dropped below 50%.
That may be true. But why? Maybe it's because the rightwing fanatics make their version of Christianity look ugly, because it's so bigoted and hateful - unlike the actual words of Jesus.
(See the earlier Biblical reference to document Jesus advocated love of both God and all people, NOT hatred.)
That's especially true for many young people. They hear bigoted, self-styled Christians-in-name-only tell them all LGBTQ people are damned, that people of color are inferior to white people (Were there even any white people in Israel 2,000 years ago?) and sex is wrong unless within male-female marriage and yada yada yada.
And they don't like it.
And they're right - they shouldn't.
Johnson also said one out of four American high schoolers don't identify as "straight."
I'm not sure where that number comes from. I don't believe there're that many gay guys, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender, nonbinary, intersex people or other-than-straight kids in high school.
But, whatever the actual numbers and percentages, I suspect it indicates a greater willingness on the part of young adults to not want to participate in the discrimination against the LGBTQ community.
Even though most of today's high school students are cisgender and sexually attracted to the other gender, maybe they don't "identify" as straight because they don't want to identify with intolerance.
So I say, good for them.
Yet, based on this dubious statistic, the Republican rightwing asshole who is Speaker of the House and second-in-line to be President, thinks God may destroy America.
Because, in his eyes, America should be destroyed.
Ronald Reagan deserves a lot of blame for the political power these disgusting people now control, but even Reagan saw America as a "shining city on a hill" - not as a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah.
Johnson is a MAGA fanatic. He may have been involved with planning the attempted insurrection on January 6. If so, he should be in jail as a traitor - and certainly not as a lawmaker for this still-great-and-never-stopped-being-great country.
Dean Obeidallah recently wrote about these “Christian” traitors to America. He interviewed a historian and expert on them, Kristin du Mez. She explained these fanatics believe the United States was founded as a Christian country. Therefore, constitutional rights should not go against their conception of “Christianity.” For instance, in that view, LGBTQ people don’t have constitutional rights.
So, to Hell with the Declaration of Independence’s: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
To Hell with what the Constitution ACTUALLY SAYS: The First Amendment prohibits the establishment of a state religion. The 14th Amendment gives all Americans equality under the law.
But, hey, when you’re God’s own tin-pot general, you don’t need to care about the truth.
He's too self-righteous to doubt he knows God's will better than you and I.
If he ever wields real power, everybody who doesn't conform to HIS will, will be made to suffer for their "sins."
If these 21st century Pharisee CHINOs get what they want, God help us all.
4. Assorted Libertarians, Anti-Tax Dodgers, Land Protestors, "Sovereign" Citizens and Other Legalistic Anti-Government Groups and Militias Who Aren't Strictly White Supremacists (Most are also White Supremacist too)
(I'm not addressing libertarians because libertarianism has a huge ideology behind it. Crackpot, but huge. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul's father Ron Paul made a lot of money marketing himself as a libertarian. In its pure form, libertarians are against ALL - and I do mean ALL - government. They don't want Social Security, police or the military. They'd open us up to military invasion by a foreign power and internal collapse into anarchy.
(For many practical reasons, libertarians will never get rid of government. The vast majority of Americans want Social Security, police and the military. The danger here in America today is libertarianism works to help de-legitimize our current government, which could lead to an authoritarian - possibly a theocratic - state. Which libertarians claim they don't want, but they're as hypocritical as everybody else.)
I use the word "legalistic" because if you get into what these groups call "ideology," it's boring.
Income taxes are illegal because <fill in the blank with assorted bullshit legal arguments long ago disproven in court>.
The federal government doing things on land it owns is illegal because <fill in the blank with assorted bullshit legal arguments long ago disproven in court>.
These people can cite the Constitution and court cases and I don't know what else, to justify:
1. Refusing to pay income taxes
2. Doing whatever they want on land
The best book on the land issue is:
Shadowlands: Fear and Freedom at the Oregon Standoff by Anthony McCann
It tells the story of a band of rightwing nut-jobs who seized and occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon in 2016.
According to Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, this illegal occupation was a "dress rehearsal for what we saw at the Capitol." (She spoke right after the January 6 attempted insurrection.)
The author got to know the occupiers well, and also others involved: local law enforcement, local regular people, local Native Americans (Northern Paiute), the FBI, workers at the Bureau of Land Management and others.
According to McCann, the leader of the occupation kept a copy of the Constitution, and had some bullshit legalese "argument" about how the Constitution gave them the right to take over the government's land.
Some of the occupiers were old hippies with knee-jerk anti-government attitudes who thought the local Paiute would support them.
McCann makes it clear the Native Americans saw the all-white occupiers as just more "pale faces" stealing their lands. (They've come to accept their traditional land being used as a bird sanctuary.)
Greed Greed Greed
Basically, at their heart, these people are just plain greedy.
They want to make money (authorized by the United States government and printed by the United States Treasury) without paying income taxes.
They want all the benefits of our current system, which includes law and order and a court system to enforce contracts, without paying their share.
They’re freeloaders.
They're assholes who take safe, paved highways for granted.
(Without the government, there'd be no interstate highways - and no police making sure gangs of thieves didn't rob and kill and rape travelers. You can drive or fly from New York City to Los Angeles today only because of the rule of law, enforced by the government. Throw that away, and you've got very dangerous anarchy.)
In the Western United States, they want to graze their cattle, mine and steal water with impunity.
That's why to the Northern Pauite they're just more cowboys out to exploit both the environment and Native Americans who have made that land their home for thousands of years.
McCann is also interesting in that he connects these people to the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791.
In other words, the United States has always had a class of people who believe they have the intrinsic right to do whatever they want, no matter who they hurt.
And without paying taxes.
To me, the best way to explain how government helps is using an old cartoon you may have seen. Several fish are together in the ocean. One asks about the water. Another fish says, “What’s water?”
We live in a country that, for the most part, in most places, at most times, is law-abiding, peaceful and orderly. When businesses or customers have complaints, they don’t shoot it out as in the days of the wild west - they hire lawyers and go to court.
Our democracy and capitalist system depend on the courts allowing for the peaceful settlement of contract disputes.
Yet we take this general law and order as much for granted as fish do water.
These cowboy types even believe they would do a better job without the government.
When they're simply bootleggers as in 1791, that's one thing.
But Trump has focused their knee-jerk anti-government sentiments as nobody else.
That's the danger - that these folks fall for a neo-Fascist ideology that uses them as its shock troops, like Hitler's Brown Shirts and Mussolini's Black Shirts.
Of course, a truly authoritarian government would crack down on them too, but they're not seeing the potential threat.
They think they already live under "communism." Doesn't "communism" mean having to pay income taxes and accept the existence liberal media?'
They are mostly white and allied with White Supremacists and the so-called "Christian" rightwing.
Just wait until a theocratic government cracks down on THEIR personal lives.
But by then it'll be too late to save America as we know it.
To Be Continued
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