Fascist Takeover, Americans cheer

[Harvey]

Guess this place is not for me.

Nonsense! Piffle!

[norton ash]

Football has always been a recruiting tool for the military. Flyovers, honor guards, all that shit. FFS, a flyover during the time of COVID could be a 'morale booster' or 'nod to the normal' wrt to the military and the NFL.

There's terrible government over-reach and deep-state-disaster-capitalism shit going on. Do the masking and distancing, but stop the lockdowns. People were mobbing supermarkets in Ontario today because lockdowns are coming on Monday. This is not pandemic-smart behaviour.

I'm seeing both sides of this one anyway. Safety yes, lockdowns, no.

[Belligerent Savant]

^^^^^^^^^
spot-on, Norton.

[dada]

I respectfully disagree. The overwhelming consumer desire to go holiday shopping will make people careless. Therefore lockdowns are necessary.

Call me a technofascist if you like. Personally, I think crying fascism just makes you look silly. We're just technocrats.

[DrEvil]

^^Don't say it out loud, but Sweden has been going full technocrat during the pandemic. By law the handling is up to the public health authorities, not the politicians.

[PufPuf93]

Guess this place is not for me.

Hang in there Blue.

You nailed it about the spread of chaos.

Spread chaos = carry water or otherwise be a dupe for fascisism.

[kelley]

i have no idea what's happening any longer

anywhere

there i said it

[Grizzly]

1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jobless-americans-poverty-line-earnings/

In October, more than 1 in 4 workers were either unemployed or working for poverty-level wages, according to an analysis of government data from the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity.

His figure incorporates both jobless workers - people who were actively searching for work in the past month - as well as adults who are earning below $20,000 a year, or below the poverty line.

Examining the job market by looking at different buckets of people - like those who are unable to find a new job versus those struggling to earn above a poverty wage - can help policymakers develop approaches geared to each group.

Some things are already starting to give way pretty loudly, and others are yet to come. You simply cannot maintain a democratic society (for whatever nominal value of democracy you want) with these levels on inequality and non-shared misery.

"I’m not sure what the next decade holds for the US, but it’s either gonna be some major-scale reinvestment and redistribution or it’s gonna get pretty damn unstable."

"Given that the duopoly is beating the war drums again, I'm figuring "pretty damn unstable" is a lot more likely than any sort of focus on pesky trifles like "national infrastructure" or "healthcare"."

[stickdog99]

Football has always been a recruiting tool for the military. Flyovers, honor guards, all that shit. FFS, a flyover during the time of COVID could be a 'morale booster' or 'nod to the normal' wrt to the military and the NFL.

There's terrible government over-reach and deep-state-disaster-capitalism shit going on. Do the masking and distancing, but stop the lockdowns. People were mobbing supermarkets in Ontario today because lockdowns are coming on Monday. This is not pandemic-smart behaviour.

I'm seeing both sides of this one anyway. Safety yes, lockdowns, no.

Flyovers never and yet always.

[Harvey]

i have no idea what's happening any longer

anywhere

there i said it

Who does?

I do think we're nearing the point where the level of fear most people seem to be living under could very easily see them corralled into almost any abandonment of their rights and the rights of others, if offered the promise of a solution to their fears. We've seen it all before too many times. Even absent some catastrophic and catalysing event.

https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html




CHAPTER 13

But Then It Was Too Late

“What no one seemed to notice,” said a colleague of mine, a philologist, “was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defence, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

“This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

“You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."

“Those,” I said, “are the words of my friend the baker. “One had no time to think. There was so much going on.”

“Your friend the baker was right,” said my colleague. “The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazis gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

“To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that,unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

“How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have changed here before they went as far as they did; they didn’t, but they might have. And everyone counts on that might.

“Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You see,” my colleague went on, “one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

“Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

“And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

“But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

“But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundred or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

“And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jew swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the life long mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

“You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level,carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

“Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

“What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or ‘adjust’ your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know.”

Trump is almost old fashioned in making fascism look like what it is. But for the last seventy five years it has looked like clean cut all American boys travelling around the globe and killing many of they people they came into contact with, like Michael Myers in a uniform. (Or politely spoken British boys travelling the world and doing more or less the same thing. Perhaps enlisting locals to do the dirty work wherever possible.)

In both cases, most of what was really done happened far away to people 'we' charmingly called rag-heads, slants, gooks or sand niggers. Most of it has probably never even been seen or heard of, outside certain military circles, and certainly not by domestic populations, or only rarely. My Lai was one of many other similar events which we didn't hear about, according to many who were there.

For a time it appeared there was an accord between government and governed. Obama was elected, now the system could at last work as it was intended to work. Wrong. Even though Manning and Wikileaks had made it possible to see clearly, the wars continued and even escalated, largely without scrutiny.

Because each system has been seen as notionally democratic, the killing in American wars of around 30 million people during that seventy five year period didn't look like a World War at all, or even fascism. It was somehow different. In each case, every war and act of piracy has always, quite plausibly, been dressed as an act of defence against one unreasoning enemy after another. And of course, every defensive act by the enemy is an unprovoked aggression. It's not even as though such enemies don't exist, they certainly do, just that wherever they don't, it's often expedient to create them.

But who can seriously imagine that the authors of all this carnage, working in close collaboration with each other, would now stoop so low as to do similar things to their own populations, for exactly the same motives? That's just illogical.

[dada]

Having no idea what's happening anymore is what some would call the beginning of wisdom.

What do they know? How can they tell the beginning from the end?

I don't think everyone has no idea. It's just that those that do are hidden in the middle of wisdom. Those who have no idea can't see them, and conclude that there must be no one who has any idea.

[JackRiddler]

^^Was the economy tanking when Trump got elected?

Yes. The economy is always in a process of tanking. It's a design feature. The next crash is always coming.

[JackRiddler]

.

I hate the warplanes. I hate the flyovers. As it happens, I wrote this three years ago (but have revised it for the repost, as is my wont).

The unnamed religion of this empire is National Consumerism. Countless, contradictory, and variable are the temples and the sects, the rituals and practices, the heresies and apostasies. But there is a mainline creed, the majority faith, and it has a high holiday: Super Bowl Sunday, a patriotic mega-church service and an advertising exhibition fused with a football game. The game is a theatrical performance, improvised within narrow bounds, symbolizing the relationship of violence to labor, industry, rules, law and litigation, arms, tech, accounting, masculinity, domination, the primacy of winning, the celebration of winners, the disappearance of losers, and, most importantly, popular assent to all of the above. The pre-game service seeks to manifest the power of the god on the final note of the national anthem, at the moment when warplanes fly over the colosseum filled with those privileged to be present in person. A hundred million people watch on the television, most of them gathered at household consumption parties. As befits the tenets of the faith, the NFL receives public money from the U.S. military for including aerial displays of the deity's shock and awe in its big show.

https://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsno ... story.html

Guess this place is not for me.

Nonsense! Piffle!

Over the last dozen years I've at some point been mean to almost everyone here in some rage or other, justified or otherwise.

I don't see why the progress of this thread is a reason for anyone to leave. But maybe I missed something?

(That being said, breaks from Internet are usually if not always warranted, for unrelated, more general reasons.)

[DrEvil]

^^Was the economy tanking when Trump got elected?

Yes. The economy is always in a process of tanking. It's a design feature. The next crash is always coming.

Sure, but it's the degree of tankage. It wasn't tanking nearly as bad back then as now.

[JackRiddler]

^^Was the economy tanking when Trump got elected?

Yes. The economy is always in a process of tanking. It's a design feature. The next crash is always coming.

Sure, but it's the degree of tankage. It wasn't tanking nearly as bad back then as now.

You may as well say a transatlantic flight at 30,000 feet skirting the coast of Greenland isn't as low in altitude as it's going to be when it lands in London. "Booms" and busts are part of the program. Crashes are big cash-ins for the system owners. There are reasons why the political management is restrained from fully using the tools most effective in postponing (for a while) and lessening the impact of crashes. Bezos on paper is worth 70 billion more since the start of the year, and there's still no credible stimulus in the U.S.

This is most true in the U.S. Countries that still have more organized and semi-conscious lower orders, like Canada, have been dispensing money to households monthly. A few with more organized lower orders and less monetary sovereignty, meanwhile, are seeing upheavals and revolutions.