Fascism - and resurgent Marxism - and other simplistic perils we thought dead

== Ecos of fascism past ==

It is well to look back a few years to the brilliant Umberto Eco’s list of 14 Traits of Fascism, of which the Nazis were just one sub type. It truly is a fascinating (and chilling) list, as Eco avoids the temptation of prescriptive jargon, distilling fascism to common traits we see so very often in authoritarian movements. 

What Eco does not do is show how these are mostly traits not just of fascism but most earlier feudal regimes, going back at least 4000 years, which ruined hope and progress and freedom in perhaps 99% of known agricultural or industrial societies.  A question to ask those who fixate on only bureaucrats and socialists as potential enemies of freedom: how often did that happen, as opposed to freedom suppression by kings, lords, priests and inheritance brats?

The overwhelming prevalence of nasty-stupid feudalism may have galactic implications! A trait that common among humans might also be obligatory in other races, across the stars, helping to explain the “Fermi Paradox” or quandary over the apparent absence of interstellar civilizations. It's a trap that all-too few escape.

==Karl's ghost rises ==

But getting back to Umberto Eco's list, is another question. How do Marxist authoritarian states differ from fascist ones? It seems to me that Marxists - or Leninists, actually - break from the list in traits #1 & 2, while modifying #6  & 10 & 12 in order to mask them with egalitarian/proletarian gloss.

A key point I keep hammering. It seemed for a while as if the works of Karl Marx had been devastatingly refuted by the society that Franklin, Lincoln and the FDR generation built, which broke almost every "ordained" pattern that old Karl thought inevitable -- making a flattened "capitalism" that followed Adam Smith's egalitarian prescription instead, seeking to include ever more groups in flat-fair-creative competitive productivity.

 A few residual red-believers grumbled: "Just you wait. The aristocrats and cheaters will be back to re-establish the worst version of capitalism. A version of feudalism that finally drives oppressed serfs to revolution!" Like many, I shrugged off those cultists...

...only now Marxist works are flying off the shelves, all over the world, and Karl's raving followers rant on every campus and in sweatshops and unemployment lines. Moreover, this resurrection of an undead cult wasn't caused by moderate liberal reformers, or those FDR-loving members of the Greatest Generation, or even Bernie-style Scandinavia socialists. 

The blame is fully at the feet of those would-be lords backing Fox. You did this. You raised the dead. And those zombies will get you.

== Ayn Rand may offer a torpedo to sink GOP fascism ==

Now and then I propose something most of you reflexively reject - reaching out to libertarians. Offering them Adam Smith and liberally-accentuated flat-fair-creative Competition instead of cultish worship of Property. ("C" word, not "P"!) The Koch/Forbes cabal spent billions to suborn this movement, an achilles hell, should libertarians ever wake from the trance. 

So far - yes - it's glacially slow, pointing out that liberals want bedroom freedom, body sovereignty, church separation, are fiscally far more prudent and it's blue states who spur entrepreneurship and are ending the damned War on Drugs. But this new item could actually do it! 

MAGA War on Architectural Diversity to bring back Classical Architecture.

Seriously, nothing you do will cause a randian to rock back and take notice more than rubbing that in their face! In Ayn Rand's best (or least-bad) book, art critic Ellsworth Monkton Toohey oppresses architectural genius Howard Roark with demands for classical columns and conformity to ornate, conservative style. So use this! Nothing could make more clear to that branch of libertarians that yes, it is the Republicans who are the cheaters, looters and repressers of modernity (and science and every other fact-using profession) in favor of a return to feudal-inherited oligarchic traditionalism.

Know one? Hammer this!

== An important dilemma to consider… but beware the sub-text! ==

Robert Zubrin, best known for his advocacy of Mars colonization, is unabashedly forward on many cutting edge issues, often combining incisive insight about the future with a somewhat-mad, rightwing moralizing that seems quaintly decent and naive, in the age of Putin, Fox, MBS and Trump. Take his most recent article in The National Review - The Real Robot Threat - a call for an international treaty against autonomous lethal weaponry - machinery that can be unleashed to target living people without the supervision and control of a human operator.

And yes, human operators do make a big difference. The drone strikes that saw an upsurge during the Obama years were all closely monitored and even from thousands of miles away, Air Force and CIA operators in Nevada frequently called off hits at the very last moment, when they suspected likely civilian casualties (sometimes violating direct orders.) Their rates of cancelation and refusal were far higher than by pilots of fighter-bombers on the scene! Suggesting that the video game generation has not been ‘dehumanized.’ (See the fascinating Mexican sci fi flick “Sleep Dealer.”)

You’ll get none of that conscientious oversight in basic, unleashed auto-targeted systems. So yes, I approve of Rob raising the issue! Though there are many points to quibble in this piece.

First, there’s the Cryptic Elite Effect. Such laws and treaties will be violated by the very ones who are most dangerous with the technology, such as criminal or despotic elites who will only respond to such a treaty by pursuing them in secret. Such controls can only be useful if we first get what I have for 30 years called the PRE-REQUISITE for all goody-goody legislation — widespread and worldwide transparency. And in such a world, the need for such laws would vanish organically, anyway.

Second, alas, Rob’s fetishistic tunnel vision glares throughout the article, for example: “Bureaucracy is necessary for tyranny because it suppresses conscience. The bureaucrat is required not to think or feel. He or she is to be part of a machine. The purpose of bureaucracy is to turn people into automatons.”

Oh what stunning drivel! Oh, sure, bureaucracy can be the tool of whatever society wields it.  And yes, as Orwell, Kafka, Vonnegut and Arendt pointed out, bureaucrats can be great enablers of hierarchical oppression. (I was Distinguished Scholar at Bard College’s Hannah Arendt Center and my father knew her at the Eichmann Trial.) But Zubrin’s obsession is a way of blaming the tool and letting the hierarchs off the hook.

For 6000 years, those oppressive hierarchs weren’t “bureaucrats” or socialists, but kings, feudal lords and theocrats, fiercely enforcing wealth inheritance for their sons, maintaining 60 centuries of grueling darkness and error and misrule and suppression. The very kind of oligarchic rule that the world’s entire mad right is trying to re-impose upon us, as we speak. Even Leninist and fascist regimes fit that pattern - pyramids of top-down power - perfectly, with only cosmetic changes in symbolism and state cult-religion. 

And such oligarchies have hated one enemy above all -- Periclean Enlightenments, brief eras of flat-open, egalitarian, transparent and fact-driven opportunity, with policies that encourage fair-competition and social mobility and opportunity for all. And yes, as Adam Smith pointed out, these vastly-creative renaissances require bureaucrats to counter-balance the power of lords and the wealthy and other elites.

And yes, that is why the mad right has declared war against today’s largely loyal, intelligent and conscientious civil servants… slandering them as some purported "deep state"... and against all other fact-using professions.

So yes, go read Rob’s missive. It’s thought provoking, so let thoughts be provoked! Only then think beyond, to why it is that a few of our brightest get lured into ancient incantations and magic spells that wind up thwarting the very kind of society they want to defend.

== Who are the crazies at the top? ==

We've all watched the bizarro theater of acting Navy Secretary Modley firing Captain Crozier of the USS Theodore Roosevelt for trying desperately to save the lives of his sailors. Ironically, Theodore Roosevelt himself did something very similar, in order to get his own men away from Yellow Fever infested swamps where the McKinley Administration cynically kept them, for political reasons. Above all, look up the story of Ernest King, who refused stupid orders to endanger his men, aboard USS Lexington in the 1930s. His career seemed doomed. And 8 years later he led the US Navy wearing five stars during WWII.

Consider this: “Billions of dollars allocated for the critical acquisition of additional ships and aircraft vital for Navy and Marne Corps warfighting capability diverted by SecDef Esper for border wall construction. This action undermines our national security and military readiness for political purposes.”

Look at all actions by these idiocrats. Find me one that goes against the itnerests of Vladimir Putin.

== Political miscellany… some of it even funny! ==

Biggest lie? "Drain the Swamp" is near the top. Robert Reich's video lays it out so vividly - make your MAGAs watch!

“Trump's new lawyer reportedly steered more than $60 million from his nonprofit to family members.”

Hilarious. The Greta Thunberg Helpline: For adults angry at a child.

Fast-changing times! Whose economy is it? And taxes that could save us.

Fast-changing times! Much of this posting was written way back in the seemingly stable and predictable era of February 2020. It's all still pertinent! But I'll remark here and there from the sci fi lurid movie that is mid-March.

First though... a profane, sarcastic and accurate video on COVID-19 offered as a PSA from "The Government." And yes, we're still free enough to do satire. For now. 

Stay safe out there. 

== Boy, stuff can happen fast ==

The business site Phil’s Stock World carries an excerpt from my book Polemical Judo as a guest editorial. “The War on All Fact People.” For those willing to navigate visitor privilege. And yes, this should be the core topic hammered by every pundit or politician who is not a blackmailed or suborned Moscow shill.

Remember when your RASR friends used to (one month ago) admit every foul stench of Trump and his minions, but then they'd answer with three things that made up for it all: taxes, judges and the Trump economy? (And in a few cases abortion.) Elsewhere we talk about each of these rationalizations and why every one bites the RASRs hard in the nards.

But from February's perspective, wasn't the economy a plus, at least? Braggable numbers in employment, for example?

 Wrong. Here are charts showing that both total and manufacturing employment improved at rates established across 7 years of the Obama Administration, with GOP actions changing those rates not an iota . 

Their giant tax cuts for the rich and for corporate stock buy-backs did accelerate wealth disparity, as has slashed corruption enforcement. But actual take-home pay increases have only happened in blue states that increased the minimum wage. Above all, those tax cuts accelerated skyrocketing debt without ever, even slightly, stimulating R&D and product development or production, as "Supply Side" has always promised to do. It... is... a... proved... cult.

Show these charts especially to any minority folks who are tempted to credit that pack of racist traitors with improved black employment. It was Obama etc. (Chart source: Slate: State of the Economy)

Also from February... at the Evonomics site: “Saving Capitalism from Inequality: Robust middle incomes deliver the demand that businesses need to produce.”

Only now, in mid-March 2020, the "Trump Economy" excuse seems to be collapsing along with the Dow.  And (alas) this will likely affect employment, but without any doubt will reduce tax revenues while sending expenses skyrocketing.

Blue states have mostly done what governments should do, in good times, socked away rainy-day funds. Watch, oh you supposed "deficit hawks" (actually stunning hypocrites), as for the upteenth time Democrats prove to be the fiscally responsible ones.

== How a particular, very small tax might save us all from Skynet ==

Years ago, I joined the very few out there demanding the “Tobin Tax” or a very small tax on every financial transaction (outside personal banking). It’s gaining traction, as we speak. In fact, see the chart below, how all the major Democratic candidates are now for something like a 0.01% tax that no private person would notice at all, but would draw large revenues from the cheating Wall Street firms whose computers perform millions of trades per day, or even minute.

While others promote this method for both revenue and fairness reasons, I am alone in calling it desperately needed, in order to save us all from Terminator! A few of you remember this riff. The rest of you should find it both entertaining and scary! Here’s the nutshell version:

The sanity and friendliness of AI will depend - as it does in animals - upon "what it eats." Fully half of all the money spent on AI research today is spent by Wall Street firms like Goldman-Sachs, creating smart systems whose ethos is predatory, parasitical, insatiable, rapacious and utterly amoral. The transaction tax would end those incentives instantly. Most of the Wall Street “quants” or super-trade programmers would have to get honest work or help make AI at institutions that are comparatively harmless and vastly more inherently moral than Wall Street. Like universities. Or Facebook. Or the Military.

Oh, here are those capsule summary Democratic candidate tax plans.

== Will the Dems use modern tactics? ==

Preliminary signs indicate that the two remaining candidates for the Democratic Party's nom are scheming NOT to harm each other. If so... and if they pick up some fresh tactics and the VP choice is excellent (I pick Liz)... we may see some intelligence among our generals, at last.  (It only took Lincoln four years.)

Example: Bernie and Biden seem to be stipulating things they share in common or are willing to concede to each other. If they do this well, perhaps it indicates some folks on their staffs finally read Polemical Judo!

But they are not our salvation. WE are! The lesson I preached in The Postman. No one will save us if we leave it up to "leaders."

Above all, we need not only to strive for Big Turnout (which worked in 92 and 2008 but utterly failed in 94 and 2010, and failed Bernie two weeks ago). We also need to keep poking and prying at the Confederate coalition! For example getting Utah folks to realize they have nothing in common with states that are steeped in moral turpitude. And getting Republican engineers to see that they should not support science haters.

Yes, RASRs are obstinate!  So? Each one peeled away weakens the Confederate-Putinist-Foxite putsch more than you can know.

The one thing that works: "Let's escrow real money for wager stakes. And choose eminent retired military officers and other conservative types who worked in fact professions to serve as judges. Then I will bet your imbecile ass over any of the rants spewed by Rush Limbaugh, on ANY random day!"

Or else. "Pick at random any 20 of the 18000 registered Trump lies. RANDOM! If 10+ prove to be true, you get my house. 

"If 10+ are proved as outright lies by the President of the U.S., I get yours. Deal?"

Watch them run! Their macho pose fallen around their ankles. Do it in front of witnesses.

And more on how to do this at http://davidbrin.com/polemicaljudo.html