A new Mussolini? A libertarian alternative? Plus international worries and learning to stay calm.

Back to politics. The Libertarian Party 2016 National Convention, held May 26-30 in Florida, nominated two former Republican governors, Gary Johnson of New Mexico and William Weld of Massachusetts, partly in hope of becoming the go-to lifeboat for sane or quasi-sane republicans fleeing the sinking ship of the GOP.

(To be clear, Donald Trump was not the first to hijack that vessel, only the latest.  Rupert Murdoch did the truly major piracy decades ago, commencing to lobotomize most of the passengers and crew, transforming the once-intellectual movement of Barry Goldwater into a full-blown crusade against scientists, teachers, doctors, journalists, economists and every other profession that uses three syllable words.)

Anyway, if the Kochs and their fellow Trump-hating peers are going to make a third-party move, it will likely be via the Libertarian Party -- (which once had me speak at one of their conventions, and I have spoken at Freedom Fest and on Liberty TV, always urging a libertarianism of Adam Smith, not their current, childish fad of Randian solipsism, so I know these guys.) With time short to get on the November ballot, the LP is uniquely suited - qualifying already in nearly all states - to carry forward half of the Never Trump faction of the GOP. Not just by providing an alternative that's not Hillary... 

...but also aiming to draw not-Trump Republican voters to the polls and thus save many GOP legislators.  

That last bit is why the gambling lords (Adelson and Wynn) and carbon lords (the Kochs and Saudis) and media lords (Murdoch and Forbes and Clear Channel) are desperately pouring support into non-Trump conservative PACs.  Still, libertarians offer especially Koch a second way to turn a lemon into lemonade.  It would, of course, cement the Kochs'  and Steve Forbes's longstanding putsch to control the libertarian movement.

None of this will please the other major non-Trump GOP faction - Religious Zealots -- a fervor not much liked by libertarians. So, will the RZs go off their own way?  Or will hypocrisy rule, as they adapt to supporting a many times divorced, admitted philandering-adultering gambling lord with underworld ties who doesn't care what bathroom Caitlin Jenner uses?  I'll put wagers on the latter.

Can Koch money help Gary Johnson poll above 15%, so he can get in on the debates in Sept-Oct? Even if it helps Hillary Clinton win the White House, it could draw more no-Trump republicans to vote and thus save down-ticket goppers.

Keep your eye also on Freedom Fest, a big libertarian event during the GOP convention in Cleveland and a perfect time/place to spring LP surprises! 

That's where I met arch-conservative comedian and author P.J. O'Rourke, who recently said on NPR's Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me, "I'm voting for Hillary. I am endorsing Hillary," though going on to denounce most of her political positions. Which, he avows, are at least in the normal-sane range.

== Is the world going crazy? ==

A while back, someone wrote to me asking that question. I suggested they take a big perspective: Going crazy "compared to what?" Compared to 6000 years of feudal oppression, grinding filth and ignorance? Compared to a million years of fear and pain before that? Compared to when we wasted the talent of ALL women and all non-whites and poor whites because of prejudice, instead of wasting just a steadily decreasing part of that vast pool of talent, which we do today?

Or are you comparing us to what we could become? Compared to Star Trek - for example - and a much better world? If you're making the latter comparison then fine, sure, we're crazy-crude cavemen! Get angrily militant and determined to make us better, nicer, smarter and more sane! Sure, we fall way-short by the standard of those ambitions for a better, wider humanity. 

But keep in mind the other comparison.

Indeed today's top dogmatism is cynical gloom, shared by both left and right, without a scintilla of historical perspective. 

Our dreams for a better world are used against us! Because we don't live up (yet) to those rising standards, the narrative is that we can't! 

To which I can only reply: Snap out of it!! 

The media does not control you and you do not have to drink Gloom-flavored Koolaid. Easily as many good things are happening as bad, especially given how far we've come. And those good things are making us stronger, so we can take on the bad.

== A wide chasm ==

See how the satirical site The Onion utterly nailed the Trump steamroller way back in July!

More seriously... Alan Abramowitz on the Washington Post talks about America’s ‘two nations’ screaming at each other across an increasingly wide chasm in which policy disagreements have converted into hate. 

Abramowize raises neither “C-word”... which I deem to be “cancer” and “confederacy” to describe the etiology of the ailment. But he does lay down the blatant demographic advantages of the Union, this time round of our Civil War.

At the same site, Daniel Drezner frets that President Barack Obama – faced with an intransigently lazy and uncooperative Congress – has been setting precedents for presidential/executive powers and actions that could be spectacularly abused in – shall we say – more flamboyantly irresponsible hands.  

== Fascism and history ==

This article by historian Fedja Buric appraises just which aspects of Mussolini’s original version of “fascism” can be compared to today’s rising mania in the US. He avows that America is in vastly better shape than 1920s Italy, with stronger institutions and traditions and civil service.

Where parallels get stronger are in the fervent anti-intellectualism of today’s right - with the War on Science now biliously expanded to include every center of knowledge in American life, from journalism and medicine to teaching to economics and law.

And politics… the art of negotiation and consensus building that allows a pragmatic-sensible people to incrementally fine-tune their shared processes and get things done. The Fox-Limbaugh campaign of 30 years has whipped up a froth of hatred of government and politics in principle, that our parents in the Greatest Generation would have instantly recognized as fascistic.

“Fascism promised people deliverance from politics. Fascism was not just a different type of politics, but anti-politics. On the post-WWI ruins of the Enlightenment beliefs in progress and essential human goodness, Fascism embraced emotion over reason, action over politics.  Violence was not just a means to an end, but the end in itself because it brought man closer to his true inner nature.” 

“Trump did not invent this anti-politics mood, but he tamed it in accordance with his own needs.  Ever since the election of Barack Obama the Republicans have refused to co-govern.  Senator Mitch McConnell’s vow that his main purpose would be to deny the president a second term was only the first of many actions by which the Republicans have retreated from politics.”

Where Buric fails is in relating his narrow historical view of fascism to other, older romantic movements, such as the recurring American fever called the Confederacy.  What this reveals is that a corner of the populace does not need hard economic times, to be whipped into hydrophobic fury. There is a thread in the American psyche that does not need desperation, in order to rush eagerly into desperate madness.

Meanwhile.. the hacktivist group Anonymous declares war on Donald Trump. Yeah, okay. Whatever.  For the rest of us out here, let's put Mr. Trump's victorious march in perspective, as the Washington Post does in an epic editorial:

"For all his unpredicted success, the number of Americans who have voted for him so far amounts to only 4.7 percent of eligible voters, according to a calculation by the organization FairVote." 

In other words, while the most vigorous confederates have spoken -- and there was very very little doctrinal difference between them and Cruz supporters... both wings of fanatical fury amounted to no more than 10% of eligible voters.

All that's needed is for the rest of us to wake up.

== International worries ==

Nigeria and Switzerland have agreed a deal for the latter to return more than $300 million of funds confiscated from former Nigerian military ruler Sani Abacha.  Abacha - who led Nigeria between 1993 and his death 1998 - is suspected to have looted up to $5 billion of public funds during his reign. This is the tip of the iceberg and the solution must be found by developing nations, themselves. 

On the other hand... "In a move that could simultaneously ease the debt of Ecuador and deliver a huge blow to rainforest conservation efforts, Ecuador is set to auction off one third of their pristine rainforest, 3 million hectares of their 8.1 million, to Chinese oil companies."  Oy.  

America’s year without a winter: The 2015-2016 season was the warmest on record. The Lower 48 states had its warmest winter in 121 years of record-keeping, NOAA announced this morning.

And don’t give us “yearly variation.” The oceans are acidifying more, every single year. Dig this well.  The climate denialist cult is an enemy of civilization and our nation and world.  They are lunatics who each day are directly harming your children.  They need to be told this directly, eye to eye… that they are fetishistically wrong about this as with nearly every other koolaid belief that they suckled as their “side’s” dogmatic incantation. They should not be allowed power over the human future.

Oh, BTW... in the arguments over bailing our Puerto Rico, let's not forget that Texas petitioned to join the Union because it was bankrupt and people were starving.....

== … and finally … ==

Emails?  Really? After 20 years proclaiming the Clintons to be “criminals,” all you’ve got is using the wrong email server? Here’s the hypocrisy. In 2007, Congress asked the Bush administration for emails regarding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

Over 5 million White House emails sought in connection with this Congressional investigation could not be produced -- because they were on a non-government server. Two years later, it was revealed that as many as 22 million emails had been deleted -- in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

Yet this event received astronomically less coverage than today’s ‘controversy’ over the minuscule problems from the archiving of Hillary Clinton’s emails.