Are still striving for the promise of democracy?
Or are we skirting the edges of fascism?
Democracy consists of four basic elements:
I want to begin with an overview of what democracy is. We can think of democracy as a system of government with four key elements:
1. A political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections.
2. The active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life.
3. Protection of the human rights of all citizens.
4. A rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens.
From a Lecture at Hilla University for Humanistic Studies- 1/21/04
http://web.stanford.edu/~ldiamond/iraq/WhaIsDemocracy012004.htm
We are in danger, folks.
- Did we have a free and fair General Election in 2016, when you consider the targeted voter suppression and the foreign influence/lies/propaganda?
- Active propaganda is destroying the educated, literate, informed voting population that we need and is hurting citizen participation altogether.
- We are not protecting the rights of all of our citizens.
- Clearly, in the US today, some citizens are more equal than others.
Trump is the first antidemocratic president in modern U.S. history—
Madeleine Albright Warns of a New Fascism—and Trump
Mussolini called on his followers to believe in an Italy that would be “prosperous because it was self-sufficient and respected because it was feared,” Albright writes [in her new book, Fascism: A Warning.] “This was how twentieth-century fascism began: with a magnetic leader exploiting widespread dissatisfaction by promising all things.” Il Duce, who was Italy’s Prime Minister from 1922 until 1943, said that his mission was “to break the bones of the democrats . . . and the sooner the better.” He used the term “drenare la palude,” or “drain the swamp.” He had a talent for theatre, Albright notes, and was a poor listener who disliked hearing other people talk. He discouraged cabinet members from “proposing any idea that might cause him to doubt his instincts,” which, he insisted, were always right…
The premise of Albright’s book is that the Fascism of a century ago was not atypical. “In hindsight, it is tempting to dismiss every Fascist of this era as a thoroughly bad guy or a lunatic, but that is too easy, also dangerous,” she writes. “Fascism is not an exception to humanity, but part of it.” …
The future of American politics is the subtext of Albright’s book. “The elephant rampaging through these pages is, of course, Donald Trump,” she writes. He won the Presidency “because he convinced enough voters in the right states that he was a teller of blunt truths, a masterful negotiator, and an effective champion of American interests. That he is none of those things should disturb our sleep, but there is a larger cause for unease. Trump is the first antidemocratic president in modern U.S. history.” [My bolding.] www.newyorker.com/...
How Trump lies, Republican lies, Fox lies, and Sinclair lies hurt our democracy—
Truth matters, fight the lies because they are lies.
“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had
reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.” [My bolding.]
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Call out the lies, and fight for the truth to be heard.
It is too important to let the lies slide,
even when there are so many of them.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Trumps lies are not accidental.
They are a part of the numbing process through their sheer volume. They are designed to make us believe that the truth cannot be known, to make us doubt that which we do know to be true, to make us doubt the very existence of truth.
Fight back, hold the truth up to the light, and confront the lies wherever you find them.
“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
“When Fascism comes to America,
it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”
–Anonymous, though often attributed to Sinclair Lewis, Huey Long, or Eugene V. Debs
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sinclair-lewis-on-fascism/
We will organize and vote in 2018.
We will organize and vote in 2020.
We will take our country forward,
one vote, one office, one state at a time,
but we cannot ever forget how close we stand to the edge of fascism.