By David Glenn Cox
I saw a headline today which read: “The Billionaires Have Captured Trump.” No, no, no Trump has captured the billionaires. He has enticed them with open-ended promises and the opportunity to steal themselves even wealthier. That is how Fascism operates, enticed by either greed or advancement they submit to whatever program the boss wants. Ask no questions and the boss is less likely to check up on you, provided you do what the boss wants.
In post WW 1 Germany, there was political pandemonium with governments coming and going. It is one reason people didn’t take the Nazis very seriously. They’ll be gone in six months! The Nazis at this time were still considered gutter trash, ex-service men and street thugs. The wealthy German gentleman industrialists would waste no time inviting a dirty little corporal into their fine dinner parties. Then one day, the industrialists got the message.
What do you want to support those guys for? Are they going to buy anything from you? Will they put any money in your pocket? You help me gain power, and we’re going to buy tanks and build submarines and airplanes! Lots and lots of them! Why your mills and factories will be running around the clock! That was all the industrialists needed to hear and all their objections to Fascism were gone.
It never for a second crossed their minds their factories would one day be bombed into oblivion or the country brought to ruin in just a few years. It never occurred to them the Nazis would take over their factories and tell them how to run their business. Money! We’re going to make lots and lots of money!
Elon Musk gives Donald Trump $45 million a month. Because he thinks Don is a swell guy. Five will get you ten, Elon ends up in a camp somewhere someday working with his hands doing agricultural work. “The nail which sticks up will get hammered down.” In a Fascist state, it’s dangerous to try and outshine the brightest star. The boss doesn’t take kindly to the colorful.
The Boss is making a list of contributors, and he’s checking it twice. He’s going to find out who is naughty and who needs a tax audit or maybe a little jail time. Strange bedfellows, the man who builds electric cars and the man who bemoans electric cars. But like the song says, money changes everything.
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” – Churchill
Maybe we don’t like SpaceX anymore. Go find your checkbook chum…I’ll wait.
News flash! Government agencies contracted to purchase Teslas! SpaceX to deliver the mail!
It’s called the leadership principle. The leader is in charge and makes all the decisions. If the leader is stupid or corrupt, you just shut the fuck up about it and do as your told. If the boss is stealing, that’s your green light to steal too! If you get arrested, you simply find out how large the bribe needs to be, and you pay the man.
Fascism isn’t about making a better world. It is about convincing you how horrible this world is. How evil goes on all around you and nobody will help you and you are powerless. But the Republicans in (horrible) Milwaukee have a plan. And you will never hear an actual god damn word of it! You’ll hear only that the Republicans have a plan. Trust us! We’ll make the trains run on time. We’ll build a wall and make Mexico pay for it! Willie Horton Lives! Only he’s changed his name to Juan or Pedro.
To your average Republican dimwit, the idea of setting the world right sounds so simple and idyllic. Because the world is so horrible. Fox News says so! Some people just need killing; I guess. They promise to get rid of the bad people, should I know more? Should I ask how they plan on doing that? Freedom is hard Fascism is easy, just don’t ask and look the other way. Don’t ask where those buses are going. It ain’t Martha’s Vineyard this time, sweetheart.
It’s only a darkest facet of our human nature. The Stanford Experiment proved jailors given authority without supervision become progressively cruel. The best way to advance yourself in a Fascist state is not to waste a lot of money on those people. Let them drink from the hose and turn off the air conditioning.
What is needed and what is missing is a vision of a better world. Offer us something besides; not them. Hopelessness is easy and fighting back is hard. It’s hard to fight back without some vision or a goal of something better in the end to hang our hats on. The technology which plagues or enhances our lives came about from such a vision. Sending men to the moon and returning them safely to the Earth in ten years.
And all the American public got out of the deal was billions and billions of dollars in new technologies, touching every life on the planet. A fifty-year technological head start on the rest of the world. And the largest scientific leap of knowledge in recorded human history. Other than that, it was just wasted money.
Where is our vision? Don’t cut my student loans. Make it so, I don’t need student loans. Don’t cut prescription drug prices, get rid of them! That was the goal in 1948! Make my life better, give me something to hope for. Convince me the sun also rises. Tell me there is a better day coming!
Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. – Franklin Delano Roosevelt