Back in the 1980's and early 1990's, I remember listening to the Dead Kennedys and frontman Jello Biafra, warning about how the country was taking into a decidedly fascist turn. In a spoken word album later on, he said that while there have been some previous attempts to try and make the United States fascist, the powers that be were being very patient in this most recent attempt. He said that the Democrats and Republicans made much of what they disagreed on mostly for show, because in fact, they agreed with one another on too many key things. It was a nightmare vision of the future. I will admit that it was unpleasant to hear, and while it put me more on alert, and made me more politically aware, it nevertheless was also difficult to believe that there really was some widespread conspiracy to convert the world's leading democracy to become a de facto dictatorship.
Since then, however, the country has gone in a decidedly fascist direction. This became clear in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, and the rise of the surveillance state. Noted American writer Norman Mailer warned as much in the February 6th, 2002 issue of the London Daily Telegraph. He spoke about America's obsession with itself and with flag-waving, and how the right wing was manipulating all of this for their own narrow political benefit:
“What happened on September 11 was horrific, but this patriotic fever can go too far. America has an almost obscene infatuation with itself. Has there ever been a big, powerful country that is as patriotic as America? And patriotic in the tinniest way, with so much flag waving? … The right wing benefited so much from September 11 that, if I were still a conspiratorialist, I would believe they’d done it.”
Mailer also warned elsewhere that he believed fascism was what people tended to gravitate towards. Here is how he explained it:
“I really am a pessimist. I've always felt that fascism is a more natural governmental condition than democracy. Democracy is a grace. It's something essentially splendid because it's not at all routine or automatic. Fascism goes back to our infancy and childhood, where we were always told how to live. We were told, Yes, you may do this; no, you may not do that. So the secret of fascism is that it has this appeal to people whose later lives are not satisfactory.”
Nor is Mailer the only writer who has suggested that our American society seems to be leaning ever more to dictatorship. The late David Foster Wallace also believed as much:
“How do you promote democracy when you know that a majority of people will, if given the chance, vote for an end to democratic voting?”
Wallace also suggested that Americans tend to misunderstand what fascism really is. In fact, the way that he defined fascism sounds suspiciously like what already exists in our present, de facto corporate supremacist American nation:
“Many people in America throw the term “fascism” around, particularly for Middle-Eastern terrorists, but in fact what fascism really is is a close alliance between a unitary executive and a state and large corporations and a state.”
Wallace also spoke about the cynicism that is growing ever more prevalent in the American mindset. We are so used to performances, that we have become convinced that anyone who we do not necessarily agree with is merely putting on a performance that is not to be believed. That also seems to have particular resonance in today's political climate, with pro-Trump and anti-Trump crowds being utterly convinced that they are right, and that the other side is basically a conspiracy. In other words, it is becoming ever more easy for real evidence and yes, facts, to be ignored as political footballs simply being manipulated by the other side.
Biafra, Mailer, and Wallace are all artists, of course. Often times, artists are dismissed as being alarmists, or not the most serious critics of a society. Yet, it sure seems like they were onto something, does it not? Indeed, when we look at our American democracy today, or at least what remains of what once was a democracy, it feels like a lot of what these artists predicted has indeed come to pass.
They were hardly alone in warning about fascism growing ever nearer in these United States. A number of other people warned about the same thing. That includes George Orwell, who saw the entire world falling to a global fascism, as did Aldous Huxley. Kurt Vonnegut warned about rising fascism in a horrific, overcrowded world. And Stephen King brought us the nightmarish, albeit fictional populist politician bound to launch World War III, Greg Stillson. Hell, Sinclair Lewis even published a book in 1935 about it, in the aptly titled "It Can't Happen Here." Indeed, it is this very sentiment that Americans so desperately want to believe, that something like that cannot happen here, that may be helping to make fascism much more possible in the United States, precisely because the systematic belief that we are better than that effectively turns off the alarm system warning us about fascistic tendencies. Look at how easily people seem to dismiss a number of fascist sentiments and, increasingly, fascist tendencies and actions taken by a growing number of very prominent Washington politicians.
About a year and a half ago, we saw what amounted to an outright coup attempt by a then sitting president who had lost an election, but refused to accept it. He pushed forth a lie about massive voter fraud, and his mass of unquestioning supporters ate up every word. And on January 6th, after listening to him urge them onto the Capitol building and to be strong and not show any weaknesses, his crowd indeed tried to "take back the country" through violent means. In any other country, this would be labelled a coup attempt. Yet millions of Americans try to wave this away, and suggest that charges of this being an actual coup attempt are exaggerations at best. In fact, one of the two major parties seems intent on undermining the significance of this event and of quickly and conveniently burying the event and any obvious significance it might hold, mostly because they are too cowardly to stand up to a politically powerful leader who bullies anyone who stands in his way. They assure us that our American democracy is very strong and stable.
Were it only so.
What it feels like, increasingly, is that what happened on January 6th were in fact test runs. Indeed next time, those who will likely try something like that again will have surely taken lessons from what happened on January 6th, and this time, they might try and do things a bit differently, to be more effective.
Now, I hate to be a pessimist myself, but it has long felt to me like this country has been going in an increasingly fascist direction. And it sure feels like now, more than ever before, we seem to be heading towards fascism, as well as, quite possibly (perhaps even likely) a civil war of sorts. I am not sure what that will look like exactly, or how it will end. Indeed, though, it is getting ever more difficult to try and ignore the dire prognostications regarding this country, when so much of what some artist were long ago predicting has indeed come to pass.
Back when I was a kid growing up, it was easy - a bit too easy, frankly - to wave all of this off, and think that some of these people (Jello Biafra and Sinclair Lewis were the ones I knew of back then) as a bit alarmist, with the possible threat still seemingly far off. It was also a different time, however. The country was nevertheless a bit different, and it felt like perhaps we still had some standards back then. Those standards, however, have been largely erased or, one way or another, rendered inadequate and/or irrelevant. It sure feels like the 2024 election will not only be fiercely polarizing, but will in fact be a rematch of the 2020 election. It seems likely that we will be faced with a choice between two men who both have held the office of president for four years. It sure feels like, in the best case scenario, we will be facing a choice between one uninspiring president who is transparently beholden to huge corporations and is advancing the cause of the military industrial complex, and another who will also strengthen the military industrial complex, who's xenophobia has spiked visible signs and incidents of hatred everywhere he goes, and has repeatedly "joked" about serving in the White House well beyond two terms, and who in fact suggested that the United States might want to look into instituting a "president for life," and who also orchestrated a coup attempt, and yet keeps getting away with all of this terrible behavior, we have lost our way.
Things may not have been as rosy as many Americans might have permitted themselves to believe it was back in the eighties and nineties, but it looks far better and more reasonable and democratic than it does now. It feels sometimes to me like Watergate had the exact opposite effect that it was intended to. It brought down on president's clear attempts to go beyond his legal limits, to in fact push the envelope beyond reasonable measure by relying on the argument that, so long as he is the president, there are no limits. It outraged a nation at the time, and brought down that specific president. Ever since, the American people seem to have lost their stomach for dealing with corruption at the highest levels in Washington. And the impact has been that we have seen wave after wave of corrupt politicians who test the limits more and more, who make a point of pushing the envelope. When someone like Trump rises to power, and as a rule, keeps testing what he can get away with, and always and forever remains with a solid and loyal backing, and remains as influential and relevant in the American political scene as he ever has, then we are in trouble. I remember how back in the days of George W Bush, some people seemed to long for the liberal old days of Ronald Reagan, who pushed the national political pendulum quite far to the right. Then, during the rise of Trump, it seemed that many of these same people longed for the liberal old days of George W Bush, even though Bush pushed the political pendulum even farther to the right. Whether we enter fascism with a second rise of Trump to the White House (perhaps this time indeed for life), or if we have another political figure who manages it, the trend seems clear enough. Wish I could be more optimistic, but my own suspicion nowadays is that we are entering fascist territory, uncomfortable and alarming as it undeniably is to concede that. We now know that our democracy is far more fragile than we had previously believed. And it no longer feels like something we can afford to take for granted. We still seem to have it, or some semblance of it, for now. But even this is under the constant threat of attack by those who seek to undermine it, paradoxically as they claim to champion it.
All I can think now is that the warnings by Sinclair Lewis, that it could indeed happen here, should have been taken far more seriously while we had the chance. Because not only can it happen here, but it is happening here. It has happened to some extent already. And it feels like it will continue to happen, until what remains of our democracy is, for all intents and purposes, a quaint relic exclusively of the past, and no longer a reality. In fact, sometimes, it feels like we already have reached that point.
Below are the links to the sources for the quotes and much of the information used in the above blog entry:
"I never liked the spotlight. It got me into dep do-do." by Michael Sheldon, February 6, 2002:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/donotmigrate/3572812/I-never-liked-the-spotlight.-It-got-me-into-deep-do-do.html
Verbatim By John T. Correll April 1, 2002
https://www.airforcemag.com/article/verbatim-2002-04/
Goodreads Norman Mail quotes page:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/108634-i-really-am-a-pessimist-i-ve-always-felt-that-fascism
Why American-made fascism puts democracy at risk By: Site Administrator, Posted at 1:09 PM, Aug 22, 2018:
https://www.kbzk.com/cnn-opinion/2018/08/22/why-american-made-fascism-puts-democracy-at-risk/
‘A Frightening Time in America’: An Interview with David Foster Wallace by Ostap Karmodi, New York Review, June 13, 2011:
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/06/13/david-foster-wallace-russia-interview/
"I never liked the spotlight. It got me into dep do-do." by Michael Sheldon, February 6, 2002:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/donotmigrate/3572812/I-never-liked-the-spotlight.-It-got-me-into-deep-do-do.html
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