07-11-2020, 11:02 AM
(07-11-2020, 06:57 AM)David Horn Wrote:(07-10-2020, 11:35 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Isn't it obvious? Racism exists largely to divide the working classes, to create innocent and vulnerable scapegoats for the perverse and incompetent conduct of elites. Donald Trump is so obvious that Americans are catching on as never before.
Just because it's obvious doesn't make it any less powerful. The revanchists always knew that playing to fear works. Breaking that paradigm will not be easy. It would be nice to have this be the crisis that gets the job done. So far, it's dicey.
Civil courage is essential to a civil society. If people see something hideously wrong they should report it and -- if government seems slow or irresponsible in response -- protest it. They should refuse to participate in evil and resist it when they see it.
So suppose some right-wing populist slimeball takes over and starts a campaign to separate a religious minority from economic participation, use of public services, participation in the economic process, and media access. Suppose that that slimeball encourages and excuses assaults on a model minority that suddenly becomes the scapegoat for all moral, technical, and economic failure. People are prohibited from having relationships, marital or sexual, with members of that group. If people in that group of pariahs of the Great and Infallible Leader aren't so obvious then some symbol identifies them as objects of abuse and hatred.
Know well that every dictatorship exploits fear of dangerous, secretive conspiracies to destroy everything with which the majority identifies, and that at the worst such dictatorships demand that people abandon whatever sensory evidence, logical reasoning, economic reality, and moral judgment gets in the way. At the worst a tyrant tells people to disbelieve 'atrocity propaganda'.
What must we do? We must resist. We must be aware of the reality that the government and its journalistic flunkies shield us from -- so check foreign news sources. We must give refuge to people who feel the brunt of political persecution. We must refuse to participate in hateful rallies and official boycotts of businesses. We must ridicule hate speech. We must eschew discriminatory and abusive behavior. By the time that people are walled off in sealed ghettos where they are helpless against an all-powerful State it is too late.
The people most vulnerable to a right-wing authoritarian slimeball leader are the model minorities. What Hitler said of the Jews, some American slimeball could say of Chinese-Americans. What? What is so horrible about Chinese-Americans? What was so bad about German Jews? Their successes were successes that German gentiles could accept collectively and with pride.
When things go bad, people look for easy solutions. Steal property that you did nothing to create and make inordinately valuable and take jobs for which you are woefully unqualified. I have my own solution: quit looking for easy money from high-yield, quick-buck investments that have proved themselves bubbles. Start a small business or expect to do honest-to-God hard labor in big projects that create a better world. If you are an ill-educated person with no obvious skills, then expect little in life. Nobody can give you anything just for the asking without having taken it himself or without expectation that you will do something in return, like creating more wealth on behalf of that benefactor.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.