11-08-2019, 08:32 PM
The alt-right has already killed. Not all are killers yet, but so it was with the Brownshirts before Hitler took power. Indeed, Hitler did not show himself as much of a killer until he started murdering the handicapped. But given the opportunity, he did.
A mere conservative tyrant such as Agosto Pinochet did more killing faster than Hitler did and then tapered off. If one did not like the 'new' Chile, which under him meant a regime in which survival was a privilege to be earned by making people already filthy-rich even more filthy rich while expressing how wonderful that dubious privilege was, then one could emigrate.
I consider Pinochet the dream for many American plutocrats... labor gets cheap and submissive while remaining productive, dissent with pure plutocracy is outlawed, the culture becomes a morgue. America run by a Pinochet-style leader would be one big happy plantation, even if the plantation is a fully-modern sweatshop. America does have a brain-drain, and the best job for an unmarried youth might be working in the tourist industry where one gets the opportunity to meet and seduce foreigners on holidays less expensive than those at home. College education might be strictly technical with some propaganda tossed in "See those mansions, castles, and [palaces going up? That is true prosperity, and if you are a patriotic American you will recognize such!"
That is just one more scary scenario that we cannot yet rule out in this Crisis. But once the Crisis is over it will either be reality -- or nonsense.
A mere conservative tyrant such as Agosto Pinochet did more killing faster than Hitler did and then tapered off. If one did not like the 'new' Chile, which under him meant a regime in which survival was a privilege to be earned by making people already filthy-rich even more filthy rich while expressing how wonderful that dubious privilege was, then one could emigrate.
I consider Pinochet the dream for many American plutocrats... labor gets cheap and submissive while remaining productive, dissent with pure plutocracy is outlawed, the culture becomes a morgue. America run by a Pinochet-style leader would be one big happy plantation, even if the plantation is a fully-modern sweatshop. America does have a brain-drain, and the best job for an unmarried youth might be working in the tourist industry where one gets the opportunity to meet and seduce foreigners on holidays less expensive than those at home. College education might be strictly technical with some propaganda tossed in "See those mansions, castles, and [palaces going up? That is true prosperity, and if you are a patriotic American you will recognize such!"
That is just one more scary scenario that we cannot yet rule out in this Crisis. But once the Crisis is over it will either be reality -- or nonsense.
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.