We’ve just had a crushing blow to our belief in American goodness. Like many of you, I am frantic not for myself–I’m 83, and my likely duration in the Dark Ages won’t be long. But I have children and grandchildren, who are suddenly faced with a world far more precarious than the one we all thought we occupied.
I’m fortunate that one of my sons lives in Amsterdam, and one of my granddaughters lives in England. While the wave of fascism that is sweeping the globe will undoubtedly affect them to some extent, and the global consequences of electing an ignorant lunatic as U.S. President will be significant, their prospects aren’t as bleak as they would be here over the next years.
Or as daunting as the landscape that faces the rest of the family.
My youngest son–parent of the younger two grandkids–has taken what I believe to be the only rational position available to those of us who still occupy a sane and humane America. With his permission, I’m sharing the message he sent to his son and daughter, both of whom are currently in college, and both of whom were blindsided by the (previously) unthinkable results of the election.
Kids, I’m still struggling to process the election results and to contextualize it in a way that is not entirely negative. I keep coming back to a handful of facts and themes. First, WE (our family) are likely to be OK. While we are psychologically traumatized by the implications of the election — and the thoughts of how bad Trump might be for vulnerable people, minority communities, and non-citizens — our daily lives are unlikely to be directly or irreparably affected by Trump’s election. In saying this, I am not discounting the genuine risk to women — particularly young women of childbearing age — but WE are fortunate enough to have resources and options that likely mute those direct threats.
Second, and really based on the first point, WE now also have a greater obligation to help those who aren’t as fortunate as we are. I don’t know how or in what ways those opportunities will present themselves, but we have an obligation to help those who are going to be attacked or adversely impacted by Trump and Trumpism in the years to come.
Finally, as horrible as many people have shown themselves to be, know that OUR community is still OUR community, and made up of all the same loving, caring, funny, positive-values-holding people. I am trying to focus on these facts in the days, weeks, and years ahead… OUR community will help us weather the dark storms ahead, and we must do our part to help our family and friends weather it as well.
I love you! We will be OK, even if we are currently suffering deep psychological wounds from this election and its implications.
I can’t add to that.
I think that message sums up both the challenge we face and the obligations we must now assume. The challenge is a concerted effort by a cohort of people who believe Hitler “had some good ideas” to remake the United States into a 21st-Century fascist state. There are far more people in that cohort than most of us recognized or still want to believe.
Our obligation is twofold: first, to resist that transformation with every fiber of our beings, with every tool we can muster, with every grassroots organization we can create or support; and second, for those of us who are privileged, who are fortunate that our circumstances (or religions or skin colors) buffer us from the full effect of authoritarian animus, to work wherever and whenever we can to ameliorate the adverse impacts on those less fortunate.
Speaking of community: I’ve been doing this blog for several years, and have been gratified by the genuine sense of community that has grown up among the regular commenters, few of whom know each other personally. With the exception of a couple of trolls who weigh in now and then, you disagree with civility, share your knowledge freely and offer each other–and me– much needed moral support. You are one of the communities my son referenced in his text to my grandchildren.
Like many of you, I am still in shock. But when we emerge, we need to figure out how to save our world–how to gift our children and grandchildren with an America that is recognizable and future worth inhabiting.
Last week, I spoke to the Shepherd’s Center at North United Methodist Church. I had been asked to address the differences between capitalism and socialism. Here’s what I said. (Warning: it’s longer than my usual posts.)
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We are in a hot and heavy political season, facing an extraordinarily important election. The outcome of that election will depend, in large part, on the ability of voters to understand the foundational premises of American government –to have what I define as a minimum level of civic literacy—and an understanding of the essential elements of America’s economic system.
Why is agreement on definitions and documented facts important? Look at the interminable debates about the Affordable Care Act—aka “Obamacare”—as an example. People may have very different opinions about the wisdom of the policy choices involved, but a decision to repeal, implement or amend the Act depends upon understanding what it actually says and does—not on hysterical accusations that it constitutes a “socialism,” that is always, and presumably self-evidently, a bad thing.
Or take the ongoing battles over religion in the nation’s schools. There are genuine arguments to be made about the proper application of the Establishment Clause in the context of public education. But we can’t have those reasoned disputes with people who insist that the First Amendment doesn’t require separation of church and state.
Basing our arguments on verifiable fact and accepted history actually helps people make more persuasive cases for their own points of view. We all encounter people who have a legitimate point worth considering, but who—because they are basing their argument on erroneous facts or demonstrating a lack of understanding of important basic concepts—get dismissed out of hand. Credibility requires verifiable evidence. You might want to use that perfect quote from Thomas Jefferson that you saw on the Internet, but if it is bogus, you’ve just undermined your own position. Defending alternate realities is like arguing about whether a fork is a spoon—it doesn’t get you any closer to a useful resolution.
A few years ago, I wrote a brief pamphlet called “Talking Politics” that contained basic facts about the U.S. Constitution, economic concepts and systems, and the nature of science and the scientific method—basic facts that every citizen should know, and that should serve as solid starting points for reasoned arguments. Among other things, that booklet defined government, the provisions of the Bill of Rights, and the major differences between economic systems. It was the elements of those economic systems that I was asked to address today—especially what we mean when we talk about the differences between capitalism and socialism.
Capitalism is defined as an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are primarily controlled by private owners for profit. It is characterized by free markets, where the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand, rather than set by government. Economists often define the ideal free trade as a transaction between a willing buyer and a willing seller, both of whom are in possession of all information relevant to that transaction.
Understanding the importance of free trade to capitalism is important, because it defines the proper role of government in a capitalist system—as an “umpire” or referee, ensuring that everyone plays by the rules. For example, Teddy Roosevelt reminded us that monopolies distort markets; if one company can dominate a market, that company can dictate prices and other terms with the result that those transactions will no longer be truly voluntary. If Manufacturer A can avoid the cost of disposing of the waste produced by his factory, by dumping it into the nearest river, he will be able to compete unfairly with Manufacturer B, who is following the rules governing proper waste disposal. If Chicken Farmer A is able to control his costs and gain market share by failing to keep his coops clean and his chickens free of disease, unwary consumers will become ill. Most economists agree that if markets are to operate properly, government must act as an “umpire,” assuring a level playing field.
This need for government regulation is a response to what is called “market failure.” There are three primary situations in which Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” doesn’t work: when monopolies or corrupt practices replace competition; when so-called “externalities” like pollution harm people who aren’t party to the transaction (who are neither buyer nor seller); and when there are what we call “information asymmetries,” that is, situations where buyers don’t have access to information they need to bargain in their own interest. Since markets don’t have built-in mechanisms for dealing with these situations, most economists—conservative and liberal alike– argue that regulation is needed.
Economists and others will often disagree about the need for particular regulations, but most agree that an absence of necessary regulatory activity undermines capitalism. Unregulated markets can lead to a different system, sometimes called corporatism. In corporatist systems, government regulations favoring powerful corporate interests are the result of lobbying by the corporate and monied special interests that stand to benefit from them. You might think of it as a football game where one side has paid the umpire to make calls favorable to that team.
The word socialism, on the other hand, simply means the collective provision of goods and services. The decision whether to pay for certain services collectively rather than leaving their production and consumption to the free market is based upon a number of factors. First, there are some goods that free markets simply cannot produce. Economists call them public goods and define them as both “non-excludable” –meaning that individuals who haven’t paid for them cannot be effectively kept from using them—and “non-rivalrous,” meaning that use by one person does not reduce the availability of that good to others. Some examples of public goods include things like fresh air, knowledge, lighthouses, national defense, flood control systems and street lighting. If we are going to have these things, they have to be supplied by the whole society, usually through government, and paid for with tax dollars.
Of course, not all goods and services that we socialize—that we provide collectively– are public goods. Policymakers often base decisions to socialize services on other considerations: we socialize police and fire protection because doing so is generally more efficient and cost-effective, and because most of us believe that limiting such services only to people who can afford to pay for them would be immoral. We socialize garbage collection in more densely populated urban areas in order to prevent disease transmission.
Getting the “mix” right between goods that we provide collectively and those we leave to the free market is important, because too much socialism hampers economic health. Just as unrestrained capitalism can become corporatism, socializing the provision of goods that the market can supply reduces innovation and incentives to produce. During the 20th Century, many countries experimented with efforts to socialize major areas of their economies, and even implement socialism’s extreme, communism, with uniformly poor results. Not only did economic productivity suffer, so did political freedom, because when governments have too much control over the means of production and distribution, they can easily become authoritarian.
Virtually all countries today—including the United States– have mixed economies. The challenge is getting the right balance between socialized and free market provision of goods and services.
In our highly polarized politics today, words like Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism and Communism are used more as insulting labels than descriptions. There are numerous disagreements about the essential characteristics of these systems, probably because the theories underlying them were so different from the actual experiences of the countries that tried them.
Socialism is probably the least precise of these terms. It is generally applied to mixed economies where the social safety net is much broader and the tax burden somewhat higher than in the U.S.—Scandinavian countries are an example.
Communism begins with the belief that equality is defined by equal results; this is summed up in the well-known adage “From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs.” All property is owned communally, by everyone (hence the term “communism”). In practice, this meant that all property was owned by the government, ostensibly on behalf of the people. In theory, communism erases all class distinctions, and wealth is redistributed so that everyone gets the same share. In practice, the government controls the means of production and most individual decisions are made by the state. Since the quality and quantity of work is divorced from reward, there is less incentive to innovate or produce, and ultimately, countries that have tried to create a communist system, like the USSR, have collapsed or, like China, moved toward a more mixed economy.
Fascism is sometimes called “national Socialism,” which is confusing, especially because people throwing these terms around rather clearly don’t understand them. Actually, fascism differs significantly from socialism. The most striking aspect of fascist systems is the elevation of the nation—a fervent nationalism is central to fascist philosophy. There is a union between business and the state; although there is nominally private property, government controls business decisions. Fascist regimes tend to be focused upon a ( supposedly glorious) past, and on the upholding of traditional class structures and gender roles, which are thought to be necessary to maintain the social order.
Understanding the differences among these different political philosophies is important for two reasons: first, we cannot have productive discussions or draw appropriate historical analogies if we don’t have common understandings of the words we are using. Second, we cannot learn from history and the mistakes of the past if the terms we are using are unconnected to any substantive content.
When activists accuse an American President of being a Fascist or a Communist simply because they disagree with a position that President is taking, it trivializes the crimes committed by the Nazis and the Soviets and it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to engage in reasoned discussion about—or persuasive criticism of—whatever the President is doing that led to the charge.
On the other hand, when we fail to see very real analogies between American political actors and the fascists who ushered in very dark historical eras, we run the risk of falling into a similar abyss. I believe it was Santayana who said “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”
As I said in my opening remarks, we live in a pivotal time. We can choose to educate ourselves and choose to embrace the philosophy of America’s Constitution and Bill of Rights. We can continue to fine-tune our mixed economy in response to the evolution of new technologies, or we can do what so many seem to do: forego fact-checking and education, and just find sites on the Internet that confirm our existing biases.
That’s the thing about liberty and democracy. We have a choice. I’m not usually a praying person, but I’m praying that Americans choose the Constitution and democracy when they go to the polls next month.
Last week, a reader contacted me to ask that I address the GOP’s ever-more frequent portrayals of Democratic policy positions as “communist” and/or “fascist.” This particular variety of propaganda–the use of words to label and confuse rather than communicate–assumes (probably correctly) voters’ ignorance of the differences between socialism, communism and National Socialism, aka fascism.
Permit me to provide a “cheat sheet.”
Socialism is the collective provision of goods and services– a decision to pay for certain services collectively rather than leaving their production and consumption to the free market. There are some goods that free markets cannot or will not produce, making collective provision necessary. Economists call them public goods, and define them as both “non-excludable” –meaning that individuals who haven’t paid for them cannot be effectively kept from using them—and “non-rivalrous,” meaning that use by one person does not reduce the availability of that good to others. Examples of public goods include fresh air, knowledge, lighthouses, national defense, flood control systems and street lighting. If we are to have these goods, they must be supplied by government, and paid for with tax dollars.
Of course, policymakers also socialize non-public goods: we socialize police and fire protection because doing so is generally more efficient and cost-effective, and because most of us believe that limiting such services only to people who can afford to pay for them would be immoral. We socialize garbage collection in more densely populated urban areas in order to enhance the livability of our cities and to prevent disease transmission.
Getting the “mix” right between goods that we provide collectively and those we leave to the free market is important, because too much socialism hampers economic health. Just as unrestrained capitalism can become corporatism, socializing the provision of goods that the market can supply reduces innovation and incentives to produce. During the 20th Century, many countries experimented with efforts to socialize major areas of their economies, and even implement socialism’s extreme, communism, with uniformly poor results. Not only did economic productivity suffer, so did political freedom. (When governments have too much control over the means of production and distribution, they can easily become authoritarian.)
Virtually all countries today have mixed economies. The challenge is getting the right balance between socialized and free market provision of goods and services.
In our highly polarized politics today, however, words like Socialism, Fascism and Communism are used more as insults than descriptions. Socialism may be the least precise of these terms. It is generally applied to mixed economies where the social safety net is much broader and the tax burden is somewhat higher than in the U.S.—Scandinavian countries are an example.
Communism begins with the belief that equality is defined by equal results; this is summed up in the well-known adage “From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs.” All property is owned communally, by everyone (hence the term “communism”). In practice, this meant that all property was owned by the government, ostensibly on behalf of the people. In theory, communism erases all class distinctions, and wealth is redistributed so that everyone gets the same share. In practice, the government controls the means of production and most individual decisions are made by the state. Since the quality and quantity of work is divorced from reward, there is less incentive to innovate or produce, and ultimately, countries that have tried to create a communist system have collapsed (the USSR) or moved toward a more mixed economy (China).
Fascism is sometimes called “national Socialism,” but it differs very significantly from socialism. The most striking aspect of fascist systems is the elevation of the nation—a fervent nationalism is central to fascist philosophy. There is a union between business and the state; although there is nominally private property, government controls business decisions. Fascist regimes tend to be focused upon a (glorious) past, and to uphold traditional class structures and gender roles as necessary to maintain the social order.
Three elements commonly identified with Fascism are 1) a national identity fused with racial/ethnic identity and concepts of racial superiority; 2) rejection of civil liberties and democracy in favor of authoritarian government; and 3) aggressive militarism. Fascists seek to unify the nation through the elevation of the state over the individual, and the mass mobilization of the national community through discipline, indoctrination, and physical training. (Think Nazi Germany.)
Politicians of both parties use these terms indiscriminately as epithets, secure in the knowledge that very few in their target audiences hear anything other than “bad!!”
Next time a MAGA person calls you a communist, you can share this little exercise in definition–but it probably won’t help. Communication isn’t the point.
One of the features of contemporary discourse that drives me wild (granted, it’s pretty easy to set me off) is the use of language to label and insult, rather than communicate. For pontificators on the Right, every social program is socialism (and their view of socialism is indistinguishable from “godless communism”). On the left, the “F” word–fascism– gets tossed about with a similar lack of communicative precision.
The problem with indiscriminate labeling, of course, is that when the real thing comes along, the terminology has lost its proper effect.
When I was a college professor teaching political science and international relations, I tried to make my students think very hard about using words such as war and terrorism, which we often apply for their emotional impact without much thought—the “war” on poverty, the “war” on drugs, and, in a trifecta after 9/11, the “war on terrorism.”
And so, I dug in my heels when Donald Trump’s critics described him and his followers as fascists. Authoritarians? Yes, some. Illiberal? Definitely. But fascism, a term coined by Benito Mussolini and now commonly used to describe Italy, Germany, and other nations in the 1930s, has a distinct meaning, and denotes a form of government that is beyond undemocratic.
Fascism is not mere oppression. It is a more holistic ideology that elevates the state over the individual (except for a sole leader, around whom there is a cult of personality), glorifies hypernationalism and racism, worships military power, hates liberal democracy, and wallows in nostalgia and historical grievances. It asserts that all public activity should serve the regime, and that all power must be gathered in the fist of the leader and exercised only by his party.
Nichols reviewed Trump’s political emergence, and explained why he was an “obnoxious and racist gadfly” but still a long way from fascism. Nichol’s points out that Trump lacked any political program–really, any consistency beyond his exhausting narcissism.
Trump had long wanted to be somebody in politics, but he is also rather indolent—again, not a characteristic of previous fascists—and he did not necessarily want to be saddled with any actual responsibilities. According to some reports, he never expected to win in 2016. But even then, in the run-up to the election, Trump’s opponents were already calling him a fascist. I counseled against such usage at the time, because Trump, as a person and as a public figure, is just so obviously ridiculous; fascists, by contrast, are dangerously serious people, and in many circumstances, their leaders have been unnervingly tough and courageous. Trump—whiny, childish, unmanly—hardly fits that bill. (A rare benefit of his disordered character is that his defensiveness and pettiness likely continue to limit the size of his personality cult.)
Nichols had continued to warn against what he called “indiscriminate use” of the term fascism– because he worried that the day might come when it would be accurate, and he wanted to preserve its power to shock and alarm.
That day has come.
Nichols points to Trump’s recent speeches–incoherent as usual, but now liberally sprinkled with terminology favored by Hitler and Mussolini, words like vermin and expressions like poisoning the blood of our country. He then enumerates the truly horrifying programmatic changes Trump and his allies have threatened to enact once he’s back in office.
Trump no longer aims to be some garden-variety supremo; he is now promising to be a threat to every American he identifies as an enemy—and that’s a lot of Americans.
Unfortunately, the overuse of fascist (among other charges) quickly wore out the part of the public’s eardrums that could process such words. Trump seized on this strategic error by his opponents and used it as a kind of political cover. Over the years, he has become more extreme and more dangerous, and now he waves away any additional criticism as indistinguishable from the over-the-top objections he faced when he entered politics, in 2015.
Precision in language matters. We’ve seen how the Right’s longtime practice of calling every government program “socialism” has eroded the negative connotations of that term. Nichols is correct in observing that overuse of the term fascist has dangerously dulled recognition of what that term actually means.
The contest between an aspiring fascist and a coalition of prodemocracy forces is even clearer now. But deploy the word fascist with care; many of our fellow Americans, despite their morally abysmal choice to support Trump, are not fascists.
As for Trump, he has abandoned any democratic pretenses, and lost any benefit of the doubt about who and what he is.
As horrifying as I find the prospect of TFG (aka Donald Trump) retaking the Presidency, the idea of Ron DeSantis in the Oval Office makes me even more nauseous.
At a gloomy brunch a couple of days after the 2016 election, a friend opined that the only thing that would save the country was TFG’s obvious incompetence. She was right–so many of the administration’s efforts failed because TFG’s ragtag group of “captains of industry” had absolutely no idea how government operated (or, in many instances, what governments are for.)
Ron DeSantis poses a significantly greater threat. He’s smart. And as Ezra Klein has recently written, he thinks Trump didn’t go far enough toward the dark side.
Klein says it’s a mistake to dismiss campaign books written by politicians. He thinks we “can learn a lot about people by paying close attention to how they want to be seen.” And he notes that Ron DeSantis’s “The Courage to be Free”–while not a good book– is a revealing one.
As I read through it, I started marking down every time he told a story about using the power of his office to punish or sideline a perceived enemy or obstacle. There is his bill to make it easier to sue tech companies if you feel they’re discriminating against your politics. Here are his laws limiting what teachers can say about gender identity and imposing criminal penalties on medical providers who offer certain types of gender-affirming care. There’s his effort to punish Disney for opposing his anti-L.G.B.T.Q. laws by removing its self-governing status. Here’s his suspension of Andrew Warren, the state attorney for Hillsborough County, because Warren declined to enforce laws criminalizing abortion. There’s the bill to increase criminal penalties against rioters during Black Lives Matter protests.
Then there’s what DeSantis wants to do, but hasn’t yet done. He thinks the federal government has become too “woke” and too liberal, and Congress should “withhold funding to the offending executive branch departments until the abuses are corrected.” He is frustrated that President Donald Trump didn’t do more with an authority known as Schedule F that can reclassify around 50,000 federal employees to make them more like political appointees, enabling the president “to terminate federal employees who frustrate his policies.” He tried to make it easier to sue media outlets for defamation, though that plan got bogged down in the Florida Legislature. Outside the book, he has called for a national “reckoning” on Covid and promised to hold people like Dr. Anthony Fauci “accountable” for the damage he believes they’ve caused.
Klein hones in on the essence of DeSantis’ view of Trump–and his own approach to governing. DeSantis argues that, despite Trump’s complaints about the “deep state,” he didn’t use the power of the Presidency to destroy what DeSantis regards as the “threatening forces of the left.” (My friend would argue–correctly–that this was due to Trump’s incompetence, rather than an absence of bile.) Whatever the reason, as Klein reports, “DeSantis is trying to show, in vignette after vignette, that he has both the will and the discipline to do what Trump did not.”
DeSantis delights in describing the methodical, relentless effort he put in to bending the state of Florida to his will. He describes winning Florida’s governorship and ordering his transition team to “amass an exhaustive list of all the constitutional, statutory, and customary powers of the governor.” Much of the rest of the book is an exhaustive, and at times exhausting, account of how he used them.
In media coverage of his campaign, DeSantis emerges as a humorless martinet, utterly unable to engage with people in retail politics. Klein notes that he also can’t bring himself to
“extend even a modicum of compassion to his opponents. When he describes the George Floyd protests he doesn’t spare even a word condemning or grieving Floyd’s murder. His anti-L.G.B.T.Q. agenda is unleavened by even the barest sympathy for L.G.B.T.Q. kids.”
Despite painting a truly appalling picture of Florida Man, Klein warns readers not to underestimate his chances–a warning that sends chills up and down my spine.
If American voters needed any further confirmation of the Republican Party’s U-Turn from political party to cult, DeSantis might be that U-Turn’s poster boy.
The GOP of my younger days was firmly opposed to what the party characterized as government over-reach. It was so averse to the exercise of federal authority, especially, that the party opposed many programs and regulations that were clearly warranted. Today, however, Republicans like DeSantis are enthusiastic about wielding government power– so long as government is imposing an agenda benefitting Republican oligarchs and culture warriors, and ensconcing Republican politicians in office.
