Oops - your Trump presidency discussion thread.

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  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    I see that Chicago, Kansas City and Alberquerque are in the feds' sights, though Trump is saying its against criminals rather than protestors.
  • Penny S wrote: »
    I see that Chicago, Kansas City and Alberquerque are in the feds' sights, though Trump is saying its against criminals rather than protestors.

    I'm pretty sure that in Trump-speak "urban criminals" means "uppity n-words".
  • Oh, frack...

    "Mayor Of Portland, Oregon, First Booed By Protesters, Then Tear Gassed By Federal Agents" (HuffPost).

    :votive: for Portland Shipmates and everyone else there.
  • Penny S wrote: »
    I see that Chicago, Kansas City and Alberquerque are in the feds' sights, though Trump is saying its against criminals rather than protestors.

    I'm pretty sure that in Trump-speak "urban criminals" means "uppity n-words".

    I think you are 100% correct there.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    It seems T has just blinked--twice. At his daily news conference today, he announced HE is canceling the Jacksonville Republican Convention. Something about it not being safe there. And then he walked back somewhat about his insistence on the opening of all schools. While he still insists he wants them open, he is allowing the states and local districts to decide how to open.
  • HugalHugal Shipmate
    Is there an election over that side of the pond soon per chance? Not that I’m being cynical. Well yes ok I am.
  • Just saw on TV:
    Judge grants temporary restraining order against federal agents in Portland.

    (Approximate quote. Was in the news crawl at the bottom of the screen.)

    Yay!!!
  • An obvious point, which I have ignored up to now, is that the vast anti-terror apparatus which developed post 9/11 in the US, can be pivoted towards internal opposition. The right wing press can mobilize by denouncing and exaggerating protest groups, so that they resemble left wing conspiracies. Everything is in place, really, ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer. (One people, one country, one leader). I used to doubt that fascism could come back to the West. Wait for the Reichstag fire.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    I am going to start a new thread on T's stormtroopers.
  • Gramps49 wrote: »
    I am going to start a new thread on T's stormtroopers.

    I don't really know if they mark a step-change, as I don't live there. But all the iconography, unmarked vans, goons with minimal ID, snatch squads, give off a proto-fascist vibe. But maybe Trump is testing it out.
  • An interesting psychological question, would Trump be prepared to enable fascism? I used to think no, but the goons look ominous. Ideally, of course, you need a fig-leaf of legal respectability, behind which the goons arrest opponents, people are jailed for spray-painting, and Trump goes all in.
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    An interesting psychological question, would Trump be prepared to enable fascism?

    Would Donald Trump be willing to enable ethnonationalism, silence his critics, promise to restore a lost golden age of national greatness (MAGA!), blame the loss of that greatness on a shadowy conspiracy of outside, un-American subversives, undermine laws to consolidate power, and generally act in authoritarian ways?

    Seriously?

    When has Donald Trump not enabled fascism?
    I used to think no, but the goons look ominous.

    An interesting psychological question is why so many people can't seem to recognize fascism unless it's bestrewn with swastikas.
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    For reference, here is Donald Paxton's list of fascism's "motivating passions":
    • a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions.
    • the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it.
    • the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external.
    • dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences.
    • the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary.
    • the need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny.
    • the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason.
    • the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success.
    • the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle.

    How many of those make you think of Trump or a MAGA rally?
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    An interesting psychological question, would Trump be prepared to enable fascism?

    Would Donald Trump be willing to enable ethnonationalism, silence his critics, promise to restore a lost golden age of national greatness (MAGA!), blame the loss of that greatness on a shadowy conspiracy of outside, un-American subversives, undermine laws to consolidate power, and generally act in authoritarian ways?

    Seriously?

    When has Donald Trump not enabled fascism?
    I used to think no, but the goons look ominous.

    An interesting psychological question is why so many people can't seem to recognize fascism unless it's bestrewn with swastikas.

    I don't think the US is a fascist state. Being authoritarian is not fascism. But possibly Trump is looking down that road. It might require a civil war.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    We have allowed fascist groups to fester within our borders since the civil war (okay, they were not called fascists at the time).

    T hopes there will be a civil war, and there may be some rumblings should he be voted out fired. But our military is loyal to the constitution and I do not see any state seceding.
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    An interesting psychological question, would Trump be prepared to enable fascism?
    I don't think the US is a fascist state.

    Nice moving of the goalposts there, switching off from the question of whether Donald Trump would be willing to enable fascism to the question of whether or not the U.S. currently is a fascist state.
  • Gramps49 wrote: »
    We have allowed fascist groups to fester within our borders since the civil war (okay, they were not called fascists at the time).

    T hopes there will be a civil war, and there may be some rumblings should he be voted out fired. But our military is loyal to the constitution and I do not see any state seceding.

    Do you think he would go for a civil war? It's a huge step, and to fail consigns you to ignominy.
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    An interesting psychological question, would Trump be prepared to enable fascism?
    I don't think the US is a fascist state.

    Nice moving of the goalposts there, switching off from the question of whether Donald Trump would be willing to enable fascism to the question of whether or not the U.S. currently is a fascist state.

    I don't see a contradiction.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    edited July 2020
    The thing about fascism is that there isn't any unified fascist ideology: strictly speaking the only thing that is Fascism is the political organisation led by Benito Mussolini. So any attempt to use the word to cover also Nazism, Franco's Spain, and so on, depends on what particular similarities the speaker wants to bring out. The answer to, is any ideology or political movement fascist in the broad sense depends entirely on what similarities the speaker wants to bring out.
    If you ask is Trump a far-right authoritarian willing to undermine democratic and liberal institutions to further his personal authority then the answer is clearly yes.

    Fascism proper and Nazism proper shared a belief that war is a positive goods - that peace as such was ignoble and that war as such is intrinsically good even apart from the glory of winning. Trump doesn't share that belief. (He likes violence as an opportunity for winning, not in itself.) He doesn't dress in military uniform. To that extent, he's not "fascist". But that seems much less important than Trump's disregard for liberal institutions.

    Trump doesn't have any particular ideological stance - that would require him to have principles. But ideological principles don't hold the importance for the authoritarian right than they have for the authoritarian left. Mussolini I think had something of a ideology (he had been an actual socialist in his time). But Mein Kampf is by all accounts nothing more than an extended rant written because Hitler had no other way to feed his self-importance while in prison. (I have next to no personal knowledge of Mein Kampf.) Hitler's program in government was to rant ambiguously, and if he liked the agenda that emerged when his underlings tried to interpret his rant he took the credit and if he didn't they took the blame.

    I don't think Trump has any worked out far-right agenda; he didn't come into office with a program of undermining liberal institutions for the sake of undermining liberal institutions (though some of those around him did). He's just perfectly happy to undermine them if they get in his way or they make a handy target or he got out of bed on the wrong side.
  • What percentage of American presidents have only served one term? It's never pleasant to lose, but would it be seen as humiliating? (And I'm hoping, not assuming, Trump will lose. Nothing is safe where he's around.)
  • What percentage of American presidents have only served one term? It's never pleasant to lose, but would it be seen as humiliating? (And I'm hoping, not assuming, Trump will lose. Nothing is safe where he's around.)

    It's pretty embarrassing to be defeated. Bush Sr, Carter and Hoover are the only ones in the last century to have been elected and then kicked out by the voters. Others have withdrawn when they could have stood again, died in office or resigned in disgrace
  • RooKRooK Admin Emeritus
    The United States is not inherently fascist, but it is also not particularly un-fascist. Every conceptualization of leadership that Trump has espoused is drench is fascism, however, and he appears to be caught up in a positive-reinforcement loop with strongly-nazi-like elements in the country.
  • Gramps49 wrote: »
    And then he walked back somewhat about his insistence on the opening of all schools. While he still insists he wants them open, he is allowing the states and local districts to decide how to open.
    Not that allowing or not allowing schools to open is something he has any authority to do in the first place. But he rarely concerns himself with such details.

  • Pangolin GuerrePangolin Guerre Shipmate
    edited July 2020
    As to Dafyd's comment on different species under the genus fascism, I have recommended somewhere on the board, perhaps on this thread, Ernst Nolte's Three Faces of Fascism/ Der Fascismus in seiner Epoche. It examines German, French, and Italian fascism, but Part Four is a rigorous attempt to come to grips with fascism on a conceptual level within a 'philosophy of history' approach to the problem. Unfortunately, Nolte's igniting of the Hisorikerstreit/Historians' Debate in 1988-89, and his book (untranslated) Der europäische Bürgerkrieg, 1917–1945: Nationalsozialismus und Bolschewismus (The European Civil War, 1917-1945: National Socialism and Bolshevism), and later works, damaged his reputation to such an extent that whatever worthy contribution he made has been in many quarters discredited. Undoubtedly of a conservative stripe, he became more so, being spooked by the events of 1968. Though I count myself on the left (by current American standards, I am a commie), I find much worthwhile in Three Faces. His later work is, to be gentle, highly problematic. For those unfamiliar with him, the (rather lengthy) wikipedia article on him is actually quite good.

    For those interested, there is an English translation of the Historians' Debate. It's difficult to imagine a similar debate in the pages of an American newspaper, even the NYT. Perhaps in the New York Review of Books.

    As regards MAGA, I'm remind of Mircea Eliade's The Myth of The Eternal Return. Again, Eliade is a conservative thinker (he served as a diplomat for both the Iron Guard and Antonescu regimes), but I think that it's a worthwhile read for putting MAGA in a more conceptual context.

    While it might seem that I'm tending to over-abstraction, to bring the current movement(s) in American politics under categories has helped me to clarify my thinking. And to eat my double-serving of crow regarding my caution in 2016-17. I should have been more awake. I should have known better.
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    edited July 2020
    What percentage of American presidents have only served one term? It's never pleasant to lose, but would it be seen as humiliating? (And I'm hoping, not assuming, Trump will lose. Nothing is safe where he's around.)

    20th & 21st Century American presidents elected twice (or more)
    • McKinley
    • Wilson
    • F. Roosevelt
    • Eisenhower
    • Nixon
    • Reagan
    • Clinton
    • G. W. Bush*
    • Obama

    20th & 21st Century American presidents elected once (or less)
    • T. Roosevelt
    • Taft
    • Harding
    • Coolidge
    • Hoover
    • Truman
    • Kennedy
    • Johnson
    • Ford
    • Carter
    • G. H. W. Bush

    Some of this is, of course, historically contingent. Kennedy was supposed to go to a re-election fundraising dinner later in the day on November 22, 1963. But for whatever reason the trend seems to be towards two term presidents. (Note how recent presidents dominate the first list.) The same could be said of the 19th century. In his day Abraham Lincoln was the first American president to be elected twice (1860, 1864) since Andrew Jackson (1828, 1832).
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    You put an * behind George Bush. Explain.

    While Nixon was elected twice, he resigned because he was about to be impeached.

  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    You put an * behind George Bush. Explain.

    There were enough irregularities surrounding the 2000 election to have legitimate doubts about whether or not George W. Bush actually won it. I borrowed the custom from the Baseball Hall of Fame which notes certain controversial accomplishments and records with an asterisk. (e.g. If a player holds the record for the most home runs hit in a season it will be marked with an asterisk if the baseball season had fewer games in it when the previous record-holder was playing. It sometimes also denotes players who are suspected of using performance enhancing drugs.)
  • Dubyah wasn't legitimately president the first time, and possibly not the second.
  • HugalHugal Shipmate
    So tell me. In practical terms what is difference between someone using fascist type actions and an actual fascist?
    Trump may not think of himself as facist but that does not mean he is not behaving like one.
  • I'd argue that Coolidge and Truman were both effectively two-term presidents having stepped up after the death of their predecessors fairly early in their terms. Harding was effectively a zero-term president.

  • Hugal wrote: »
    So tell me. In practical terms what is difference between someone using fascist type actions and an actual fascist?
    Trump may not think of himself as facist but that does not mean he is not behaving like one.

    I was weaned on various Marxist ideas, particularly the corporate state. This means that the fascist state absorbs various bodies, normally considered independent, such as trade unions, professional bodies, etc. However, this is but one pattern. There is also the issue of private militias, for the use of the leader, e.g., SS, SA, etc. Hitler also had the Gauleiters, local leaders, who were also Nazi paramilitaries. Overall, the priciple of Gleichshaltung, coordination, meant that most aspects of life were Nazified, e.g., sport. Also, "working towards the Fuhrer", which involved local initiative, Hitler often avoiding decisions.

    Of course, this is not the fascist template.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    Hugal wrote: »
    So tell me. In practical terms what is difference between someone using fascist type actions and an actual fascist?
    Trump may not think of himself as facist but that does not mean he is not behaving like one.

    I was weaned on various Marxist ideas, particularly the corporate state. This means that the fascist state absorbs various bodies, normally considered independent, such as trade unions, professional bodies, etc. However, this is but one pattern. There is also the issue of private militias, for the use of the leader, e.g., SS, SA, etc. Hitler also had the Gauleiters, local leaders, who were also Nazi paramilitaries. Overall, the priciple of Gleichshaltung, coordination, meant that most aspects of life were Nazified, e.g., sport. Also, "working towards the Fuhrer", which involved local initiative, Hitler often avoiding decisions.

    Of course, this is not the fascist template.

    I would say that mutatis mutandis these are features of any totalitarian state of whatever political label.
  • BroJames wrote: »
    Hugal wrote: »
    So tell me. In practical terms what is difference between someone using fascist type actions and an actual fascist?
    Trump may not think of himself as facist but that does not mean he is not behaving like one.

    I was weaned on various Marxist ideas, particularly the corporate state. This means that the fascist state absorbs various bodies, normally considered independent, such as trade unions, professional bodies, etc. However, this is but one pattern. There is also the issue of private militias, for the use of the leader, e.g., SS, SA, etc. Hitler also had the Gauleiters, local leaders, who were also Nazi paramilitaries. Overall, the priciple of Gleichshaltung, coordination, meant that most aspects of life were Nazified, e.g., sport. Also, "working towards the Fuhrer", which involved local initiative, Hitler often avoiding decisions.

    Of course, this is not the fascist template.

    I would say that mutatis mutandis these are features of any totalitarian state of whatever political label.

    Yes, the Soviet state has been labelled fascist. The subject of heated debate over the years, I suppose the Nazis tended to favour big industries such as Krupp, whereas Stalin would presumably have nationalized them.
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    I'd argue that Coolidge and Truman were both effectively two-term presidents having stepped up after the death of their predecessors fairly early in their terms. Harding was effectively a zero-term president.

    I'm only assessing number of elections won, but Harding served more than half his term before dying, putting Coolidge in more or less the same position as LBJ. Teddy Roosevelt, on the other hand, ascended to the presidency only six months after McKinley was inaugurated for his second term and seems more reasonably to be considered a two-term president. Nonetheless, he was only elected to the office once.
  • Hugal wrote: »
    So tell me. In practical terms what is difference between someone using fascist type actions and an actual fascist?
    Trump may not think of himself as facist but that does not mean he is not behaving like one.

    (And also referring to Quezacoatl's comment)

    Each fascism is its own thing. Communism has at least the 'virtue' of having canonical texts to bring about some degree of conformity movement to movement. One thing that defines a fascist movement is a strong collective ethno-cultural identity, hence the heterogeneity of fascist movements, and I think that white nationalism in the US seems to be fulfilling that role, or, starting to as it expands. Fascist action vs being an actual fascist? One can use armed force against one's civilian population and not be a fascist, e.g., Uganda, Zaire (as it then was), Brasil, at various times.

    Q refers to corporatism* and Gleichschaltung (bringing parts into a single activity). The Franco state was mutable over time. Initially through the Falangist influence it displayed definite totalitarian hallmarks, moving toward a more authoritarian profile. The two terms are not interchangeable. One way of differentiating the two is that the former is prescripitive (you must think this, you must do this), and the former is proscriptive (you cannot do this). One consist aspect was its corporatism even as it became ideologically less restrictive. I do not see this happening in the US; at least, not yet, and the sense of freedom of association I think would be a strong impediment to it.

    As to the Marxist critique of fascism, some critics are better than others. The poorer ones, like Georgi Dimitrov, did damage to the term fascism, and the Marxist critique, by labelling social democracy "social fascism". Yeah, thanks for that contribution, George. Lumping the SPD in with the NS was, plainly, idiocy. Further, I find that limiting oneself to the economic/political critique misses some important facets of fascist movements: anthropological and psychological, not least.

    *Corporatism does not refer to 'corporation' in the current capitalist sense, but to the various sectors (labour/professions/capital/[various others, depending on the pre-existing profile of the given polity]) of society being organised and brought under the aegis of the state/party.

    One unhappy parallel that I've noticed is the portrayal of the protests by many politicians and media (and not just Fox), is that the out-equipped demonstrators are being demonised ("criminal", "anarchist") wheres the federal forces are indulging in obviously criminal behaviour with impunity. Or the armed occupiers of the state capitol in Lansing, none of whom, to my knowledge, were charged. Yet unarmed demonstartors in Portland are beaten and spirited away in unmarked, often rented, vehicles. This looks a great deal like Weimar Germany. If one looks at the statistics for conviction rates for political street violence, conviction rates for those on the Left vs on the Right, it was (I'm relying on memory of my grad research here, so I might be slightly off) in excess of 4:1, despite the Right more often being the initiator of the violence.

    My pessimism grows.
  • Missed edit window... last paragraph... "none of whom.... *was* charged" it should read.
  • If someone ascended to the Presidency because of the death of the incumbent, how many elections would they be permitted to fight?

    And what was the argument in favour of only two terms of office in the first place?
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    If someone ascended to the Presidency because of the death of the incumbent, how many elections would they be permitted to fight?

    That depends. The Twenty-Second Amendment states, in part:
    No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.

    So someone who comes to the presidency by the death or resignation of their predecessor can be elected twice in their own right if that predecessor had less than two years left in their term, but only once if the succession was any earlier than that.
    And what was the argument in favour of only two terms of office in the first place?

    Mostly it was a reaction to Franklin Roosevelt's unprecedented four elections. The idea that presidents should only serve two terms was a norm established by George Washington. There were previous attempts to break that norm (Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt) but FDR was the first person who actually did. The Twenty-Second Amendment insured he'd also be the last*. An argument can be made that the presidency is such a uniquely powerful office that long tenures are destructive to democratic norms.


    *Technically whoever was president when it was ratified was not bound by this amendment, so Truman could have run again as many times as he wanted to. He just didn't want to.
  • TurquoiseTasticTurquoiseTastic Shipmate
    edited July 2020
    @Croesos quite right on Harding/Coolidge and McKinley/Teddy Roosevelt - for some reason I thought Harding had died almost immediately. I think I must have been foolishly mixing him up with Harrison.

    @Robert Armin they would be permitted to fight two more elections. So both Truman and LBJ could have stood for re-election but chose not to (or perhaps were deselected by their parties? More knowledgeable Shipmates will elucidate I'm sure...).

    I think the term limit must have been introduced because of FDR's four victories and an uneasy feeling of "it was just about OK with that guy but we might not be so lucky next time".
  • Whoops I'm completely wrong

    https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-22/

    Should have Googled first.

    Turns out that if you have served more than two years of "someone else's" term then you can only fight one election.
  • quick note: We don't normally "fight" an election, but "run for" one. God keep us from fighting this one, though.
  • Yes, the Soviet state has been labelled fascist. The subject of heated debate over the years, I suppose the Nazis tended to favour big industries such as Krupp, whereas Stalin would presumably have nationalized them.

    In the Soviet Union the state ran the businesses. In America the businesses run the state. Really six of one when you look at how they treat people.
  • quick note: We don't normally "fight" an election, but "run for" one. God keep us from fighting this one, though.

    amen
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    The 22 amendment was passed by a Republican-controlled Congress in 1947. It was finally was ratified by the states in February 1951. I think the Republicans were more afraid that the presidency would stay in Democratic hands.

    I can argue both ways on this. It was obvious FDR was becoming too frail to continue to govern; but, on the other hand, many of us would have liked to have seen Obama continue in office. At least it does prevent a tyrant from getting a lifetime term.
  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    At least it does prevent a tyrant from getting a lifetime term.

    Here's hoping we can still claim this in January '21.
  • Amanda B ReckondwythAmanda B Reckondwyth Mystery Worship Editor
    Ohher wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    At least it does prevent a tyrant from getting a lifetime term.

    Here's hoping we can still claim this in January '21.

    No problem. Should you-know-who refuse to leave, the Secret Service would escort him out in handcuffs. What defense against the Secret Service would an overweight old geezer with heel spurs have?
  • Ohher wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    At least it does prevent a tyrant from getting a lifetime term.

    Here's hoping we can still claim this in January '21.

    No problem. Should you-know-who refuse to leave, the Secret Service would escort him out in handcuffs. What defense against the Secret Service would an overweight old geezer with heel spurs have?

    A hundred million well-armed minions?
  • Amanda B ReckondwythAmanda B Reckondwyth Mystery Worship Editor
    Powerless against the combined armed forces of the United States, which the President (not you-know-who) would command.
  • (a) The armed forces have already stated that they aren't interested in being used as a police force, and (b) A good number of boots on the ground are themselves white supremacists and very much support the president.
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