There is no "Fascism Lite."

Coming soon: from the plutocrats who brought you Foreign Invasion Lite (Bases everywhere! Borderless drone wars!), Human Trafficking Lite (Thailand tours!), Money Laundering Lite (Switzerland! Caymans!), Sex Slavery Lite (Celeb nude video hacks!), and Racially-Based Summary Executions Lite, we’re proud to bring you Fascism Lite! 

Sarcasm aside, there is a growing force of real-life Fascism sweeping across the Earth.  In textbook-definition terms, this means that powerful governments are merging with distinctly amoral corporate entities and then working together to take over the world.  In the process, they demolish all legal precedents, presumably kicking it off with the Geneva Conventions and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and follow up by killing the environment. Oh, and they use virulent hatred of "The Other" to mobilize the minions.

Anyone who follows pro-torture, pro-war, pro-prejudice, anti-environment leaders expecting that utopia is just around the corner has probably been brainwashed by the likes of Donald Trump. What proto-fascist demagogues such as Trump, Bachmann, Hannity and Cruz so colorfully illustrate is that opportunistic hatemongers have no real plan but to unite people against enemies, and that this blind obsession with hatred will come to no good end. The inescapable outcome of obeying terracidal sadists is a dystopian mix of societal regression and ecological degradation. 

I normally direct these ranty missives toward the upper echelons of power, but I’d like to address the cheerleaders on the far Right for a moment.  You know who you are: the ones who equate Abu Ghraib with a "fraternity prank" because 'Papa Bear' O'Reilly gave you moral permission, or describe a largely innocent population of Muslim prisoners as "Animals" in order to justify their humiliating, categorically inhuman treatment at Guantanamo Bay.  Every casual slur, every little act of cruelty, every time you just keep your head down and try not to think about the moral implications, you bring yourselves closer to the edge. The problem is that they didn’t tell you where the race to the edge leads.  If civilization’s gearshift stays stuck between “Imperial Fascism” and “Human Rights with Sovereign Borders” much longer, we'll face one of two options, neither of which most of you would like:

In Plan A, the forces of Justice win, be it through revolution or rapid structural reform, and try to sort everything out in a way that’s fair to everyone. This quickly proves to involve a massive pile of litigation, because the Good Guys, given free reign, have unearthed decades worth of files and witness testimony detailing nefarious cover-ups from coups to germ warfare experiments... you know, the kind of stuff the Far Right always pretends not to notice if they think it helps their team. Everything is fair game: assassinations, biowarfare, unconstitutional invasions of privacy, you name it.  Hooray for the Good Guys!  The problem is, most of the Bad Guys get away clean.  By and large, those you might call "Middle Management" in the Conspiracy are the ones to take the fall: the spokespeople, technicians, messengers, and NSA contractors who didn’t go the Snowden route.  Names like Kissinger, Cheney, Gonzalez, Von Braun, Dow, GE, Bechtel, and Monsanto would no doubt arise in the course of investigations, but it’s hard to beat a billion-dollar legal team.

Plan B is a living nightmare in which the Fascists have finally won.  This would involve an undeclared empire comprised of the United States, England, France, and possibly (but not necessarily) Germany—an alliance which opposes human rights on principle, instead imposing a lawless, pay-to-play form of government across much of the developed world.  No more rights or protections, but those who play the game can ensure that their children are insulated from most of the fallout, in some cases literally.  You see, in ForProfitLand, there is no more Hippocratic Oath, and no pesky government watchdogs such as the EPA to protect the general public from nuclear meltdowns and toxic spills.  Like a bulldozer leaking oil and belching smog, the fascist juggernaut would spread to the ends of the earth appropriating whole cultures overnight, and assuming tacit ownership of assimilated citizens' bodies through the right of Toxic Trespass. Slavery Lite, anyone?

Plan C—amnesty for almost everyone—is slipping away. It stands to reason that there are only a few people out there who actually came up with the brilliant idea to bring back bioterrorism, torture, and treating people as property, since most human beings find these acts revolting. The true architects of atrocity should be only the ones to take the fall... and the good news is, there aren't many of them.

Posting nude videos of someone online without their permission isn't "Sex Slavery Lite;" there's nothing innocent or light-hearted about sexually using people against their will. Police forces killing unarmed people of color in the streets, trusting that the Blue Line will protect them, isn't Apartheid Lite; it's a murderous gestapo that hearkens back to Hitler's Final Solution. Letting thousands of children in Flint, Michigan suffer permanent brain damage from months of lead poisoning isn't EPA Lite; its a horrible act of state bioterrorism which has gone unpunished, from the Governor on down. A U.S. Predator Drone incursion into a sovereign nation which results in the mass killing of a wedding party, or a hospital full of sick people, isn't "War Lite;" any unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation is an unequivocal act of war, and attacking an enemy through civilian proxies is a war crime.

The problem isn't that there are no laws; there are plenty. They just aren't being enforced. What most plagues the world is the problem of privilege. The phonetic roots of the word privilege reveal its true meaning: Prive (private)+Lege (legal); in other words, private law, or the ability to buy your way out of accountability for any crime. Speaking only for myself, I think it's safe to say that this literal definition of privilege accounts for over half of what's wrong with the world these days. If the modern League of Nations concept actually made any sense, had any abiding principles, then no one would have the state-sanctioned right to tithe their way out of culpability for gross atrocities such as arming pre-ISIS terrorist cells in Syria or raining depleted uranium upon Fallujah. Sad to say, this is not how "justice" seems to work in the 21st Century. "Less justice, more privilege" is the Law of the Land now. Oh, also "Resistance is Futile."

Fascism Lite: “Because the only reason they hanged all those poor souls at Nuremberg is that Hitler never mobilized the moderates.”

_______________________
Afterthought: I try not to judge those who keep their head down for their own safety or that of their loved ones.  That's not selling out: these days, sometimes it's just survival.

Skepticism Vs. Faith: Give it a Fuckin' Rest, Already

Have you ever been in a situation when a bunch of people with very different world views were actually getting along in some social media venue or other, and then someone totally commandeered the discussion into a debate of "Is religion totally right, or am I?!!!" All of a sudden all your friends lose focus and so do you, until everyone is sparring with a troll.  This is more than a case of GroupThink vs. individuality: it's a case of people who are trying to learn from each other cooperatively, respecting difference, versus those who assume that theirs is the only valid opinion (trust me, I've been there).

...And thus does a perfectly awesome potential meeting of the minds in the comment on a Facebook post become a train-wreck where half the people bail for lack of Drama Attention Span, and the other half try to spar with the unwitting troll until most have given up and moved on to saner pastures.  This is a case of "the loudest person in the room gets the spotlight," not a problem of people who have religious faith or a lack thereof. The problem, in short, is zealots (including anti-theist zealots) who obnoxiously disregard basic logical and emotional considerations in their approach to cosmological disagreements.

It's perfectly normal to assume that you're right about a lot of stuff; let's face it, that's how we sleep at night and get through the day with our sanity more or less intact. Some people, however, take it upon themselves to prove to anyone who will listen that their own cosmological perspective is the supreme truth. This applies to everything from whether there is a Heaven to whether Creationism is the most factually accurate accounting of how everything got here. I mean, really: everyone with half a brain knows that you either [1] Accept carbon dating and dinosaur fossils or [2] Choose to have faith in the Scriptural assertion that when God created the world several millennia ago, He went to elaborate lengths in order to mess with our heads *ahem* test our faith in Him. It's not that complex... it's not even a debate, just fodder for people talking loudly at each other over social media (a more likely candidate for "Proof that God is testing us" in my opinion, but I digress).

Let's be realistic here: like most matters of faith vs. skepticism, if someone is really convinced one way or the other as to the Earth's approximate age, the chances of your changing their mind are slim to none. Why even try, when there are probably a lot of things you could teach one another without strife, and ultimately, alienation? Yet some just can't let it go... even long after the person' they're talking at has tuned out. These are tired, obvious arguments that leave a bad taste in the mouth of anyone with a sense of nuance, which is why a minority of extremely zealous people are the only ones actively debating them any more.

Along with browbeating, the other hallmark of a zealot is the presumption of knowing Supreme Truths. They claim to know, either through God or Science, the absolute truth on a wide range of cosmological matters, even the total ineffables. An atheist zealot insists "There is no God" or "People who believe in God are stupid" rather than asserting "I'm trying to be as objective as possible. Barring proof, I cannot believe in God" or "I can see what draws some people to religion, but it's not for me, for these reasons."

Far more obnoxious than zealots' smug dismissiveness, however, is their relentless reiteration of the same "sermons," as if the entire world is their personal mock-debate group. You'd think that people with all the answers would see that beating someone over the head isn't always the most effective way to get an idea across. Then again, maybe some do see it, in which case I must pose the question: "If your real agenda isn't to convince people, why go to all that trouble to explain yourself over and over?"

Zealots constantly alienate others by talking AT people rather than with them, because they have no humility whatsoever about their own fallibility. Whether they're preaching devout faith or "devout skepticism," once zealots start pontificating, they cease to consider the possibility that others might possess insights which they themselves lack. It's a sad corner to paint yourself into... and the saddest part is that die-hard zealots "win" argument after argument in their own minds, without heed to the collateral losses. 99.9% of the world may not acknowledge these daily victories, but that's just the price of martyrdom.

(Still) Fighting the Nazis at Age 40

I just turned 40 this past week. Not for the first time, my birthday gave me pause to reflect on the direction the world is heading, and to wonder how I might be able to help. From all this soul searching has come a burning realization: I want nothing more than to fight the Nazis. Not the old-school kind, but a resurgence of Nazi ideology in America, which threatens to destroy human civilization and plunge us into a new Dark Age. As a goal it's nothing new, but I have renewed and bolstered my commitment... so watch out, world.

 

For many years now, I have been putting the word out that there is a growing force of malevolence infesting humanity's collective unconscious like an aggressive virus. This disease has one overriding objective: to upend moral codes in every nation and culture until there are no more ironclad laws or notions of good and evil anywhere on Earth. From waging peace to overcoming prejudice, everything that we have associated with the idea of "goodness" is, in some circles, being re-envisioned as a weakness. The sales pitch is that while ethical codes like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were once the mortar and glue holding civilization together, we can no longer afford to be so naive. 

 

Some have called me an alarmist over the past two decades when I have declared that America would soon emerge as a fascist Fourth Reich that puts Hitler to shame. I see it more as an “informed opinion,” because I have been right so far. My predictions from the late 1990s were that America would fall victim to the following sociopolitical "plagues:"

 

[1] A steady erosion of civil liberties, especially privacy; 

 

[2] A return to relativistic arguments over torture; 

 

[3] Citizenship stripped of blanket legal protections (habeas corpus, "innocent until proven guilty," etc.); 

 

[4] An increasingly militarized domestic police force, which discourages dissent by brutalizing peaceful protesters and performs regular summary executions of non-Caucasian people; 

 

[5] In foreign policy, an imperialistic rejection of national borders; 

 

[6] A slow merger of state and corporate power that leads the deregulation of financial markets while transforming citizens into lab rats for Monsanto mad scientists; and 

 

[7] The rise of a bigoted New Right whose members proudly foment hatred and oppression for certain social groups... all tied together with: 

 

[8] Constant nationalistic fear-mongering and saber-rattling, a symphony of dog whistles meant to hypnotize us into accepting xenophobia as a positive force that can bring people together in a spirit of camaraderie ("Hating Together is the New Love." Gosh, nothing Orwellian about that). 

 

So yeah, some scoffed, called me paranoid, mentioned tinfoil hats, said America is a light unto the world and could never sink so low (they said I was mad!!!!)... and then along came Candidate Trump. How does that crow taste, doubters? 

 

Whatever twisted vision our erstwhile Overlords are pushing on the world, evidence suggests that their victory would lead to humanity's descent into a nightmarish dystopia. Those who pull the strings (purse-strings, mostly) have been actively fighting for LESS peace, love, and freedom wherever they have influence. They insist that the best thing for humanity is to get rid of the human rights standards which reflect the best in all of us, a ludicrous notion that only makes sense to the tragically brainwashed. They have, in short, chosen to be willfully evil. I know that thwarting evil overlords who are trying to take over the world is so 20th century, but call me old-fashioned. Plus, it's kind of epic. Like, literally. ;)

 

So in conclusion, from 40 on out, my top priority will be to thwart the torturers, warmongers, and other cells in this highly aggressive, civilization-killing virus. There is a lot to recommend modern-day civilization, most of all its steady evolution from war, bigotry and oppression toward cooperation, universal compassion, and freedom and justice for *all.* I'm not going to stand by while some people who totally reject the notion of ethical standards turn back the clock on all the major wins of the modern day. I encourage everyone with a heart to join me in defending the bedrock of human civilization against those who seek to destroy it.