The corporate coup d'état and collapse of American democracy began long before Trump. He is simply snuffing out what remains.
The Christian fascists and oligarchs gleefully handing Donald Trump his sharpie and executive orders are not making war on the deep state, the radical left or to protect us from “antisemites.” They are making war on verifiable fact, the rule of law and the transparency and accountability that is only possible with a free press, the right to dissent, a vibrant culture and a separation of powers, including an independent judiciary.
All of these pillars of an open society, as I detail in my book “Death of the Liberal Class,” were degraded long before Trump. The press, including public broadcasting, academia, the Democratic Party, a corporatized and banal culture, a judiciary that serves the billionaire class and a Congress bought by lobbyists, have been disemboweled. They are easily picked off. Few want to rise up to defend them. They sold us out. Let them die.
“The loss of the liberal class creates a power vacuum filled by speculators, war profiteers, gangsters, and killers, often led by charismatic demagogues,” I wrote in “Death of the Liberal Class” in 2010. “It opens the door to totalitarian movements that rise to prominence by ridiculing and taunting the liberal class and the values it claims to champion. The promises of these totalitarian movements are fantastic and unrealistic, but their critiques of the liberal class are grounded in truth.”
Fascism is birthed by a bankrupt liberalism that has surrendered its traditional role in a capitalist democracy. It no longer ameliorates the worst excesses of the ruling class and the empire by instituting incremental and piecemeal reforms. It scolds and moralizes the disenfranchised workers it betrayed. (more...)
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