America - The Official Thread

[Pupik]

What I find a shame here on GTP is that even the slightest flirt with Trump or Musk ends up being labeled like stupid, racist, fascist, homophobe , uneducated and wrong. All arguments are drilled into the ground with we are right and you are wrong. No wonder most people keep their opinions to themselves.

Some of us just aren't fans of the Tru Tux Tan for a wide variety of reasons.

Every one of the finer talking points by Republicans over the last 20 years has been co-opted and reversed because now it suits their massive agenda. They don't want a smaller government, they want their government. They want to pick the winners and losers. They want the fairness and equality that also gave them a platform to be destroyed. The media is an enemy, for how dare it give them a chance to have open thought. Let's cut everything but still run up massive debt and inflation by over-producing money to overcome shortfalls. And holy hell, the separation of church and state and peaceful protest are also codified in all of those flimsy blackletter decals on these truck which happens to get crummy gas mileage (don't forget complaining about the free market). Let's make sure the right to squelch those voices with a hammer's click as the first available option when it disagrees.

We'd warned people for the best part of a decade about what happens when you vote in an unprepared actor which upends situations because he ran on a platform to engage the uninformed of government processes and unaware of history, all for the same reason of desiring absolute power. We've seen this before and it rarely ends well. It's empowered by media which takes unified sides and bombards your senses with coded language over and over, like a simpler version of the Ludovico Method but with more ads for worthless supplements, and petty distractions about renaming the Arabian Gulf Gulf of Mexico (forgot about changing history because now it releases American dopamine).

And despite creating a hissy fit literally of epic proportions due to the personal inconvenience of not being popular enough during the difficulties of a pandemic (which honestly, was probably going to unseat any past President), decided to incite a riot to take back which he'd lost. And...many of his red minions refused to unseat him over that banana republic show of complete sore-loser douchebaggery, which drove a further contemptible wedge down our political body.

So maybe we'd thought you folks would have come to your senses about what would happen next. We tried to be genteel about it, and too courteous to a massively spineless fault. But many of us that aren't as politically-correct as your fine choices have no such need for restraint, as we have a functioning cerebral cortex.

But nope, you gave him another chance. Jokes on us, I guess.

So some of us are out of play-nice words for all this ****-uppery that's occurring all around us. I've been generous to you personally, but see how we may very obviously disagree.

 

[Biggles]

The US has brushed fascism before. Woodrow Wilson is often cited as a fascist president. Depending on how you view him and his policies, FDR had some fascist tendencies as well (like locking up American citizens in concentration camps). Then there was the entire time during the Cold War when politicians branded anyone they didn't like a Communist to jail them or discredit them.

I don't think Trump is anything new for America, and we've been here before; the only difference now is that there's more money and influence to chart the course while also having easily accessible platforms to spread nonsense. Think about how the Red Scare would've gone if social media had existed and crackpots had the opportunity to say whatever they wanted at any time. So really, we've always been here, it just hasn't been as easily seen as it is now since we have infinite access to information, a platform for people to say whatever they want and reach millions, and 24-hour news cycles. The amount of money being thrown at politics is also insane and the people behind that money support fascist ideals.

Checks and balances haven't been effective in a long time. It used to work when each branch was concerned with its power, but now it's just all about falling in line with the party leadership so you can keep your job. Whatever the head of the party says goes, even if the underlings disagree. The benefits of being in Congress are excellent and people don't want to lose that so they just continue to toe the line. Just look at what happened with Congressmen like Mitt Romney and Adam Kinzinger or Congresswoman Liz Cheney; they went against Trump and lost their power even though they were right.

It's telling that you would choose to cite Woodrow Wilson and FDR as examples of "fascists". A much more obvious example would be the Ku Klux Klan and various other rabidly nativist, racist and anti-immigrant organizations that grew up in the 19th century and flourished well into the 20th century. In addition, there were a variety of actual American fascist parties that received a lot of popular support in the 1930's.

 

[wowbaggerBR]

Lived to see someone frame FDR as fascist. I guess this is enough internet for this week.

 

[TexRex]

Lived to see someone frame FDR as fascist. I guess this is enough internet for this week.

Incarceration of citizens without indictment, prosecution or conviction solely due to ancestry was a super friendly affair, obviously.

 

[wowbaggerBR]

Incarceration of citizens without indictment, prosecution or conviction solely due to ancestry was a super friendly affair, obviously.

If I am not mistaken, there was a pretty big war going on at the time and foreign agents were indeed found on American soil plotting all kinds of sabotages during that war. It was a Japanese spy who related the ins and outs of the Pearl Harbour base and a bunch of german spies were delivered to the west coast by U-boat (granted, those particular operatives were incompetent, but at the time, how could anyone be sure there weren’t more?). While no one deserves to be imprisoned solely because of their origin - and the internment camps remain a stain on FDR’s legacy - the conditions in American camps were not remotely comparable to those where people were subjected to starvation, systematic cruelty, and FAR worse, as we all know.

FDR upheld democratic institutions, didn't dismantle them as fascist leaders did. He also didn't had an armed militia inside his party terrorizing dissenters, he didn't abolish free press. He won competitive elections, whereas fascists banned opposition parties and censored the press and cultural expression. Courts remained open and were allowed to be a check and ballance against his adminstration. Fascist dismantle the judiciary as soon as they got power. He also was probably the only American president to give more strength to worker's unions, while fascists would just outlaw them all, as usual.

Also missing from FDR, the raging fascist, is the cult of personality, the creation of a secret police or the persecution of opposition leaders. Oh, and he went ahead and got himself allied with the not fascists. But yeah, other than those small things, a huge fascist.

 

[Imari]

Incarceration of citizens without indictment, prosecution or conviction solely due to ancestry was a super friendly affair, obviously.

Obviously not, it was a terrible thing to do. But I feel like context matters - there was a world war going on and Pearl Harbour had just happened.

It was not the right thing to do, and even then the way in which it was done was pretty awful. But I think it's an understandable response, even though not an acceptable one. It may have been fascism by some technical definition, but I'm not sure it rightly should be assigned the negative implication that usually comes with fascism. The internments were not about consolidating political control or exterminating an entire race of people, this was about maintaining military and physical security.

And to be super extra double clear, it was a wrong thing to do and FDR should be viewed negatively for it. But probably not because it's fascism, because intent matters and words have meanings. FDR was many things but a fascist is probably not one of them, at least to my limited non-US understanding of the history of the dude.

 

[Joey D]

It's telling that you would choose to cite Woodrow Wilson and FDR as examples of "fascists". A much more obvious example would be the Ku Klux Klan and various other rabidly nativist, racist and anti-immigrant organizations that grew up in the 19th century and flourished well into the 20th century. In addition, there were a variety of actual American fascist parties that received a lot of popular in the 1930's.

None of those groups were in power. Yes, plenty of groups supported fascism, but I'm looking at it as who had power.

Also, I'm not saying anyone was an outright fascist. I'm saying they had fascist ideas, and the country was flirting with fascism. Wilson wasn't a good person, though; he was incredibly racist. He showed KKK propaganda in the White House (Birth of a Nation), supported eugenics, support Jim Crow, and resegregated the government. During WWI he even prevented one of America's best fighting forces, the Buffalo Soldiers, from entering the war purely because they were black. He pushed the Sedition Act and wanted it to be illegal to criticize the government. He dragged the US into WWI under dubious pretenses. He also likely led to the rise of fascism in Italy after stonewalling the Italians and leading to Mussolini, and he helped completely bumble how post-war Germany was managed, leading to WWII.

Was Wilson a fascist? It's complicated, but he certainly has fascist ideas. Also, did Wilson do good things? Yes, but it's worth recognizing the awful things he did because they were pretty damn awful.

Lived to see someone frame FDR as fascist. I guess this is enough internet for this week.

FDR put 120,000 Asian Americans, many of who were American citizens (upwards of 2/3rds), into concentration camps for four years. At least 1,800 people died. In addition to the Japanese, he also put Germans and Italians in camps as well. What's weirder is that he hated Jews despite championing for them when the opportunity benefited him.

Never mind he didn't want to give up power and managed to serve four terms as president.

But if you go back and read what I wrote, I didn't call FDR a fascist. I said he had some fascist tendencies, which he absolutely did and it was undoubtedly a brush with fascism in the US. Wilson falls into the same camp.

====

Right-wing populism that Trump subscribes to is nothing new for the US either. Strom Thurmond, Joseph McCarthy, and Barry Goldwater all were right-wing populists. So while some think we are in uncharted waters with Trump, we really aren't. This stuff has been going on in the US for a long time. Even the corruption Trump does is nothing new. Nixon, Reagan, Harding, Buchanan, and Jackson were all incredibly corrupt and that's just what we know. Chances are corruption is rampant in the US government but it gets covered up. Trump's problem is that he doesn't know when to shut up so we see his corruption more than others.

 

[eran0004]

What I find a shame here on GTP is that even the slightest flirt with Trump or Musk ends up being labeled like stupid, racist, fascist, homophobe , uneducated and wrong.

That pretty much is a summary of their character though, so it's like complaining that even the slightest flirt with Hitler ends up being labeled like antisemitic.

All arguments are drilled into the ground with we are right and you are wrong. No wonder most people keep their opinions to themselves.

What do you want? A medal for participating in a political discussion?

"We respect your support of this racist, fascist, misogynistic, stupid, uneducated regime and their efforts to ruin America and the rule based world order which is the foundation of much of the progress we've seen around the globe in the past 80 years. What is right and wrong even? It's not like any human thinker has ever thought about that before - certainly not the founding fathers - so we don't have any standards to possibly judge Trump and his immature nazi pet by. All is fine and dandy, what could possibly go wrong. Gravity is just an illusion, I'm sure we would all be able to fly if we just collectively threw ourselves off the bridge all at the same time. This MAGA movement does not sound like a cult at all. Nope, no alarm bells ringing here, none whatsoever. That Musk guy seems unstable at best - oh he just accidentally did a nazi salute live on tv. Twice. Let's give him access to the entire government apparatus and let him fix it in much the same way that he ruined Twitter. I have my doubts about it, but I'm in no position to criticise it because up is down and down is up and all we are is dust in the wind. Serenity now."

Forget about it. If you want to enter a political discussion you should be prepared to have your opinions scrutinised and criticised. I mean, how do you even expect to develop as a person if nobody criticises your opinions and beliefs? How do you expect to see the flaws in your reasoning if nobody helps by pointing them out for you?

 

[Scaff]

I said he had some fascist tendencies, which he absolutely did and it was undoubtedly a brush with fascism in the US. Wilson falls into the same camp.

Given that fascism is a specific ideology I have to disagree, FDR had some authoritarian tendencies, but overall those didn't align with the fascist ideology.

What I find a shame here on GTP is that even the slightest flirt with Trump or Musk ends up being labeled like stupid, racist, fascist, homophobe , uneducated and wrong.

All arguments are drilled into the ground with we are right and you are wrong. No wonder most people keep their opinions to themselves.

Nope. Oddly, those who support Trump et al. are unable to support an argument that doesn't expose those labels.

I acknowledge that those who do support Trump etc. are burdened with the challenge that he is racist, fascist, and homophobic. Therefore if you are unaware of that you are ignorant of that (I wouldn't use the term stupid), you are supporting those traits via that ignorance; or you are aware of those traits and agree with them (which I would label as 'wrong' ).

I mean, how else would you describe the position of 'I want to ethnically cleanse Gaza'?

 

[Liquid]

If you're going to slap an authoritarian charge against FDR, you might call him a communist for his executive order prohibiting private ownership of gold. Communists interred people too.

The traditional left-right communist-fascist compass just isn't applicable anymore. If you're going to use one axis, the up-down authoritarian-liberal one is the one that people seem to refer to first in quick conversation more often these days, even if they're unaware of it and still clinging to the x axis.

 

[Scaff]

If you're going to slap an authoritarian charge against FDR, you might call him a communist for his executive order prohibiting private ownership of gold. Communists interred people too.

I wouldn't describe him as authoritarian overall.

The traditional left-right communist-fascist compass just isn't applicable anymore. If you're going to use one axis, the up-down authoritarian-liberal one is the one that people seem to refer to first in quick conversation more often these days, even if they're unaware of it and still clinging to the x axis.

I disagree in part, the Left/Right axis still very much exists, it would be hard to describe Trump and co as anything other than having a hard right set of leanings.

 

[Joey D]

Given that fascism is a specific ideology I have to disagree, FDR had some authoritarian tendencies, but overall those didn't align with the fascist ideology.

Fascism doesn't have one agreed upon set of ideologies though and it's difficult to define. I would argue that FDR putting 120k Asian Americans in concentration camps, most who were American citizens, was a fascist act.

FDR was also in support of the Mexican Repatriation started by Hoover during the 1930s where upwards of 2 million Mexican Americans were deported, many of them being American citizens, for being a contributing factor to the Great Depression. While FDR was less on deportations than Hoover, he still supporter the policy and continued it.

Deporting and interning your own citizens is, in my opinion, absolutely fascism tendencies.

FDR also had the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, in which he wanted to change the Supreme Court because he didn't like how they were ruling on New Deal policies. It failed to transpire, but that act also felt fascist in nature given how the government is structured.

I'm not say FDR didn't do good things, but like Wilson it's important to call out the bad things he was doing. Trump is trying to do those exact same things right now. He's putting people in concentration camps (Gitmo), deporting millions while blaming them for the economy, and packing the Supreme Court to push through policies that are likely unconstitutional. If we criticize and lable Trump a fascist for doing that we should also apply that to other presidents too. Trump also appeals to a frustrated middle and low class while putting out policies that supposedly will help them. FDR did the same thing with the New Deal. Of course the New Deal worked, while Trump's polices remain to he seen. They might ultimately help the low and middle class (although it seems unlikely).

Yes, Trump is undoubtedly more fascist but other presidents have done remarkably fascist things. I'm not an expert though. The only reason I selected FDR and Wilson as examples is that there is there's a ton of debate around them, which means there's more information out there to read. Since before this past election I've been trying to look into fascism in the US to see how we got here.