Fascism is Less of a Threat than the Illusion of Democracy

It is Time We Open Our Eyes to the Other Real Challenge America Faces

The dangers we face from the onset of fascism are less grave than those that flow from the illusion of democracy in America.

That is not to say that the with each passing day, Donald Trump, his advisors and supporters have acted as fascists, spoken like fascists and sought to build an incoming administration that appears ready to emulate fascist regimes from history. Trump’s announcement this past weekend that he intends to nominate Kash Patel to head the FBI underscores how seriously we take such threats. The most serious indictments of Patel and the most illuminating insights into the why his appointment would be so disastrous for the rule of law in this country have all emanated from Patel’s own mouth. He has indicated that he would use federal law enforcement to arrest and prosecute Trump’s critics in the media. He has said he would empty the FBI headquarters building and turn it into a “Museum of the Deep State.” He is the worst kind of loyalist thug that Trump could name to such a vital position and his confirmation or recess appointment would no doubt usher in a very dark period in our history.

Other Trump nominations and statements of intent have dashed any hope that a second Trump term—one in which he was effectively freed from concerns regarding his own criminal prosecution for crimes committed in the past or future—would be somehow be less authoritarian than many of us feared they might be. There has in fact, been a pattern in his choices and in his reckless disregard for past norms that has raised concerns greatly.

Pete Hegseth, a man with no management experience and no defense policy experience, an extremist white Christian nationalist with a history that has included an accusation of sexual abuse and vile attitudes toward women, is without question the very worst choice to be Defense Secretary (or its equivalent) ever. Yet, somehow, nominating Tulsi Gabbard, a woman with no experience to speak of in the intelligence community and deeply compromised foreign loyalties, to be Director of National Intelligence is even worse.

Picking an anti-science crackpot to run the Department of Health and Human Services, a peddler of snake oil remedies to run our Medicare and Medicaid programs, or a convicted felon with no diplomatic experience to be Ambassador to France shows the president-elect’s absolute disregard for the well-being of the American people or the protection of U.S. interests. His stated desire to have his nominees approved without the Constitutionally-required advice and consent of the Senate or to place people in positions of great sensitivity without any sort of background checks goes further combining recklessness with an autocrat’s disregard for any views or interests other than his own. So, too, does Trump’s overt effort to assume control of crucial aspects of U.S. foreign policy months prior to his assumption of the presidency. (See his meetings with foreign leaders, repeated threats of imposing tariffs, etc.)

For all these reasons plus the past statements of Trump and those closest to him, it would be irresponsible not to be concerned about the shape and direction of the incoming U.S. administration. But to focus on those issues alone is to fail to recognize how we came to be in this situation and why there are even more profound perils to take into consideration than even the most egregious kind of conduct by our government over the course of the next four years.

There is evidence of those larger dangers in some of Trump’s actions and the context for them. For example, while many of Trump’s cabinet choices are outrageous, his picks to lead Treasury and his economic advisory council are conventional, designed to appease Wall Street and others among his supporters who seek market stability. He is also surrounding himself with the wealthy, leaders within the top 1 percent of the 1 percent in America. There are, at least seven billionaires or near among his top advisors and most of the rest are millionaires. Perhaps his closest advisor at the moment is the world’s richest man. Look at Trump’s performance last time around and although his record on everything from foreign policy to managing the COVID epidemic was ghastly, the one major legislative “accomplishment” he delivered was a tax cut that benefited America’s best-off citizens at the expense of all the rest of us.

Further, when you look at Trump’s campaign to be reelected as president, a hugely disproportionate amount of his funding came from billionaires or centi-millionaires. He is a candidate of the rich, for the rich put in power by the rich. And in that respect, like it or not, he is no different from any other successful candidate or, for that matter, any other presidential runner up in our lifetime.

It has been said—I have even indulged in saying it—that with the help of billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, billionaire Trump has engaged in hostile buy out of the American government. It is a nice pithy observation to offer up on social media or a television broadcast. But it is misleading. Because while such a buy-out has occurred, it has taken place over many years.

As they have throughout our history—and the history of most other countries in the world—those Americans with the most economic power have sought to have and exercise the most political power. It is a phenomenon our founders warned of…even as they established a country in which effectively only white male landowners would have real power. They traded the British aristocracy for the seed stock of its American successors. As we transitioned from being an agrarian nation to an industrial one, the super-empowered in our society changed their business interests and addresses. But whether they were called robber barons in the 1890s or tech bros in the 2020s, the few have always had the most power in our society. Some have pushed back on that power but typically they did so on behalf of another group of aspirants to their role, not average citizens but oligarchs-in-waiting.

That is not to say average citizens had no role in these transfers of power. They did. The rich would use all the tools at their disposal to persuade voters that political candidates would be acting in their interests, addressing the quotidien challenges of their lives. But, the primary sponsors of those candidates did not seek primarily to improve the well-being of the masses so much as sought to ensure their man—and his supporters in Congress and statehouses and legislatures—would be in power to protect and advance their interests. They had to take the will of the people into account to be sure. But they always found ways to manipulate it and where turbulence from below would bubble up, they would find a way to smooth it over.

In recent years, however, let’s say for the better part of the last half century, triggered perhaps by the high tax rates of the Eisenhower Era, the counter-culture movement of the 1960s or the potency of the media during the Watergate era (to name just three healthy phenomena during the periods in question), there has been an unprecedented move to consolidate the power of America’s richest citizens and the corporations they controlled.

Already great influence became ever greater. The rich on the right used their influence to change the laws of American media to enable the creation of a partisan media ecosystem that promoted their views, their candidates and ultimately even their “alternative facts” and narratives of American life. Washington was the enemy. Deregulation was their friend. Republicans were looking out for the working man. They fought deficits. They were masters of national security. They understood how to create jobs and prosperity.

None of this was true, but that didn’t matter. For the purposes of those behind the creation of these disinformation networks only building political support for the candidates of lower taxes and less regulation and who would support judges and laws that concentrated power in the hands of the few and undid the efforts at leveling our society that came with initiatives like the Voting Rights Act or other efforts to empower disenfranchised groups like minorities or women. Since such groups largely did not share the interests of the superempowered in our society, the influence that they might have that came from their numbers (and they were a growing majority of Americans) would have to be counteracted.

This in turn produced gerrymandering or court decisions like Citizens United that gave the rich ever more power and tax cuts and decisions like removing Chevron deference that gave or will give them ever more wealth (which they could then translate into power and then translate that into more wealth and so on ad infinitum).

Through such efforts over the past forty years, economic inequality has grown dramatically in America. This has frustrated many average Americans. Which is why it became increasingly important for those in power to find a way to harness those frustrations into support for candidates who would protect and expand the prerogatives of the emerging oligarchy. That was effectively done via the demagoguery of Fox News and Breitbart and GOP candidates and led to the perverse situation that in the most recent presidential election the majority of Americans expressed their anger at a system that was leaving them ever farther behind by…electing the people who were engineering their marginalization and exploiting them.

That is not to say that the very wealthy would not have found ways to do something close to the same had a Democrat won. They certainly did in the recent past when during the Clinton Administration embraced neo-liberalism and promoted Wall Street and corporate views from ending Glass-Steagall to promoting unfettered free trade that helped fuel the growth of inequality. (I was in that administration and regret every day my willing and active cheerleading for such policies.) Barack Obama received more support from Wall Street than any candidate in history until that time…and the first thing he did was hire back the same folks from the Clinton Era to perpetuate neo-liberal policies. Did both administrations do more good than Republicans that came before and after? No doubt. They were much preferable to them in my views. But, they also in crucial ways exacerbated the forces that undermined real democracy in our society.

Many of us warned that reelecting Trump would pose a threat to American democracy…and surely it does to some degree. But no country in which the top 1 percent of society holds more wealth than the bottom 90 percent is in fact, a democracy. Because without Citizens United but moreso with it, money translates to power. Always has. Always will. (And those with money seek more of it and those with power seek more of it and seek to retain it.) Alexander Hamilton saw this problem clearly, writing, “As riches increase and accumulate in a few hands…the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard.”

Supreme Court justices have not always been as servile toward the wealthy as the majority in our current court are today. Justice Louis Brandeis famously and more importantly accurately said, “We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of the few. But, we can’t have both.” And the fact that more great wealth is today concentrated in the hands of a smaller proportion of Americans means the situation is more dire than it was in either Hamilton’s time or that of Brandeis roughly a century ago.

Compounding the problem is the aforementioned problem that the wealthiest and most powerful in any society tend to use the tools at their disposal to influence society (media, schools, churches, etc.) to persuade citizens that society is working well if it produces the wealth and stability that serves the interests of the superempowered. I’m not just talking about political sloganeering. I’m talking about something deeper. I’m talking about shaping a culture so that people’s deepest beliefs and even their sense of identity is linked to serving the objectives of those in charge. This was done by feudal lords and the church working in unison to say, serve the state today and gain your reward in heaven and it was done by bosses throughout history persuading people that the very value in their lives came from the work they did (for someone else.) Today, being an American means being for unfettered capitalism (anything that seeks equity is socialist and thus by definition evil and anti-American).

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Antonio Gramsci described this as cultural hegemony—the ability of those in charge to inculcate into the rest of society beliefs that served the interests of those in positions of power. When I mentioned this before, I said I would return to this idea and that, as you may have guessed by now, was the origin of the thinking behind this post. He felt that the only way to produce change in society was to create a counter-hegemonic cultural force that would undo some of the exploitive core beliefs. Naturally, because Gramsci was a communist, he is instantly discredited…as are all writers who have promoted philosophical approaches that have promoted community interests over those of the individual or a more active role for government as a force to bring social benefits to all citizens.

But here’s the thing: on this point Gramsci was right. (He was wrong on many others.) Just as on some points Marx was right and on some points liberal economic thinkers like John Maynard Keynes was correct and on some points modern societies influenced by socialism from Europe to Asia have much to teach us if we could only hear them above the din of the beliefs indoctrinated in us since our childhoods.

Trump can do much damage and we must be on guard against that. But while some of the damage he may do might be grave other elements of it might be undone. But they will not be undone in a way that truly restores democracy in America unless we reject the idea that prior to Trump we were actually a functioning democracy. I know that is a brain-bender for many people and will lead to my arguments being dismissed out of hand by some, but nonetheless, I deeply believe it is true and that our real mission must therefore be to produce a cultural change in the way Americans see their lives, their society and their system of government that is more grounded in truth and less influenced by the self-interests of the few who seek to exploit the many.

Perhaps excesses by Trump and Musk and their ilk may make it easier for us to help begin to produce that kind of change. I tend to believe that they will if we actively draw attention to them and their consequences, to the corruption that is likely to be not just endemic but a central goal of the next administration. Perhaps the changes that could be ushered in—for better or for worse—by the huge sea-change in our societal and economic structures due to the advent of the age of artificial intelligence (which in my view is as big a transformational moment as the industrial revolution that influenced thinkers like Adam Smith, Marx and many of the founders of this country) will create an opportunity and and impetus for such changes.

Whatever the case, we should not underestimate the immensity or the urgency of the task at hand. Protecting our system from further degradation by the incoming administration is vitally important. But if we believe that, we must recognize that there is a greater mission of which we cannot, we must not lose sight.