2024 Election Season Ends... for now
Many would agree that the 2024 election season has been the weirdest in years – not only because Trump, Harris and Walz are candidates who keep satirists in business, but because many future historians will write that 2024 was the year it became painfully obvious to almost everyone it was also when most major media companies dropped all pretense of objectivity and professionalism, giving full-throated support to a public/private partnership with one of our major political parties in the information distribution business – to which point I'm fairly sure the ABC-sponsored debate was the first time I witnessed a candidate having to take on three people at the same time.
Politically-motivated attacks calling candidates either fascist or communist are not only not helpful because accusations of that sort are lacking in historical context, but miss the mark by revealing absence of understanding of what those terms mean.
Old Soviet-style communism, replicated in part in such places as Cuba and Venezuela, eliminated private ownership of industry and agriculture, putting party apparatchiks in charge of running nearly all parts of the economy. Whether or not this was a good idea can be answered by observing the standard of living and morale of people who have lived under the system for a long time.
National socialism (fascism) is a system of private/public partnerships where most ownership of the means of production, both agricultural, industrial, and the service economy (including education and the dissemination of news and information) remains in private hands but under the strict scrutiny and control of the state. For the purpose of this discussion the "state” is defined as the dictatorship of the unelected, whether an individual or an autonomous “administrative state”.
In Germany during the 1930s, the Third Reich had close business alliances with favored companies such as Bayer/IG Farben, (manufacturers of Zyklon B gas); Hugo Boss (makers of uniforms for the SS, Hitler Youth, the Wehrmacht, and in recent years clothing for fashionistas everywhere) and others. Thomas Watson and IBM, pioneers in the data processing industry, spent time in Germany advising the Third Reich on best ways to use the new technology to more minutely analyze and catagorize the nation's population, especially according to age, sex, mental ability, religion, ethnic backgound and other characteristics. Officially dividing people by ethnicity would in later years be enthusiastically encouraged by political activists and made part of public policy in the United States. At any rate, Germany was a pioneer in the shameful business of de-emphasizing the importance of the individual in favor of enshrining group identity – while at the same time demonizing or scape-goating the people least favored by the state. I leave it to the reader to judge which group that is in the U.S. at the present time.
The similarities between fascism and one of our major political parties are many – both depend on control of the media and the dissemination of information to the public in order to promote the party's agenda. The National Socialists in Germany organized the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda directed by Joseph Goebbels – in the United States of today (2024), ABC/Disney, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, NPR & PBS do much the same – protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. One of the interesting things about the current political establishment's neo-fascist ambitions, is that its agenda is being marketed ingeniously by much of the media to the more gullible elements of society as being somehow virtuous. I suppose party faithful marching in the streets of Berlin during the 1930s also thought they were virtue-signalling.
Although much has been written and said about Biden/Harris as less than ideal heads of state because of their demonstrated ineptitude in formulating or carrying out sound public policy (i.e. the economy, mismanagement of the border by design and executive order, propensity to involve the nation in foreign wars, apologists for crime, etc.), a good case can be made that they have been excellent place holders for their party – enamored enough by the trappings of the office to be willing to take orders from the unseen dictatorship of the unelected. Proponents of one party rule will definitely vote accordingly.
