This essay begins at the first half of one central question: “Can it happen here?” The answer, of course, is yes, it can happen here. In fact, it can happen anywhere. The evil in the human heart is universal, and each of us battles to subdue it every day. Well, that’s not exactly true. I am certain that there are lots of people who do not fight the evil within them, but I don’t personally know anyone in the Trump Administration.
Also, in case you have absolutely no historical consciousness whatsoever and, therefore, no concept of what this question means, I suppose it is my responsibility to save you the trouble of ‘googling’ it. ‘Can it happen here?’ refers specifically to the question as to whether or not a regime as totalitarian and brutal as the Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler in Germany between the years 1933 and 1945 can happen here. For us in the United States the question is specific to our society. In fact, every nation must ask itself this question often and take the steps necessary to insure that it doesn’t happen here (wherever ‘here’ for them is).
Unfortunately, in the United States of America, it is happening here. In the wake of Charlottesville, we must all come to grips with the reality that there are vast cadres of willing Sturm Abteilung (Storm Troopers) standing ready for a single word from their would-be Hitler, Donald Trump. The moment he says “go,” they will unleash their violent fury on every minority person, women’s organization, individual they may suspect as being a member of the LGBT community, and ‘liberal’ they can reach. Their reach will be long and they will be, for the most part, protected by local police forces.
Since I began this essay, one particular event has occurred that requires mention. On Friday, August 25th, President Donald Trump extended a presidential pardon to convicted felon, Joe Arpaio. Mr. Arpaio, the former sheriff of Mariposa County, Arizona, was convicted in federal court of criminal contempt of a court order to stop policing Mariposa County in a clearly and unapologetic racist and bigoted manner. He instructed his deputies to engage in blatant ethnic profiling of Latino Americans and held them without cause or trial in conditions which one can only describe as ‘barbaric’ at best.
This is clearly anathema to everything for which we have been told, since we were children, that America stands and means; both to us and the world at large. To put it in simpler terms, Joe Arpaio is as un-American as one person could possibly be; he stands in opposition to every reason why the good people of this world come here to make better lives for themselves and their families. Mr. Arpaio slouches through his day as the darling little poster child for the white supremacists and nazis that have come out of the darkness since the election of Donald Trump. It is happening here.
Since we are all, now, acutely aware that it can happen here, the second half of the central question becomes the relevant point we must address: Can it succeed here? This, my friends, is really the core of the central question. Since it is happening here, the question is, can it succeed here? The answer to this question is also ‘yes,’ but it will not be easy, and in this vein I will discuss the total state and the autocracy mentioned in the title.
The Total State:
We all know that it succeeded in Germany, and this success has, since the defeat of the Third Reich in the Second World War, given rise to what is known among historians of this period as “The German Question.” Simply posed, The German Question asks: Is there something about the German that predisposes him to such brutal, totalitarian rule? I believe the answer is ‘no.’ However, I do believe that there is something about humans that predisposes us to such brutal totalitarian rule. A political map of our world showing the locations of political prisons should be proof enough.
Why did it succeed in Germany? After their team finished second in the First World War, Germany had a government imposed on it that was completely foreign to its history and the consciousness of its people: the Weimar Republic.
This experiment in republicanism in Germany might have succeeded, were it not for the circumstances in which it had to try to take root. The government of Weimar became the scapegoat amongst almost all politicians across the political spectrum in Germany for the country’s social and economic woes. The generals and politicians that led her into the disastrous war of 1914 – 1918 did not have to shoulder the blame for their actions, as many also blamed the republic for Germany’s defeat in the war, even though it was not even established until 1919.
We must also understand that the domestic circumstances in which Germany found itself in the late 1920s and early 1930s made the nation ripe for the message of a madman like Adolf Hitler. A small sampling of these circumstances are: hyper-inflation which reduced the value of the Reichsmark to a low of four trillion marks to the dollar in the 1920s (it required a wheelbarrow full of money just to buy a loaf of bread), massive unemployment across all sectors of the economy and labor force, political unrest that saw the two opposing extremes, communists and fascists, engaged in regular street brawls, and perhaps most importantly, a vengeful peace imposed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles which stripped it of land in the Ruhr Valley (the heart of its industrial sector), much of its armed forces and, as many saw, its pride. These are only a few of the elements that made the German people susceptible to the lies of the nazis. Add to all of this the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, which gripped every industrialized nation on the planet, and you have a socio-political recipe for disaster.
Most importantly, however, within this context, is the fact that Germany had no history of liberal republicanism of which to speak. In stark social and economic times a nation will revert to what it knows in order to find solace and peace. The political system of Germany proceeded from numerous kingdoms, principalities and small city-states to one central government, essentially imposed upon it by Prussia, and under the rule of Kaisers Wilhelm I and II in the period from 1871 to 1918. In the midst of their depression and humiliation the German people were ready to submit their liberty for the security of a new Kaiser. Strange though it may seem, German unification into a single powerful and dangerous nation-state in 1871 occurred in a ceremony at the Bourbon palace of Versailles in France. So I guess we can blame the French for Germany.
That’s joke, please laugh.
In order to be successful, a republic that functions through the democratic process must be something that the people choose. It cannot be imposed, it must evolve from the desires of the people for freedom. Luckily, people will always, as far as I have been able to deduce, choose to be a ‘citizen of a republic’ over a ‘subject of a kingdom,’ or a ‘minion of a total state.’ It is unfortunate for Germany and, indeed, the world as a whole, that the German people did not have the opportunity to experience this evolution among its political leadership prior to 1933. The Federal Republic of Germany of the twenty-first century has over seventy years of democratic rule behind it and this should, for the present time, hold it securely.
The Autocracy:
It succeeded in Germany in 1933 and it is succeeding in the Russian Federation in 2017.
I’ll give Vladimir Putin one thing (other than my foot in his ass). He is a very astute politician. This is not because he turned Donald Trump’s entire inner circle of advisors (and a good portion of his family) into his personal bitches. You don’t have to be astute, or even very smart to do that, you only have to be awake to wrangle a deal like that out of Trump.
I don’t like Vladimir Putin’s politics, but I can tell you this; he will go down in history as one of the most adaptable and renowned political minds of the early twenty-first century. Regardless of the undemocratic nature of the policies he pursues and the autocracy he is trying to establish in Russia, his political legacy will far outlast his human life. Unfortunately, that legacy will be what he is making of it; a return to the cruel and jack-booted rule of the Soviet Union.
The question for this essay is ‘why is Putin succeeding?’ I think it is, again, just like with the Germans of the Weimar Republic, a lack of history of political and personal liberty. If Putin has his way, this will be the downfall of democracy in Russia. We must remember that the people of Russia went from centuries of monarchical rule ending in the Romanov Dynasty, straight to the totally enveloping rule of the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union. It was only in the late 1980s and early 1990s that the Russian people finally tasted anything even approaching western liberal society and its basic freedoms and personal liberties.
Unfortunately, this liberalization of society was accompanied by a steep and noticeable decline in Russian military power on a global scale, and it is this decline that Putin has exploited to his full advantage. As Russia turned inwards to try and heal the scars of Soviet rule, the United States government basked in a false glory of having ‘won the cold war’ and sought to establish a unipolar world pecking order with itself and its corporate partners at the top.
Russia, as a new democracy, had the opportunity to seize the initiative in pushing for democratic reforms in many, if not all, of her former satellite states, and she did, for a while, but the momentum could not be maintained. The reasons for this are many, but the continued push of the United States into areas of former Soviet influence was as much to blame as anything else. The results of these influences are — just as it was in Germany — a descent into the familiar; the strong man.
Us
“To be an Englishman is a fact, to be a Frenchman is a fact, to be a German is a fact. The be an American is an idea.” We have to ask ourselves a very important question: “What is the ‘idea’ of being an American becoming?” Not to us, but to the rest of the world. It is becoming this: “I guarantee you, you sons of bitches, that the last thing I want here is your damned tired, your filthy poor, and your nasty huddled masses yearning to breathe free camping out in my back yard.” That may sound harsh, but it’s the truth. That is the new voice of America in the world.
The true America of today, in relation to that which it has always appeared to be to the rest of the world, is now nothing more than a bad joke. Trump is the harlequin, the fool, the court jester running the tiny dog show. His dogs are Scott Pruitt, Steve Bannon, Betsy DeVos, and a host of others who bounce about him in a sycophantic delirium seeking to destroy all this country has marketed itself to be in this world.
Essentially, regardless of the problems we face internally as a society; rampant and increasingly vocal racism, a growing culture of unbridled exploitation of the worker, a corporate consumerist culture that devours the soul of any who buy into it, and a dominant fundamentalist evangelical religion that defiles the name of Jesus in the name of the American empire and ever greater profit for itself, America still represents something special to the huddled masses of the world. America, since it is an ‘idea’ above all else is, first, last, and always, how others in the world perceive it.
Michael J. Koplow wrote quite well in his article in Foreign Policy Digest [Jan. 30, 2017]: “…people around the world have historically seen the United States not just as a place on the map, but as something bigger. The power of the American dream and the iconography of the Statue of Liberty mean something. They have value far beyond feel-good expressions of patriotism. They represent America as something for which to strive, as an expression of hopes and dreams for a better life, as a fulfillment of a quest for ultimate safety and prosperity and liberty. They represent America not just as a place for Americans, but, as John Winthrop stated, ‘a shining city upon a hill for the entire world.’ The power of the United States comes from many sources, but more than anything else it comes from the strength of the American idea.”
He continues a few paragraphs later with this: “This is the challenge that we now face…in evaluating everything that comes over the next four years, do not lose sight for a moment of how powerful and important for all of us it is to maintain America as an idea. Doing so will be more important than the sum total of every individual policy outcome. In all instances, do your best to ensure that we continue to lift our lamp beside the golden door. Because when the idea of America is snuffed out, we forever become just another country.”
So, here is the crux. The only thing that will prevent it from succeeding here is our history of personal liberty and the freedom of the individual. This has been the core of this great American experiment ever since its inception and all of American history revolves around this core set of values.
Yet therein also lie the great problems. First, our ‘history of personal liberty and the freedom of the individual’ is a lie and in truth applies only to white males over the age of twenty-one. The dissipation of this ‘white male privilege’ as ‘human rights’ to all genders, and racial and ethnic minorities is the exact thing that Trump, his henchmen, and their solid voting block of poor white deplorables hope to destroy.
Second, though many will say that our constitution will protect us from such a power grab in this country, I think we all know that those who believe such a thing are living in a dream world. No constitution is worth the paper or parchment upon which it is written unless the people governed by its articles and amendments are prepared to stand up and enforce its ideals and principles when it is challenged. If we are unable or unwilling to defend our republic (in the streets if necessary), then we’re already done. We’ve lost and it will succeed here. If we leave it to the cowards in state and national Houses of Representatives and Senate chambers to defend our republic in the halls of government, then we’re already done. We’ve lost and it will succeed here.
My friends, we have to do it. The time will come, it is inevitable. It will come in our lifetime. The survival of America as an idea is in our hands. We must not fail ourselves, our children, or, indeed, the world. We cannot stop it from happening here (we are too late for that), but we cannot allow it to succeed here.
Peace and love to all,
Niemand