Everything about how the world works became much clearer after I read a book last year called “Democracy in Chains.” The author did a great job and she wrote on a dense and complicated subject in a way I, just an average person, understood quite well. The central focus of the book was, in my view, taxes.
From other readings I have come to understand that taxes are what make a state function. This is an inescapable fact those of the libertarian persuasion refuse to accept. And it is greed that blinds them and leads them down a path that results in nothing but ruin and anarchy for everyone. Almost everything that has gone wrong in America, and by extension, the world, has to do with the rich avoiding taxes.
If Fascism was replaced by Neoliberalism then Communism was replaced by Oligarchs. The two go together as Neoliberalism is an ideology and Oligarchy is the practice of that ideology. America is presently fighting a form of Fascism called Trumpism that is a response to Neoliberalism. Across the spectrum the Neoliberals want to be Oligarchs and are using the Trumpist dream of a Fascist America, who call any opposing them Communists. It is a strange brew whose main ingredient is the destruction of truth and this era has, in fact, been named, “Post-truth: Post-truth is a philosophical and political concept for “the disappearance of shared objective standards for truth”[1] and the “circuitous slippage between facts or alt-facts, knowledge, opinion, belief, and truth”.[2] Post-truth discourse is often contrasted with the forms taken by scientific methods and inquiry.[3] The term garnered widespread popularity, in the form of “post-truth politics“, in the period around the 2016 United States presidential election and the Brexit referendum. It was named Word of the Year in 2016 by the Oxford Dictionary where it is defined as “Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”.[4][5]
And that…is the truth. They (Republicans) have calculated quite carefully that Trumps rabid base is the key to them staying in power for life and becoming rich with no apparent risk for trying to do so….so why not try? They would be stupid not to try. That is what they are. And if we let them we deserve it. They believe that. If enough democrats do not understand the danger America faces over the next 4 years and work to vote them out the Trumpists could destroy this nation. “History doesn’t repeat itself, but It often rhymes” – Mark Twain. The parallels with Fascism in Europe are obvious.
Ice on the Moon 