POSTULATE

 Postulate:

There are those who predict doom and gloom for the U.S.

Everything from Fascism to a complete societal breakdown, while others believe it will be less severe, more a return to an era of Jim Crow, banned abortions, rightwing policies.

Others, and I include myself in this, think this is all overblown. I grant you, it looks bad right now, but we did un-elect the One and Done, even in Red states electric charging stations are popping up, solar farms popping up, Confederate statues being taken down, etc.

BUT it is also what we don't see, at least in the Media that likes to spread Angst.

I have posted this on previous threads, but let me try again:

Black and white kids playing together.

Gay couples opening walking down the street.

Prior to Covid, violent crime DOWN across the nation, it really was, but you wouldn't know it from the day to day bombardment of violence in the news.

Growing up all I saw were white faces, now almost all neighborhoods have Hispanic, Muslim, Asian faces. 

OUR YOUNG PEOPLE are overwhelmingly progressive, except of course, they don't vote in large numbers, but one day they will and we will see a swing back to Liberalism in this country.

However, there is no denying, that with the Right becoming more engaged and dangerous, with new Covid variants likely to grow in number, not diminish, with more extremists taking up arms, there is good cause for SOME Angst.

Now for the rub:

The biggest threat to our existence is INTOLERANCE OF SOMEONE'S ELSE'S VIEWS.

We have devolved into a nation of name-callers, labelers, and hatred towards any group that doesn't side with us.

So going back to my opening line: Postulate

Not just for this year or next year, but further down the road, where are we heading?

Are we really heading for Fascism, or just a rollback to the 1950s before there is another correction and we move again towards Progressiveness?

Postulate.

Vaccine regret stories

Some stories are coming out about people who did not get vaccinated and then got infected and became sick. Ones who did not get sick probably don't regret their decisions. Others who are sick now continue to deny they are infected with COVID and firmly believe they have the flu. The New York Times writes:

Some people hospitalized with the virus still vow not to get vaccinated, and surveys suggest that a majority of unvaccinated Americans are not budging. Doctors in Covid units say some patients still refuse to believe they are infected with anything beyond the flu.

“We have people in the I.C.U. with Covid who are denying they have Covid,” said Dr. Matthew Sperry, a pulmonary critical care physician who has been treating Mr. Greene. “It doesn’t matter what we say.”

Still, some hospitals swamped with patients in largely conservative, unvaccinated swaths of the country have begun to recruit Covid survivors as public health messengers of last resort.  

Theirs are Scared Straight stories for a pandemic that has thrived on misinformation, fear and hardened partisan divisions over whether or not to get vaccinated.

One woman in Utah who regretted not getting vaccinated now worries that her hospitalized husband will die from his COVID infection. She wrote on her Facebook page: “We did not get the vaccine. I read all kinds of things about the vaccine and it scared me. So I made the decision and prayed about it and got the impression that we would be ok. If I had the information I have today, we would have gotten vaccinated.”

The woman in Utah with her family at home 

while dad is in the hospital critically ill

She told the NYT, “I have such incredible guilt. I blame myself still. Every day. I will always regret that I listened to the misinformation being put out there. They’re creating fear.” In that, one can clearly see the destructive power of dark free speech and disinformation about COVID. Some people believe it. Some who are infected refuse to believe the literal reality of their situation.

This again shows that dark free speech leads some people to firmly believe things that are clearly false. The NYT described people's fear as coming from “a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories touted by anti-vaccine lawyers and YouTubers, and videos in which anti-vaccine doctors and nurses decried the Covid-19 shots as bioweapons.” 

Questions: What responsibility, if any, do people and groups, e.g., Fox News, the Republican Party, etc., that spread lies about COVID bear for the suffering and deaths their deceit has caused, even if they themselves were deceived? Do people who fall for the lies and emotional manipulation bear full responsibility? Does it matter for those who now express regret are honest and public about their mistake? 

Fox News doing its best to keep 

the pandemic alive and growing

Go Laura! Keep on lying to the public!

Keep on killing people!!

Politifact has a huge list of COVID

lies

On the fragility of democracy

Fareed Zakaria writes in a Washington Post opinion piece:

The news this week that democracy is imperiled in Tunisia — the only success story of the Arab Spring — comes just three weeks after we heard that Haiti’s president had been assassinated. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the government seems unable to establish authority across the country. It got me thinking about one of the fundamental questions of politics: Why is it so difficult to develop and sustain liberal democracy?

The best recent work on this subject comes from a remarkable pair of scholars, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. In their latest book, “The Narrow Corridor,” they have answered this question with great insight. In every society, they note, the first step is simply achieving some measure of order and stability. History is littered with places where gangs, warlords and tribes rule and the state is never able to effectively consolidate power and govern. That was Afghanistan’s past and might be its future.

If political order is rare, liberal political order is rarer still. Liberal democracy is the Goldilocks form of government. It needs a state that is strong enough to govern effectively but not so strong that it crushes the liberties and rights of its people. The authors call this “the shackled Leviathan.” (Thomas Hobbes used the biblical monster Leviathan to describe a powerful state.) Getting to liberal democracy requires that societies travel through a “narrow corridor,” one that allows the state to build power while allowing for the growth of a civil society that asserts itself and fights for rights. Together, they create the delicate balance between stability and freedom. Countries in the West have succeeded because they have managed to build up both strong states and strong societies.

In Afghanistan, despite two decades of efforts, the state has failed to gain control over much of the country, creating what the authors call the “absent Leviathan.” In Egypt, the state is too strong. After a brief flirtation with democracy after the Arab Spring, the country reverted to dictatorship. Other parts of the world have “paper Leviathans” — governments that exercise power mostly to enrich a small elite at the top. Think of Nigeria or Venezuela.

How did the West get Goldilocks politics? The authors cite two opposing forces. First, there was the legacy of the Roman Empire, which provided institutions, laws and traditions that made it possible to create order. Second, the northern European tribes, rooted in egalitarian assemblies, had a tradition of challenging powerful leaders. The contest between nobles and kings — and later, I would add, between church and state, and among the hundreds of states, duchies and principalities of medieval Europe — all helped individual liberty grow and flourish.

Zakaria goes on to argue that liberal democracy in the West is a matter of an unusual history, not cultural superiority. Although a few countries such as India and South Korea had a similar balance, but it is hard to maintain it. Liberal democracy really is fragile and rare. The phenomenon of “illiberal democracy” began to arise in the 1990s when democratically elected leaders started systematically abusing power and depriving people of democratic rights. They attacked and weakened liberal, constitutional government and supporting institutions. Established democracies such as India are moving into anti-democratic authoritarianism. 

Zakaria asserts that Russia lost its democracy and has reverted to dictatorship, apparently the normal human condition. Countries such as the US that have the right state-society balance are in a good situation. The US is in an era of democratic dysfunction, with populism threatening political institutions and norms that used to be taken as neutral. He argues that this anti-democratic mindset is the most dangerous in the Republican Party with its successful push to politicize vote counting and access to voting in red states.

Where does the main threat lie?

Based on poll data, most Republicans, conservatives and a significant number of independents see radical Democrats, socialism and government tyranny as the main threat to democracy and the rule of law. Others see the radical right Republican Party and radical fundamentalist Christianity as the grave and imminent threat, especially in view of the progress that movement has made in the last ~5 years. Where does the most urgent threat lie? 

Is the American liberal democracy a Goldilocks form of government that is inherently too unstable to last much longer? If it is unstable and on the verge of collapse, what is most likely to replace it, e.g., fascist tyranny, socialist tyranny, kleptocratic plutocracy, endless social instability and violence, maybe driven by two flavors (left and right) of autocratic tyranny, Christian theocratic autocracy, etc.? Or, is American democracy just fine and not under any serious imminent threat?

Names and companies to remember: Patrick M. Byrne, former CEO of Overstock. com, et al.

American fascists

By now it is clear that most of the fascist GOP (FGOP) and most of its rank and file want to reject the 2020 election and just install the ex-president by fiat. The most common "reason" is the blatantly false claim there was widespread election fraud  and Biden is illegitimate. The 2nd most common is "to reassure voters that the election was not fraudulent." Neither excuse amounts to anything close to honest or persuasive based on the evidence in the public record so far. For example, the need for voter "reassurance" is based on a continuous torrent of FGOP lies that the election was stolen. 

So, when names of rich and powerful backers and companies of this new American brand of fascism pop up, it seems reasonable to at least mention them. Not surprisingly, most try to hide, downplay or deny their immoral role in fomenting American fascism. They like to invoke plausible deniability and pretend they are patriotic and pro-democracy. Instead, they are fascist thugs lying to the American people to manipulate and betray them and democracy. As usual for autocrats and kleptocrats, they rely heavily on toxic but legal dark free speech.

The New York Times writes today about the fraudulent "vote audit" the FGOP-corrupted state of Arizona is pretending to conduct:

It had been apparent since the review began in April that supporters of Mr. Trump were both donating money to the effort and recruiting volunteers to work on it. But the sources and size of the donations had not been disclosed until Wednesday.

According to the Cyber Ninjas statement, the largest donation, $3.25 million, was made by a newly created group, The America Project, led by Patrick M. Byrne, the former chief executive of the Overstock. com website and a prominent proponent of false claims that the November election was rigged.

Mr. Byrne resigned his post at Overstock in 2019 after it was disclosed that he had an intimate relationship with Maria Butina, a gun-rights activist who was jailed in 2018 as an unregistered foreign agent for Russia and later deported. He later said he had contributed $500,000 to the Arizona review, and produced a film featuring [Cyber Ninja CEO] Doug Logan that claimed the November election was fraudulent.

The statement said that another pro-Trump group, America’s Future, contributed $976,514 to the review. The group this year named Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, the retired Army officer Michael T. Flynn, as its chairman. Mr. Flynn is a vocal conspiracy theorist who once called for the military to “rerun” the 2020 election.

An additional $605,000 came from Voices and Votes, a group organized by Christina Bobb, an anchor for the pro-Trump cable channel One America News, who solicited donations for the review while covering it. A fourth group that was reported to have donated $550,000, Defending the Republic, is tied to Sidney Powell, the former attorney to Mr. Trump who led a failed legal campaign to overturn the election results.

The last reported donor, the Legal Defense Fund for the American Republic, was reported to have donated $280,000. The fund was established by a Michigan lawyer, Robert Matheson, to help finance Ms. Powell’s lawsuits, but since has launched other fund-raising efforts.

Of course, one cannot overlook the fascist company Cyber Ninjas and its fascist CEO Doug Logan. Logan is a well-known spreader of the anti-democracy stolen vote lie. He is making money from doing the faux vote audit in corrupted Arizona. The NYT reported that although Logan claims the identity of its funders was being made public “as we continue our commitment to transparency,” that is yet another lie. The audit has been opaque. Logan fought efforts to allow observers of his sloppy, faux audit. 

Logan was forced to reveal the funders in response to an Arizona county court order two weeks ago that the sources of the review’s funding be released to the public. That court order came after fascist Republicans in the state Senate fought against making them and other records of the faux audit process public. That's fascist "transparency" for you. The rest of us call it opacity hiding lies, corruption and anti-democratic sleaze.

American fascism

To summarize, here's the list of corrupt FGOP fascists and their lying fascist groups and companies from this article:

Patrick M. Byrne, traitor, liar and fascist former CEO, 

Overstock. com, The America Project

Doug Logan, liar and fascist CEO, Cyber Ninjas

at the "audit" in Arizona

Logan without the mask

Michael T. Flynn, traitor, liar and fascist pardoned felon, 

America's Future

Christina Bobb, liar and professional fascist propagandist, 

One America News, Voices and Votes

Sidney Powell, liar and fascist lawyer, 

Defending the Republic

Robert Matheson, liar and fascist lawyer, 

Legal Defense Fund for the American Republic

Notice how some of the fascist political groups involved in attacking the Republic and democracy have names that imply or are the literal opposite of what they actually do, e.g., "Defending the Republic" is attacking the Republic. That tactic is common in politics. To mislead people, all kinds of things get named to invoke the opposite of what they want and work for. Even the names of these groups constitutes a lie. Lies are everywhere in American fascism. More honest and transparent names would be:

The America Project = The American Fascism Project

America's Future = America's Fascist Future

Voices and Votes = Fascist Voices and Votes

Defending the Republic = Building a Fascist Republic

Legal Defense Fund for the American Republic = Legal Defense Fund for a Fascist America

And, it's tax exempt!

Unfortunately, all of the groups are (probably) tax exempt "non-profit" organizations under tax law. In essence, the American Tax code subsidizes fascism in its attempt to overthrow democracy and the rule of law in America. And, it just might succeed. That is really screwed up.

American fascists

Questions: Is the emphasis here on fascism over the top or warranted in view of the evidence in the public record so far? Whatabout Antifa?

If the bib fits, wear it ;(

                                 

What is your opinion on state governments offering incentives for the unvaccinated to get the COVID shot(s)?

My opinion is below in the posting area.

Thanks for posting your opinion and recommending.

What happened to the annual flu season?

Data coming in indicates that 2020-2021 flu season has been eliminated. Measures to slow the COVID pandemic appear to have almost completely stopped the spread of flu this year. An April 2021 article in Scientific American, Flu Has Disappeared for More Than a Year, included this data:

Extended data through this month indicates that the flu virus never took off. Infections in North America, temperate South America and Oceania all remained at very low levels so far this year. SciAm commented: "When Scientific American first published influenza data in November 2020, the 2020-2021 flu season looked like a possible no-show. Since then, cases around the world remained near zero."

At least, one can reasonably believe that (1) masks are effective to some extent for flu and probably most other virus diseases, and (2) COVID is more infectious than this year's flu strains. A few science deniers continue to argue that masks don't work and COVID is a hoax. The flu data indicates that masks do work to at least some extent and flu isn't responsible for deaths that have been attributed to COVID.