How America helped get Trump to where he is

Sam Smith - As noted here before, Donald Trump has more in common with Latin American dictators than he does with traditional fascism. His policies are based more on his personal sociopathy than on ideological goals. He regards America as another one of his personal businesses with which he can do whatever he wants.

But regardless of one's definition, what Trump is doing is dramatically escalating the disparity between that which America is meant to believe and what it does. As early as 15 years ago, I began writing about the end of the first American republic, What is happening now, however, is far worse because it is not only Trump's madness that is at work, it is being aided by other segments of our government that won't stand up to him. It is fair to say that now not only the White House, but the US Senate (which isn't even being allowed to vote on key bills) and the Supreme Court (which is increasingly reflecting its near right-wing majority) are in effective coalition with the worst and most dangerous president of our history.

While Trump has the idiosyncratic character of a self-absorbed dictator, there are plenty of things that have happened in the past four decades that made his ascendancy possible. Here is where the fascism model is useful. To understand fascism, one must not confuse it with many aspect of Nazism, its partner in World War II. Fascism actually got its start in Italy, as I explained some years ago:

One needs to look not at Hitler but at the founder of fascism, Mussolini. What Mussolini founded was the estato corporativo - the corporative state or corporatism. Writing in Economic Affairs in the mid 1970s, R.E. Pahl and J. T. Winkler described corporatism as a system under which government guides privately owned businesses towards order, unity, nationalism and success. They were quite clear as to what this system amounted to: "Let us not mince words. Corporatism is fascism with a human face. . . An acceptable face of fascism, indeed, a masked version of it..."

Thus, although the model generally cited in defense of organized capitalism is that of the contemporary Japanese, the most effective original practitioners of a corporative economy were the Italians. Unlike today's Japanese, but like contemporary America, their economy was a war economy.

Adrian Lyttelton, describing the rise of Italian fascism in The Seizure of Power, writes: "A good example of Mussolini's new views is provided by his inaugural speech to the National Exports Institute on 8 July 1926. . . Industry was ordered to form 'a common front' in dealing with foreigners, to avoid 'ruinous competition,' and to eliminate inefficient enterprises. . . The values of competition were to be replaced by those of organization: Italian industry would be reshaped and modernized by the cartel and trust. . .There was a new philosophy here of state intervention for the technical modernization of the economy serving the ultimate political objectives of military strength and self-sufficiency; it was a return to the authoritarian and interventionist war economy."

Lyttelton writes that "fascism can be viewed as a product of the transition from the market capitalism of the independent producer to the organized capitalism of the oligopoly." It was a point that Orwell had noted when he described fascism as being but an extension of capitalism. Lyttelton quoted Nationalist theorist Affredo Rocco: "The Fascist economy is. . . an organized economy. It is organized by the producers themselves, under the supreme direction and control of the State."

The Germans had their own word for it: wehrwirtschaft. It was not an entirely new idea there. As William Shirer points out in the Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich, 18th and 19th century Prussia had devoted some five-sevenths of its revenue on the Army and "that nation's whole economy was always regarded as primarily an instrument not of the people's welfare but of military policy."

I use the 1980s as the kickoff for the major change in American economics, ethics, and the relative political power of people vs. corporations.  For example, labor unions began their membership decline in that decade, Reagan promoted a corporatist agenda, and the Democrats began to lose interest in legislation that aided the working class. The media increasingly presented as fact the economic biases of corporate America. 

In a recent article, Ralph Nader describes another trend that helped bring Trump to the fore:

For avalanche-level lying, deceiving, and misleading, mega-mimic Donald Trump need look no further than the history of the corporate advertising industry and the firms that pay them.

Dissembling is so deeply ingrained in commercial culture that the Federal Trade Commission and the courts don’t challenge exaggerated general claims that they call “puffery.”

Serious corporate deception is a common sales technique. At times it cost consumers more than dollars. It has led to major illness and loss of life.

Because history doesn't interest the media much, Americans have little idea of how much their government has changed. For example, in my book Shadows of Hope, published in 1974, I wrote:

During the [initial] 100-day session of Congress, Franklin Roosevelt pushed through legislation that rescued the banking industry, slashed government pay, established the Civilian Conservation Corps, passed the National Industrial Recovery Act, provided relief for millions of citizens, regulated Wall Street, created bank deposit insurance and set up the TVA.

Aside from the years of  Lyndon Johnson we have not only not see anything comparable, the Democrats have not even sought it with any meaningful energy. 

 In fact, the Democrats now find themselves paying the price of ignoring the successful values of the New Deal and Great Society, even to the extent that a con artist like Trump can successfully convince large numbers of white workers that he's on their side. Labor union membership, which used to be core to Democratic politics now represents only 7% of the private working class. And as the powerful in the party became increasingly well educated they increasingly took a more classist view of what was once a key constituency. 

Count the number of times you hear a Democratic presidential candidate speak of  labor unions, anti-trust or small business and you'll get some idea of how things have changed. To win this election the Democrats need to clearly realign themselves with the working class and with the small firms that provide an economic contrast to the system that allowed someone as awful as Trump to flourish.