The Rant:
There is no unified Right Wing: The robber-barons are ruling the roost. They've created an army of business leaders, think tanks, politicians, government workers, academics, religious leaders and general zealots to do their dirty work. These people -- leaders and followers -- hold some or all of the following dangerous beliefs: that free enterprise is holy; that the true core American values are that competition and private ownership of everything one can own is sacrosanct; that what motivates people are profits and nothing comes close to profits as a motivational tool; that cost-cutting in the name of profits is a holy activity; that God is on their side; that wealth proves one's righteousness; that their success proves the worth of democracy and proves US democracy is just fine the way it is; that the United States is chosen specially by God; that Rapture is coming and they've got to get all Jews to Israel and while they're doing it, they can do whatever we want as saved Christians since they ARE saved since they've proclaimed Jesus their personal savior; having so declared, there's nothing they can do that is really going to get them in trouble with Jesus when he comes; that poor and suffering people have only themselves to blame; that therefore it's fine to perpetuate their problems; that the government should never interfere in the market if it's not in their interest for it to do but should when it is.
They imagine their own wealth or their own imagined salvation or both prove the truth of these beliefs. The beliefs gild tawdry unexamined motives: greed and power lust. Humble as it may sound, being one of the guys may also be a motive. These people socialize with each other all over the place. And fear, too, may haunt some of them: fear of meaningless, emptiness, loss of prestige, who knows? Maybe even fear of prison. Maybe fear of damnation.
This army is organized from the top. When the organization starts to slip, the army will start falling apart: anti-gay Christians will start noticing that there are gays in the Bush Administration. Libertarians will see that their private enterprise friends have turned into the state and are actually intruding on their lives. Small businesses will realize they have no power -- if they haven't already -- and that there is no such thing as competition: there are only alliances and payback schemes and cutthroat tactics. Superpatriots will realize that many of the most powerful business interests are international and don't give a shit about whether the U.S. as a nation survives as long as they do. Free enterprise folks will realize there's no such thing anymore.
How can we push them along the road to disintegration? With the facts, among other things, and with some big efforts to draw them together and to present them and to yell about them and show how the facts betray the values and needs of the little people that the Republican Party so assiduously courts.
Here in Texas, we ourselves footsoldiers starting down the road of state and national fascism.
Fascist is a strong word to throw around and maybe not quite right. Maybe corportist would be better. But let's look at fascism for a minute. According to the Columbia Encyclopedia, 2001 Edition,
Fascism, especially in its early stages, is obliged to be antitheoretical and frankly opportunistic in order to appeal to many diverse groups. Nevertheless, a few key concepts are basic to it. First and most important is the glorification of the state and the total subordination of the individual to it.
"Aha!" you say, but this is not just the United States of America, this is TEXAS we're talking about: Texas, the heart of the home of individualism! But just look around you...at the Ford trucks and the W stickers and the giant, glittering churches and the carefully cultivated drawls and the cowboy boots in the suburban Wal-Mart.. We wear the talismen of individualism to prove our membership in the state of mind of Texas. The Encyclopedia continues:
A second ruling concept of fascism is embodied in the theory of social Darwinism. The doctrine of survival of the fittest and necessity of struggle for life is applied by fascists to the the life of a nation state. Peaceful, complacent nations are seen as doomed to fall before more dynamic nes, making struggle and aggressive militarism a leading characteristic of the fascists state. Imperialism is a logical outcome of this dogma.
Now Texas is not an imperial power, but the drive to trample over decision-making processes and to insist on the rightness of things like true discussions of gigantic plans like the Trans Texas Corridor are justified by a belief in a very aggressive use of fear of "falling behind." And you'll note it's in gigantic private-public profit.making projects that all this glitz is applied. It's not applied to the needs of the people who actually live in the state, like children. The Encyclopedia continues,
[Fascism's] essentially vague and emotional natue facilitates the development of unique national varieties whose leaders often deny indignantly that they are fascists at all. (All quotes from The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001.
Texas state government is at this point in the hands of one party which is in control and partner to enormous business interests. It's not just the corrupt good-old-boy network with dirty hands of a decade or so ago. Today, although lipservice is given to public participation, mechanisms for effective discussion are practically nonexistent. Texas practices are linked to national practices: they are the cutting edge, if you will (though obviously not because our leaders are progressive), the vanguard.
A look at the development of the Trans Texas Corridor will prove this. Before we hit the really big time, however, we will find the development of the Camino Colombia Toll Road outside of Laredo instructive.
