Comments
GELFAND’S WORLD - It's been an interesting week. It would appear that Donald Trump is out to achieve much of what he promised, and that includes being a dictator for at least the first few days of his presidency. There is, of course, no reason to assume that he would improve on his tone, ethics, or morals anytime after these first few days, so we look to be in for a long ride. It all depends on whether there is any dedication to the Constitution or to traditional American values either in the congress or in the Supreme Court.
One immediate example is a judge pointing out that Trump's arguments about revoking birthright citizenship are bogus. The idea is simple and preposterous: The 14th Amendment was enacted in the post-Civil-War period when it was necessary to establish the end of slavery and the rights of the former slaves. It defines a right of citizenship for any and all who are born in the United States, with a minor exception that usually is interpreted to exclude such categories as babies born of foreign diplomats. The broad understanding of the 14th Amendment to include all those who are born here as citizens has frosted the anti-immigration folks for a long time, and a few have come up with attempts to say that the original language really doesn't mean what the rest of us think it means. Thursday's news cites a judge who points out that the executive order is wrong and unenforceable.
Bluntly speaking, Trump can sign all the executive orders he wants, but they are subject to court review and the birthright citizenship order is already coming under fire. Unless, that is, the congress and the federal courts opt in to fascism, in the sense that they give Trump the power to do bad things in contradiction to what the Constitution says.
So we are motivated to look for symptoms of incipient fascism. And within the past few days, we've had a couple.
Let's start with the reaction to a sermon preached as part of the inaugural ceremonies, in which the preacher asked the new president essentially to apply the Christian virtue of mercy to people, including immigrants. Perhaps this might be interpreted as a bit extreme because it was delivered as part of the inaugural ceremonies, but it seems to me to be well within the realm of what preachers say. In any case, the preacher's remarks are well within the bounds of protected speech as described under the First Amendment.
So what was the right-wing reaction? Some simply found it a bit distasteful that their president was being put in discomfort on his big day. That is their right, and also fully within the right to freedom of speech and of thought.
But one congressman took it a step farther. Mike Collins, a Republican from Georgia, said, " The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list."
The remark is either especially ignorant or viciously spiteful, considering how far it goes from the law and Constitutional order. In other words, it is playing at a new fascism, an image of a new America in which one's speech and thoughts are subject to government oversight and, when found to be those of the political opposition, subject to severe punishment.
To repeat, the core element of this new American Fascism is that political opposition can be found to be criminal and can be punished. One wonders how long it will take this group to decide that voting for the wrong side is equally criminal.
One other example of fascist symbolism raising its ugly head.
Most of you have seen it. Elon Musk, while appearing in public, executed a Nazi salute. Just to make sure that he couldn't be misinterpreted, he did it again.
I'm going to add my own interpretation here, which is that Musk has some emotional and intellectual eccentricities that put him pretty far out along the end of the curve. It's not exactly a new finding. But what is of interest is the subject he chose for his little joke. He didn't make fun of gay people in the way that English comedy has been doing for a century. He didn't make fun of the military, as Sid Caesar used to do. He didn't make fun of the French or of Trump's eating habits.
No. Although he had dozens of possible subjects, he chose to make fun of our civilization's repulsion towards Naziism. Towards Fascism. The fact that he would use the Hitler salute to taunt the majority of Americans about the new regime is really telling.
It's like those stories about truth coming from the lips of a child. "The emperor has no clothes!" In this case, Musk, the childlike man, is saying that fascism is now the new rule.
Put all these little symbolisms and executive orders together, and you've got a signal that Donald Trump and his loyal followers are willing to violate every previously accepted norm if the result is to punish anyone who says anything negative to or about the new president.
Addendum
Kevin Drum points out that the Trump administration has just attacked the National Institutes of Health in a particularly damaging way. You can read it here. Basically, the NIH has been forbidden to carry out the usual ways that it considers research applications and gets funds to researchers. Cancer research? On hold. Experimental treatment for heart attacks or strokes? Not this week. Alzheimer's treatment? Forget it.
Drum suggests that this may be part of Trump's payoff to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. If so, it represents Kennedy's lack of judgment and Trump's weird approach to appointments.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics. He can be reached at [email protected])
