The title of a recent article by Steven Rosenfeld caught my attention: "If We Don’t Act Now, Fascism Will Be on Our Doorstep, Says Yale Historian," (March 15, 2017).
I'm not happy about the fear meme embedded and critiqued in the article, i.e. prepare for the worst. It's as if we're coaxing it into existence.
I'm not happy about the fear meme embedded and critiqued in the article, i.e. prepare for the worst. It's as if we're coaxing it into existence.
This sentence from Rosenfeld's article also struck me: "Fascism says, disregard the evidence of your senses, disregard observation, embolden deeds that can’t be proven, don’t have faith in God but have faith in leaders, take part in collective myth of an organic national unity and so forth." Manuela Cadelli writes about this phenomenon in her article "Neoliberalism is a Species of Fascism."
I think the tilt towards fascism started before Drumph, but I really don't want to be right about that. In any case, language, and how we choose to create and experience the world, matters.
I remember when Walter Mondale closed the 1984 (!) Democratic National Convention by repeatedly calling out for Ronald Reagan. He was supposedly pulling together a fractured party by railing against a common Republican enemy (i.e. President Ronald Reagan), and all that we heard on TV and radio, and read in newspapers, and felt in the universe, was a loud and clear invocation of Ronald Reagan's name. We lost before we started, and I wonder if HRC et al. did the same thing in 2016.
Should we focus on what we want, rather than what we don't want? Do we amplify democracy or echo dark foreboding? What's the implication for the world that we want to live in?
I remember when Walter Mondale closed the 1984 (!) Democratic National Convention by repeatedly calling out for Ronald Reagan. He was supposedly pulling together a fractured party by railing against a common Republican enemy (i.e. President Ronald Reagan), and all that we heard on TV and radio, and read in newspapers, and felt in the universe, was a loud and clear invocation of Ronald Reagan's name. We lost before we started, and I wonder if HRC et al. did the same thing in 2016.
Should we focus on what we want, rather than what we don't want? Do we amplify democracy or echo dark foreboding? What's the implication for the world that we want to live in?
See you on the march, at the grille, or on the dance floor.
