Henri Reynard Speaks Out

Malice And Punishment For Weakness?

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There is a maliciousness creeping into our government and a tendency to punish the weak and call it strength creeping into our culture. Fascism had much the same face by the time it became empowered in the 1920's and became dominant in some parts of Europe by 1933. As it developed into the force that demolished Europe during WWII it gained the power to suppress and eventually kill all of its opponents. There was no safe middle ground either you were with them or you were the enemy. Hitler won power as did Mussolini, by appealing to the desire to suppress those society has marginalized and by calling on the emotional appeal of patriotism and the fear of enemies both within the nation and outside of its borders.

Mussolini held power from 1922 to 1943 in Italy. Hitler held power for a shorter time but with a greater level of malice against the Jewish outsiders in his nation. Franco merely retained power after the war because no one who won WWII wanted to see Spain become powerful again. It seemed that the time of Fascism had come and gone by 1950 but it is alive and well again and making inroads into our Democracy. Fascism is characterized by abusive dominance of the weak by the powerful, a coalition between government and industry that controls the economy, and grandiose even grotesque dependence on military power to attain one's ends. No one would call the current government of the US Fascist but we all have seen the emotional excesses that eventually made fascism so evil becoming part of everyday political debate in this country. We have also seen far more effort and money spent by corporations on the process of controlling government for their purposes.

No political force can govern without what I have always called the minimum consensus. The minimum consensus is derived from the tolerance of governmental excesses that have not got so bad as to force the population to react by removing the government. It is part of the recipe for Frog soup, something that may be making a comeback in this nation today. First you put the frog into cold water then you turn up the heat and by the time the frog realizes he is in trouble he is cooked. If you heat the water first the frog senses the danger and jumps out. It is in the gradual increase in temperature that the citizen is co-opted into supporting oppressive regimes. The temperature in this nation is rising fast enough to alarm some of us, but in oppressive times the danger is in looking different or acting differently from those in power. If you protest the gradual temperature increases most people will dismiss you as an alarmist. I am jumping out of the soup now before it is too late.

It is always a friendly face that greets you in the morning when you look at political posters, especially those of successful politicians. The urgent drive for power that fuels any politician more sophisticated than the everyman type of characters depicted in movies is hidden. Politics is a grinding daily effort to overcome opposition from all types of forces in order to carry out your agenda. There are a lot of agendas in a town like Washington DC so following the party line is the safest practice. Parties raise money and provide human resources; they can also help you promote your agenda if it is aligned properly with theirs. Hitler looked friendly but firm in his posters as did Mussolini, friendly yet firm. Their policies toward those who opposed them were always to treat them as the enemy, and as they gained followers that became more and more dangerous. Their followers knew that assassination was the final resort and used that option increasingly frequently as the press became more and more under their control. Human rights abuse of the outsiders in a nation is always a sign that the political soup is heating up. We are abusing the human rights of people today, particularly outsiders, more frequently than in any recent period. The soup is getting warmer but we are a long way from Fascism yet.

Pragmatism would drive one to note that fact and keep one's big mouth shut, so as not to become one of the first targets of oppression. My pragmatism is always at war with my love for this country and its great ideals and its wonderful people. I chased the rainbow of Alcohol Fuel in the 1970's when we first recognized the need to end oil imports. We were only importing around thirty percent of our oil then, now we are closer to sixty percent dependent on imported oil. We are also importing a lot of our manufactured goods today and have a monthly trade deficit of around forty billion dollars. We are an international economy today and we will not do well if the world becomes significantly less stable. The international scene even without 9/11 is heating the water, with 9/11 thrown in the heat is rising fast. I am one of the people in this nation that believes we have an obligation to speak out when we see things going wrong. It is one of the great things that will keep fascism from winning here, the tradition of freedom of speech that keeps us free in so many other ways.
Do I think our government is likely to go the way of Italy and Germany's and join the brown shirt brigades? Naw; I, and a lot of others, will die to prevent that should it become necessary! We may not approve of the growth in militarism in our nation but we are too patriotic to allow it to become a dominant force here for long. We need our military strong, I have never thought otherwise. I also believe that the maximum restraint in using the military to solve problems here and elsewhere is our obligation as citizens of a democratic republic. I support our troops, and question our leaders! It is uniquely a part of American society to do that and it will not be suppressed, even by the excesses of Fox News, a foreign owned media force that is telling us how to define patriotism here.

The temperature is rising in our political soup and I am advising you who do not want power in the hands of the hijackers in corporate boardrooms to pay careful attention to the men behind the curtain. Watch our political industrial complex and pay attention to their machinations, They are not a force that has any patriotism, they will steal us blind if we don't watch them, ask the pension-holders at ENRON or lots of others who invested in that stock. The corporate officers who control our largest industrial companies are less concerned with patriotism than you and I; they are international thinkers. That is good for our businesses and bad for our nation if we do not curb their political influence. It is the combination of government which only has law to guide it, but no conscience at all and corporate business which has neither conscience nor much in the way of law to guide it that we must watch carefully. Government dominated by the short-term interests of corporations is fascistic in nature. It is also not a good force for democratic action in our world. God bless and keep you our troops and our protestors safe in these trying times.