Tag: fascism

TYRANNY

Arresting people based on their appearance without judicial review puts America on the slippery slope of authoritarian tyranny.

Opinion Page
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Chet Yarbrough

Today, the idea of Aryan endorses the absurd belief in white, Anglo-Saxon supremacy. Research shows a French aristocrat (de Gobineau), and a British-German philosopher named Chamberlain, defined Aryans as a superior white race.

However, there are many ideas and speculations revealed by the Durants’ history of civilization.

In the Durrants’ research, the word Aryan was originally used as a descriptive word for the Brahmin class in ancient India. The Durants noted the word Aryan in their history of civilization meant “noble” or “distinguished”. The criteria of India’s Brahmin class are reprehensible to one who believes in “equality of opportunity” professed by America but not practiced by Americans.

Class identity in ancient India does deny the truth of equal opportunity but not based on the color of one’s skin, but on ritual status, occupation, and social custom.

The injustice of human inequality is as old as the history of civilization.

ICE’s accosting citizens because of the difference in the color of their skin is reprehensible. Of course, that has been the criteria for American Blacks before and after the Civil War.

Emigrant injustice is compounded by the failure to adjudicate immigration status before deportation.

The Administration’s use of force is a reminder of Nazi Germany when Jewish German citizens were being rounded up for believed difference and/or opposition to the government.

This is a picture of the beginning of Jewish discrimination in Nazi Germany with broken windows of businesses owned by Jews.

ICE arrests in America based on his non-white appearance.

Being able to easily identify difference based on physical appearance amplifies the probability of discrimination.

THREE ASIAN AMERICANS BRUTALLIZED IN 2025 BY AMERICAN RACISTS.

What has happened to the principle of “separation of powers” meant to provide a system of checks and balances on the Legislative and Executive branches of the American government? Have we abandoned Separation of Powers, Checks and Balances, power sharing between federal and state governments, the Bill of Rights, Judicial Review, and Electoral Safeguards? The idea of our Constitution is to stop a single branch of the government from dominating our system of government. Have we become a third world country? Today’s “NO KINGS” turn-out offers hope that others agree with the sentiment of this disappointed supporter of American Democracy.

Where is the Supreme Court in this injustice?

Arresting people based on their appearance without judicial review puts America on the slippery slope of authoritarian tyranny.

EQUALITY

Discrimination is certainly based on the color of one’s skin but also on gender, ethnicity, and income inequality. Those nations that embrace equality of opportunity for all will be the leaders of the future in the age of technology

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Caste (The Origins of Our Discontent)

Author: Isabel Wilkerson

Narrated By:  Robin Miles

Isabel Wilkerson (Author, American journalist, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in journalism in 1994 while serving as the Chicago Bureau Chief for the NYTimes.)

Isabel Wilkerson has written a provocative book about what she characterizes as a rigid social hierarchy in America that undermines the ideals of democracy. Wilkerson weaves her personal life and the history of black experience with the sociological failings in America’s treatment of race. She notes the past and present truth of white America’s unequal treatment of its citizens based on race. However, her characterization of America’s discrimination as a caste system and its comparison to India’s and Nazi Germany’s governments is hyperbolic. Nevertheless, it creates a sense of urgency for those who believe in the ideal of human equality. It is difficult, if not impossible, to compare other nation’s inequality with America’s effort and present-day failure to fulfill the ideals of democracy.

The timeliness of Wilkerson’s book seems appropriate in relation to the backward steps being taken by Donald Trump.

Some Americans feel threatened by demographic change that will make white citizens less than 50% of America’s population by 2045. In theory, no one should care if all people are treated equally. What history shows is that the ideals of equality have never been achieved in America or in any other country with a dominant race and/or ethnicity.

Trump’s effort to return America to its past is interpreted by some as a return to industrial production.

America’s return to industrialization is a false flag that will not make America Great. Reindustrialization and keeping America white is a fool’s errand based on demography and the age of technology. Trump’s desire for power, adulation, and loyalty have little to do with prejudice but everything to do with appealing to the worst fears of middle-class America. Trump is willing to use whatever dog whistle is required to satisfy his desire for power and prestige. He understands the fears of the middle class and where American power lays. Power and money are the driving forces of capitalism. Middle class American’s buying power has stagnated or fallen since the 1970s despite the increasing wealth of the top 10% of American citizens. The middle class of America is something Trump appealed to in his re-election for a second term because of their disproportionate loss of income and the rising wealth of America’s business leaders. The irony is that Trump is one of the beneficiaries of that income gap between the very rich and the working-class.

Income growth in America.

Income disparity trend in the U.S. through 2015.

Wilkerson is right in the sense that America’s real objective should be to ensure equality of all. She is arguing we should have a greater sense of urgency in achieving equality. Equal treatment for all is a formula that can maintain America’s position as an economic, military, and political hegemon. American industrial hegemony is yesterday’s goal. Technological advancement is today’s goal. To achieve today’s goals, equal treatment of all becomes essential in technology because intelligence, innovation, and persistence does not lie in any one race, sex, or creed.

America is class conscious but not in the same way as either India’s or Nazi Germany’s histories.

Wilkerson notes a caste system can be built around ethnicity, religion, language, or gender but race discrimination is what she has personally experienced and underlays much of her comparisons of American history with India and Nazi Germany. Equality of opportunity is key to continued growth of human beings and national economies in the age of technology. In the short term, one may see an autocratic country like China become an economic and military hegemon, but maintenance of that success is dependent on equality of opportunity for all, not just those in power.

One can sympathize with the author’s view of discrimination but her comparison of America to India and Nazi Germany misses too much of what unequal treatment in America is based upon.

Discrimination is certainly based on the color of one’s skin but also on gender, ethnicity, and income inequality. Those nations that embrace equality of opportunity for all will be the leaders of the future in the age of technology.

DEMAGOGUERY

In 2025, the American election process may allow an adjudicated felon become President.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“It Can’t Happen Here” 

By: Sinclair Lewis

Narrated By: Grover Gardener

Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951, American novelist and playwright, first American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.)

“It Can’t Happen Here” was published in 1935. It is a novel about the election of a fascist to the American Presidency. Lewis was a recovering alcoholic who died at the age of 65 from advanced alcoholism. Though divorced in 1942, he was a father of a son who died in WWII in 1944. There is a sad irony in his son’s death when “It Can’t Happen Here” was written before America’s entry into war against the fascist nations of Germany and Italy.

Lewis describes a view of the 1930s in America when Roosevelt was dealing with the Great Depression and Hitler was martialing a nascent Nazi party in Germany.

Some Americans viewed Roosevelt as a fascist because of his centralization of power in the government. Famous people of that time, like V.P. John Nance Garner, Journalist Walter Lippmann, and Ambassador Joseph Kennedy turned against Roosevelt’s early administration. On the one hand, “It Can’t Happen Here” may be interpreted as a critique of the Roosevelt Administration.

Benito Mussolini (1883-1945, WWII Italian dictator who founded the National Fascist Party.)

However, historians suggest Lewis wrote “It Can’t Happen Here” as a warning to Americans that a reaction to Roosevelt’s interventionist economic policies could lead to a fascist American President’s election.

A fascist President’s policies would promote rich white Americans at the expense of the poor, particularly women and racial minorities. Lewis had reservations about extending Roosevelt’s New Deal policies but recognized it had alleviated much of the Depression’s suffering.

“It Can’t Happen Here” is a warning about American government control and influence.

That control and influence hugely increased in the Roosevelt administration and roosted in the 1950s with Eisenhower’s mandated Interstate Highway System, and signature Civil Rights Legislation. Some would argue it blossomed with John Kennedy’s election, expanded in Johnson’s administration, and changed direction with Reagan’s election. Between 1789 and today, American political parties have increased federal government control on, and influence of, American society. Those controls changed human’ and economic’ rights of Americans.

Different views of government control are held by Americans, but the common denominator is freedom.

Humans are naturally motivated by self-interest. In a capitalist economy, money and power are synchronized influences on freedom. Those influences are concentrated in an election process largely dependent on Americans who have money and power. Without money, one is unlikely to be elected to a political office. The consequence is a distortion of equality of opportunity. Corporations legally recognized as individuals carry greater influence on electability than “one person, one vote”.

“It Can’t Happen Here” and the American Presidential election process clearly shows “It Can Happen Here”, and it has happened here.

In 2025, the American election process may allow an adjudicated felon become President.