On the surface, it appears that this country is locked in a battle between opposing “cultures,” involving “traditional” mores against those who demand the right to do as they please, and between those who believe the past is past against those who believe the past is present. Florida has become the principle battleground between these forces, although it is strictly an unfair fight with a governor with fascist-leanings backed by an equally fascist-minded legislative super-majorities.
But in general this country’s ethical and moral compass has certainly strayed far afield since Donald Trump was elected in 2016. Perhaps people don’t really notice themselves that much because life just goes on day to day without any real change; when politicians just bark at each other, it doesn’t matters all that much. But it is not true that one party can’t cause great damage if it gets carried away; we see the potential for that with a looming debt default that Republicans always happily pass “clean” debt ceiling bills when a Republican is in the White House, but then decide they want a “dirty” one when a Democrat is in office for purely partisan reasons. Fanatics on the extreme right even seem to take a delight in seeing the country to collapse in on itself.
The far-right extremists promise a “new world order”; Ron DeSantis and Elon Musk gave us a “taste” of that yesterday announcing a “new direction” and “status quo-busting” future for America—DeSantis’ embarrassing and glitch-filled audio-only twitter presidential campaign announcement. It was an inauspicious opening for a campaign that outside the far-right Fox News bubble—which at best reaches 3 million viewers, a relative drop in the bucket as a whole. Outside some media exposure (mostly negative), DeSantis is a relative unknown, and frankly he looks like the political gangster he is.
I have problems with “woke” culture too, but DeSantis goes way beyond that, not merely expressing an opinion, but passing laws that literally make it a crime to express any opinion that he doesn’t like or makes him feel “uncomfortable.” DeSantis is a xenophobe and a racist, and so he passes laws wherever it is possible have his critics “muzzled”—such as in schools and on the streets: he hasn’t quite figured out how he can legally silence free press criticism against himself, but he’ll keep trying. DeSantis is notoriously “media shy,” and he only appears on Fox News for a reason.
It has been noted that DeSantis is so full of himself that he has made little effort at coalition-building outside of Florida, and both Democrats and many Republicans found much to amuse themselves with the disastrous opening of his presidential campaign. No doubt those on the far-right fringe may see him as more “electable” at the moment than Trump, but we remember how fast Howard Dean flamed out. If people think Trump has dangerously destructive impulses, wait until they hear what DeSantis has to say outside his Florida and Fox News bubble.
People may have to learn the Barry Goldwater lesson once more: after the original favorite, Nelson Rockefeller, saw his poll numbers plummet, by June 1964 polling showed a dead heat between Goldwater, Nixon, Lodge and Scranton at 20 percent each. But far-right voters (who called themselves the “mainstream” of the party) mostly abandoned the others to back Goldwater and his “culture war” beliefs, and merely using “traditional” conservative tropes to mask an ideology of what one critic called “plutocratic profiteering” and “fascist-style thought control nationalism.”
The result was that even in a country divided by the civil rights struggle, Goldwater was seen as too “extreme” in his culture war views, and only the 1936 election rivaled the 1964 election as the worst defeat by a Republican nominee in a presidential election. I suspect that if DeSantis were to be nominated, he could do one of either two things: lose so badly that Trumpism/fascism is killed-off completely—or lose the popular vote by a wide margin but win narrowly by the electoral vote—and send this country down the path of becoming at least “culturally” a fascist state.
Yet the truth of the matter is that Republicans don’t so much as “govern” the country, but impose their own sordid, narrow-minded cultural and nationalistic views on the majority of the country. Beneath the surface of the rhetoric, we in fact live in a—how about this word—“corporatocracy.” It’s an actual “thing,” even if it isn’t in Microsoft Word’s spelling dictionary. It refers to “a society or system that is governed or controlled by corporations.” This includes the judicial system as well, and we can certainly see Clarence Thomas as an example of this; Thomas still claims he doesn’t think he has to report what is probably in the millions of dollars in gratuities he has received from his corporate “best friend” for voting the “right way.”
In a corporatocracy, no major policy decision is made without the approval of Wall Street; an example of this was the Affordable Care Act, which corporate America eventually relented to as long as they benefitted from it and didn’t need to worry about a “public option” as a competitor. Of course it was different during the Great Depression because FDR had super-majorities in Congress to work with and a Supreme Court that eventually included eight of his personal selection. But with “divided” government, corporations pretty much pick and choose their spots, and “ideology” is just what a politician says that is different from what another person says; in some people who are bought and paid for by corporations like Kirsten Sinema, we see that “ideology” and “principles” really doesn’t have anything to do with decision-making.
Some people think that if voters don’t come to their senses soon, fascism will be in this country’s future. Can one imagine the chaos and civil unrest that could ensue if someone like DeSantis is elected president and he tries to impose by authoritarian dictates the same personal “cultural” beliefs he has inflicted on Florida to the rest of the country—especially with a Supreme Court filled with right-wing culture war ideologues?
But this has nothing to do with corporate America, and before DeSantis picked a fight with Disney, his laws did not affect its own “rights.” Perhaps DeSantis (being Italian-American) looks to Mussolini for guidance; Mussolini referred to his version of fascism as “corporatism,” which in theory means that different elements of society form their own “unions” and they band together to work out their differences to agree to a common policy. This certainly sounds “practical” in theory, and unlike democratic government even those on the margins have their two-bit thrown in.
But in “practice,” as we saw in Nazi Germany, not everyone’s voice in this kind of "system" was tolerated or heard, and in Florida, “dissent” in any governmental department is punished, and all must fall in line with DeSantis’ “vision” no matter how extreme it is.
Meanwhile those on the outside looking in are being treated to a carnival freak show from Republicans in Congress and in states like Tennessee, as I discussed the other day. Remember January 6? What did you hear from the corporate community about that? Nothing. It was just a mob action that proved their “point” about “the people” being inherently unfit to govern themselves.
As for their elected officials, you can throw out decorum and civility from any Republican committee hearing, especially one run by Jim Jordan. He doesn’t care if the claims he is making have no basis in fact or reality, or that his “witnesses” are bought and paid for by far-right activists, or are themselves far-right conspiracy mongerers—or in the case of “witnesses” of wrong-doing by Joe or Hunter Biden, they have mysteriously “disappeared” or never existed in the first place. Jordan’s committee hearings generally degenerate into chaotic pie-fights in which he is only interested in insuring he gets the last pie in.
The corporatocracy is also apparently blasé about Trump, his legal issues or his fan base. Despite his record of bizarre behavior, clearly false statements, deliberate efforts to turn people against each other and in turn destroying the country from within while alienating our friends abroad, it's tolerated as long as it doesn’t affect “business.” Trump can do and say anything he wishes just as long as he doesn’t do anything that is “bad” for business.
What politicians do, crazy or not, is surface detail; it doesn’t actually have anything to do with how the country “runs” beneath the surface. If there is a “deep state” in this country, it is one in which politicians are bought and paid for by corporate America. To reach that end, you have to have an electorate that votes on its present whims, not looking to the future.
You have the hardcore on the left and right, but in the “middle” there are voters who simply vote on “gut feeling.” They probably know more than most that their votes won’t change their day-to-day lives so long as one party doesn’t do something so stupid that actually does impact their lives in a negative way—like allowing the country to default on its debts, which the extremist on the far-right seem determined to do at the moment. And that is certainly not what corporate America wants to see happen; it would be surprising if behind the scenes they are not making their views on the matter known to the parties involved.
And so while DeSantis seems to be “winning” on his “culture war” agenda in Florida, it is another matter altogether when he takes on a corporate giant like Disney, which has announced it is pulling a project that would have brought 2,000 new jobs to the state. Disney has been struggling financially, but its parks and recreation business is still strong.
But what is important—and that DeSantis doesn’t understand—is that what is bad for Disney is bad for Florida. While Disney isn’t leaving Florida anytime soon, what’s bad for its “business” is bad for the Florida economy, which makes DeSantis’ “culture war” antics revealing for its blindness to the “big picture.”
You have Florida Republican politicians saying, well, my family canceled Disney+ or we aren’t going to Disneyland anymore over the “culture war” issues, but if enough people think like that, who ultimately is going to be hurt by attacks on the company? How about the state where Disney has the largest footprint on its economy? It is people who ultimately lose when “culture warriors” win—both in their free speech rights, and their jobs either with Disney or businesses who rely on it along the peripheries.
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