Barring the Door Against Fascism

Vladimir Putin - Fascist

fascism - (fash-is-uhm) noun (sometimes initial capital letter) - A governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.  See photo at right.

There has been an inordinate amount of admiration for the likes of Vladimir Putin coming from the American right.  When the President of the United States and his sycophants fawn over a man who kills anyone who opposes him, if you are standing on Ronald Reagan's grave, you can be forgiven for getting the willies as he rotates under the sod.  There are innumerable ties between the Trump team and Russian mobsters, oligarchs and Vlad himself.

The Mountain suspects Putin is balls-deep in the Trump administration and that when Putin coughs, Trump tweets.  And since no part of the Steele Dossier has been disproved - In fact, many parts of the dossier have been proven independently - it is easy to see why Trump refuses to release his tax returns to the American public.  Trump, The Mountain believes, is a willing dupe involved with big business money laundering - large scale international financial crimes - for the mob bosses who control Russia.  As an investigative reporter and a former criminal investigator, The Mountain feels sure that Trump's IRS files were the first information Special Counsel Robert Mueller subpoenaed.   Once you know who the billionaire owes, then you know who is the organ grinder and who is the monkey. 

All of this is just one part of a grave assault on American democracy.  The republican party has embarked on a corporate plan to take over the democracy.  In effect, capitalism is buying out the democracy so that the government serves corporate interests rather than the electorate's interests.  And damn it, when Verizon wants net neutrality revoked then, by God, net neutrality will be revoked.  And when Exxon wants climate change denied then, by God, climate change will be denied.  And when Monsanto doesn't want their genetically engineered food labeled, by God, it will not be labeled.

When corporate donors buy up all the stooges in congress, which has just about completely happened, at least on the republican side, then we are dangerously close to becoming a thinly disguised fascist state.

Trump has managed a dandy of a stretch.  Utilizing the disinformation of Fox News and Breitbart, the Trump campaign has somehow cobbled together a coalition of evangelicals, tea party activists, Alt-Right Neo-Nazis and Wall Street Ayn Rand worshipers into a bedrock 33% of the American electorate.  Together with the Redmap gerrymandering process, a minority of republican voters ensures corporate control through mostly republican lackeys.

The U.S. House of Representatives looks to the future with Redmap-colored glasses.  The U.S. Senate is also controlled by republican corporate interests.  If you doubt the corpo-republican axis you need look only as far as the republican legislative agenda.  They can hardly govern even given the keys to all the power except to do ONE thing: pass "tax reform."  The DONORS want some payback like a Wall Street dividend check on their investments.  And the republicans are lining up to do as they're told.  That the GOP is selling this as a "middle-class tax cut" is preposterous.  That they are ignoring the $1.7 Trillion hole the plan will likely blow in the national deficit seems to fly in the face of everything conservatives have ever stood for.  But look at them scurry to get it done so that those campaign donations will keep coming.

But there is a glimmer of hope.  You've seen that the republicans just cannot govern.

They bitched about Obamacare for seven years and voted 50 times to overturn or amend it.  But when they got into power they had never done the work to repeal and replace it.  Trump bragged it would be fabulous heath-care.  They had SEVEN YEARS to come up with a plan, but when they pulled back the curtain having taken control they had no plan and couldn't even come close to agreeing among themselves.

And lately, it seems that the pure vulgarity of the GOP candidates is finally starting to catch up with them.  Trump appears to be a serial harasser of women if not a complete mysogynist.  But when the gerrymandered Alabama electorate chose Roy Moore, a pro-life, evangelical pedophile (go figure out what HIS belief structure must look like) to run for the U.S. Senate, finally the people there, by the slimmest of margins, said no.

And with the republican margin in the senate now being 51-47 with 2 independents, good gravy, their precious tax giveaway to the super rich could be in jeopardy.  Donald Trump, himself, stands to profit by $1 Billion under this plan.  So much for helping out the "forgotten men" of this economy.

If recent elections in New Jersey, Virginia and now the redest of red states Alabama are suggestive of anything, it might be that the electorate has finally gotten wise to the vulgar, fascist loving republicans and are calling shenanigans on their ultimate power grab.

Maybe by the time the next presidential election comes around, Mueller will have shown Trump for the criminal The Mountain suspects he is.  Maybe then the corporate citizens bent on controlling government and edging us toward a fascist state will realize their money is far better spent doing good for Americans rather than just trying to OWN America for themselves.