Secrecy, Democracy, And Fascism - How Fear And Laziness Lead To A Headache-inducing Web Of Conspiracies

In my essay titled, Secrecy, Democracy, and Fascism: Lessons from History, I began by decrying the polarization in the United States with the view that it is extremism on the religious, economic, and political right that is causing division, while the ideology of the progressive left works toward freedom, democracy, and respect. However, I did not elaborate on this introductory point, only returning to it at the end of the essay, where I addressed Jonah Goldberg's book, Liberal Fascism. Rather, I went on to express dismay about the New World Order conspiracy theory, how it diverts attention from the real culprits of greed and repression, and then I launched into my exploration of what a failed democracy might be, looking into several terms in their historical usages, and thus arriving at “fascism,” to embark on a more detailed study of its complicated nature. After showing how fascism can creep insidiously into democracy when democratic principles are not adhered to, I summed up my conclusions about what constitutes fascism: “The tendency toward totalitarianism, militarism, fundamentalism, populism, in conjunction with the economic-political policy of corporate collusion with top members of the state, the perpetuation of the idea that the workers and middle class must depend on those same corporate leaders as the best path between the extremes of oligarchy and socialism, the deceitful way that popular support is gathered, and the opportunistic method of utilizing crises to gain inexorable power and control – all of this describes what fascism is.” That essay was written back in the fall of 2008. Now, there is a new president, a man who I consider to be an honest broker, a progressive, a natural-born leader with amazing skills of communication, intellect, and patient practicality. He is a relatively dark-skinned man with African ancestry, but not simply a black man, rather, a man of mixed race, which, to me, is a beautiful realization of the connective principle, a representation of complexity, and a hopeful symbol of real, peaceful, progressive change. During the election, he promised government transparency and inclusiveness. He said he wanted to make government work for everybody. He moved people in a way that no politician in recent memory had. Perhaps I am now wrong to stave off the cynicism that has caused so many in the United States to give up all hope for real change because they cannot believe that such a man as I have described could actually exist, that his presidential campaign rhetoric had been politics as usual, and that the “change” that he spoke of was a hollow promise, a ruse. While many of his initial supporters on the left have already become disillusioned, there are all of the people who opposed his candidacy in the first place, who do not trust him, who even fear him, either because they are ideologically opposed to progressive ideals themselves, or because they believe in the conspiracy that Barack Obama is an agent of the dark forces that rule the workings of the world from behind their secretive curtain, that he is actually a Secret Militant Muslim, CIA-sponsored, America-hating, Tyrannical Fascist, or some combination thereof. So, in this essay, I intend to go back through those different characteristics, which, as I explained in the previous essay, do not each on their own indicate fascism, but which do tend to be expressed in some degree or other in fascism, to take a close look at how Barack Obama is not a fascist, and then to examine how this conspiracy theory, combined with the politics of the United States' democratic system, has brought its society to this level of insanity. Let me begin with populism, since it is this characteristic that those who see fascism in the face of President Obama seem very concerned about. Yes, Barack Obama was swept into office by what might legitimately be called a massive wave of populist support. This wave was even more populist, in the sense of a grassroots groundswell, than any other popular support for a candidate in recent memory, because Barack Obama overwhelmed the Democratic Machinery itself, defeating seven other candidates and the heir apparent, herself, moving literally from the fringes to the center of attention,

with historic amounts of small donations at the beginning. This presidential campaign was a particularly heady one, after eight years of Republican stewardship of a nation that was plunging into the abyss of economic uncertainly. The stakes were high, and people actually cared, getting involved within their communities and showing up by the tens of thousands to hear a man speak who actually made sense to them and gave them hope. All of this was, indeed, frightening to his political opponents, and so they did their best to paint the scene as a mob-mentality, his enthusiasts as blind lemmings, his campaign's stage-craft as nefarious, dangerous, cult-of-personality-building propaganda. Well, duh – it was an emotionally-charged national political campaign, brilliantly run, headed up by a man who actually HAS a magnetic personality and is able to communicate eloquently, sound sincere, look good, and appear presidential, all qualities that are sorely lacking in most of our politicians. The whole point of what has long been referred to as “political pageantry,” since well before Mr. Obama and his team came along, is to get the supporters riled up and active. As far as mindlessness and a mob-mentality is concerned, I never witnessed any unruly behavior or heard any sloganeering or hateful rhetoric at his gatherings, nothing as inane as the bizarre “Drill, baby, drill!” that the Republicans were mindlessly chanting at their convention, due to a lack of any other issue that excited them. As the Ayn Randers like to point out, envy is one of the deadly sins, and first the Clnton campaign, then the Republican Party were as green as Kermit the Frog when they saw the amazing power that Barack Obama had over people. Populism, in the simple sense of a popular majority, is precisely how United States presidents get elected, when they are not being appointed by the Supreme Court. And just because a candidate is more popular than, say, the Beatles, does not mean that there is something frightening afoot. It simply means that more people than ever are getting involved in the democratic process, and that somebody actually shows real leadership abilities. Militarism – Candidate Obama had to present himself as tough and capable enough to be the Commander In Chief of the world's most powerful military. It is a job requirement of any president of the United States of America. I would characterize the culture in the United States as being pretty militant in general, and Obama had to appeal to this character to get elected. But one of his major campaign points was the pulling out of the United States military from Iraq, because we had no business being there, and to instead re-focus on the Taliban in Afghanistan. The reality is that that is an even bigger quagmire than Iraq, and in my opinion, we do not really have any business being there, either, but the Democrats cannot afford to be peaceniks when it comes to national presidential elections. Other than that, President Obama has very clearly put an emphasis on the State Department and the Special Envoys to help negotiate peace in both the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and in Pakistan, deliberately rejecting the belligerent, militaristic foreign policy stance of his predecessor. Additionally, he has been trying to clear up the mess that the military confinements of the men at Guantanamo Bay present to the United States, returning the rule of law where the military tribunal system had been failing miserably. And as to the United States themselves, there has been no sign of any military crackdown on anyone, no rise in police brutality, nothing – not even domestic spying – that would indicate the usual signs of brutal fascism. It is, in fact, citizens who are ideologically opposed to everything about President Barack Hussein Obama who are becoming militant in the United States at this time, not the President nor any of his supporters. Fundamentalism – In my previous essay, I tied the willingness to use violence toward some “higher cause” with fundamentalism, and again, the opponents of President Obama are the ones showing themselves to be fundamentalists, not the president. I, myself, am a dyed-in-the-wool liberal progressive, and I consider Barack Obama to be a practical progressive. However, he has, from the moment he was elected, made a concerted effort to reach out, to talk to everyone, to negotiate and deliberate, to bend toward whoever is willing to constructively discuss issues with him, to be inclusive. This, to the chagrin of us lefties, at times. But he said, “I will be your president, too.” to the entire

nation, and that is certainly far from the exclusive attitude that George W. Bush and Karl Rove had taken, and far from the usual politics on Capital Hill. Although the right is throwing a tizzy fit about his emergency spending in light of the unprecedented economic crisis the country is facing, the left is also angry that he has not done more to reign in the financial institutions that were bailed out with taxpayer dollars (during the still-Bush Administration, mind you). Another example of his straying from the liberal game plan was his turnaround on his promise of transparency, where he decided that he should keep the most recent prisoner abuse pictures secret, as well as deciding with the CIA on some other issues that angered us liberals. That is not fundamentalism. That is practicalism, and I give him credit for that, even though I disagree with him. If anything, his fundamental issue is to make the government work properly again, more democratically, as well as more efficiently, and there is really no fundamentalism present, in the sense that I described it, as reductionist ideology riddled with contradiction, in anything that Mr. Obama has said or done. In the health care reform debate, the President is most definitely not the fundamentalist. The reform was one of his election mandates, and it must be done. The health care system in the United States is an absurdity. Access to health care is a human right, not something to make maximum profits off of. Lack of health care in the United States is weighing the nation's productivity, as well as its spirit, down. It is one of the founding principles in the United States Constitution, the part about, “We the People, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.” That means that it is one of the government's jobs to promote the well being of the people of this nation. The fact that it is the insurance companies, the for-profit health centers, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that are behind the “grassroots” protests, where uninformed people are screaming and shouting and threatening violence because they are being told that this is some kind of government tyranny, speaks for itself. (Look it up – politifact.com, snopes.com, factcheck.org.) The President has not said anything like, “You're either with us or against us.” He has continually said that he invites constructive conversation, yet all he gets in return is yelling and screaming and threats with guns. Totalitarianism – Observers have pointed to the unusually large number of “czars” that President Obama has appointed to help him sort out the mess that George W. Bush left him as a sign that he has made a power grab that amounts to totalitarianism. To those who distrust him, I concede that this looks scary. However, as with the fears about his mob-mentality following, one need only observe actual reality to see that, at least so far, nothing nefarious has happened. These so-called “czars” made a cleaver talking point for his political opponents, namely Senator McCain, the man who doesn't know how many houses he owns, so he must know something about delegating authority, and House Minority Whip, Eric Cantor, who is desperate to keep his name in the news cycles as a future Republican presidential contender. The reality is that they are presidential aids that have been appointed to keep particular focus on specific issues, as a practical way for the President to efficiently deal with many different issues at once. None of the czars have done anything crazy, other than to try to solve complicated problems. So the man can multitask – not scary, not totalitarian, at least not so far. A real totalitarian state subordinates all of its individual parts to the service of the state. The cult-like leaders that usually represent totalitarian states are god-like embodiments of that state. Everything is about the state, itself, which demands unquestioning loyalty to itself and its leader. That is the face of totalitarianism, and I do not see any of that in the Barack Obama presidency. No-one is being silenced. No-one is being forced to submit to the demands of the state. The “death panels” that Sarah Palin thinks are a part of the government health insurance package are a myth, a scare tactic that anyone who

seeks real information can see to be the exaggerations that they are. Everyone has continued to live their life just as they were before he was elected, well, as long as they have not lost their job or their health care or their bank accounts, which has by no means been a totalitarian plot to ruin everyone's wonderful Bush-era sunny days. There has been a certain fascination with Barack Obama and his family, which some might see as a cult following, but I do not see it as any more than the media's obsession with Brittany Spears or Micheal Jackson or Governor Sanford's love life. None of these overt characteristics that may be present in a fascist state actually stands up to any close examination of the Barack Obama presidency, particularly the two possible characteristics that have been singled out and exaggerated by his political opponents that say that he is fascist. However, there are the more complicated, more covert factors to consider. First is the set of characteristics that are actually areas of some concern to me, because they are more systematic problems as well as holdovers from the previous administration, having to do with political-economic policies that tie business interests with agents of the government in a way that undermines democracy itself. Corporate collusion with government officials, the Ayn Rand/Milton Friedman school of thought about trusting the business elites to lead to the highest form of freedom, and the opportunistic use of crises to grab more wealth and power all fit into the conversation about what happened with the financial institution bailout that occurred just at the end of Bush's days, and then with President Elect Obama's earliest decisions about who would lead his all-important economic team. It was the bailout, with its total lack of oversight over all that money being doled out to the irresponsibly greedy financiers by other financiers, that was so infuriating, and which lead me to write about insidious fascism sneaking into our beautiful democracy in the first place, not any spectre of a populist candidate that made me think of Hitler or Mussolini speaking of the need for purity and cleansing of the nation in front of giant crowds. Then came the Obama economic adviser decisions, which caused me to question my faith in the man, as so many others were loosing theirs or pointing to that action as a distinctive lack of any promised “change” whatsoever. In order to maintain continuity, the reasoning went, Mr. Obama chose men from Goldman Sachs and the likes, the same group of people that had created the whole mess in the first place and then cleaned up to their own outrageous advantage. It seemed that the president-elect was doing exactly what the liberal left was afraid of, which was being corrupted by the same powerful business interests that had helped to get him elected – not much of a change at all. Those seeds of fascism do exist, and they must be watched closely, to see if they sprout, or to see if they will get weeded out by this president if they do sprout. The final issue is one of deception. This is difficult, because it might lead to my having to face the fact that I have been deceived. If this is so, then either Barack Hussein Obama was simply toying with my heart, whispering sweet nothings in my ear, buying me chocolates and flowers, all as a ruse to get himself, well, we all know where that all leads. No-one likes to have their heart broken, thinking there is love when it was really just lust, or greed, or self-aggrandizement. Yet, we have to continue to try... A much worse-case scenario is that the Obama presidency is not just a matter of one man's political ambitions, but rather, a conspiracy by the darkest of figures, who worked in the shadows to set Barack Obama up with a fake birth certificate, funneled money from his “rich father in Africa,” placed him in the nation's most prestigious law school, put him to work for the CIA through the guise of being an editor at Business International Corporation, got William Ayers to ghostwrite his fake biography, had him live in a small apartment in Chicago and pretend to be a “community activist,” moved him through the corrupt Illinois political process, and then orchestrated his presidential campaign, all in order to place him as their puppet in the White House in order to continue to amass even more power, to enslave the world's population to death, destruction, and indentured servitude from behind their evil curtain of already omnipotent hidden power.

Sadly, I am not making this conspiracy stuff up. Sadly, people fall prey to this kind of complicated conspiracy because they fear what they do not understand, they sense that, somehow, there have been lies and manipulations that were hidden by secrecy, and then the perpetrators of the conspiracy are able to convince them that any “information” that comes from outside the circle of conspirators themselves is suspect, and that it is they who shed light in the dark corners of the world. It was the secrecy itself that lead to the mistrust in the first place, the kind of secrecy that the Bush Administration was so fond of, but which goes well beyond that, with the secret workings of the CIA and other black operations by the United States government to destabilize democratic governments that have been considered to be dangerous to the economic prosperity of the United States throughout the world. In fact, an archive of classified documents from the Nixon Administration has just come to light, about the abhorrent behavior of United States government operatives in South America. The truth that these secret operations exist should appall all citizens of this nation that holds itself so proudly to be the beacon of Freedom and Democracy to the world, and now would be a good time to call for an end to the web of operators that work in the shadows of the world, even within the United States, one must assume, affecting political outcomes of democratic elections and spreading rumors and lies, and even actively removing leaders, such as Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti, or Salvador Allende of Chile, or stopping the left-wing “Frente Amplio,” which, ironically, is now in power in Uruguay, in order that the people of the United States may have more gasoline to guzzle and more sugar to consume and cheaper goods, produced by laborers whose lives have been kept miserable so that we could live more comfortably. Pardon my anger. It is this secrecy, along with the sheer hypocrisy, that leads to the anger and the distrust. But the anger and distrust must be directed at the proper culprits. To simply throw anger and distrust around, willy-nilly, eventually consumes the individual. Finding the proper target can be extremely difficult and frustrating, especially when the anger and distrust are being manipulated for some ulterior purpose. But being lazy or giving in to the frustration in the search for a culprit is the easy way out. And all of this is compounded by the state of the culture in the United States today, for as life grows more and more complicated, with new technology, the world wide web of infinite imagery and information and entertainment, new and more complex understandings the universe, and simply more and more people, it seems that the basic response to all of this complexity is to compartmentalize and to reduce and to simplify in order to try to make some sense out of it all. Sound bites, text messaging, and Twitter all exemplify this tendency to abbreviate and reduce, and it leads to a sort of mental laziness, an unwillingness to try to understand the details and the complexity of the world. So rumors and misinformation spread more quickly than ever before, fed off of this reductive tendency, and spurred on by the gullibility inherent in the notion that, because you perceive that you have been lied to and deceived by “them,” you can therefore only trust “us.” Barack Hussein Obama is a figure upon whom the conspiratorial lies and misperceptions are grafting at lightening speed. The conspiracy theory that I had been so concerned about in my first essay was the 9/11 conspiracy, which had expanded into the idea that the elections didn't matter, because the powers that be were going to manipulate everything to their own benefit. They supposedly have the awesome power to affect everything, from the government policymakers, to the votes that disappeared into the Diebold voting machines, to the whole charade of Sarah Palin having been put forth, all parts of their evil plan. And now that Barack Obama emerged as the winner, he is assumedly their agent of choice. Now, I distrust the voting machines, because there is no way to verify the votes. However, to take my distrust of the Diebold machines, and place it in the hands of an international cabal of powerful puppet masters lets the Republican operatives, who have been in charge of the voting system and completely capable of stealing votes all on their own, off the hook. But the perception that the election was illegitimate, bizarrely, not only fits the narrative of the One World Order conspirators, but the same

rumors about villainous manipulations of the whole political process have been swallowed line, hook, and sinker by Barack Obama's political opponents, who are gullible to the tale because they neither like nor trust this man who has darker colored skin, international family connections, and ideas that are admittedly vaguely socialist, but which are being conflated with fascism for purely political gain. The whole thing is beginning to make my head spin. That Hitler used conspiracy theories about Jewish bankers and others whose international ties amongst the Jewish diaspora were supposed to have caused them to have undermined the Germans during and after the Great War, in order to enslave the German workers, and now, we have conspiracy theories about international bankers who have been undermining the United States so that their evil enslavement can be exacted, wherein the belief is that the international conspirators are also the fascists, is headache-inducing to think about, at the very least. Where does the irony end – and where oh where is my bottle of aspirin? People have been whipped into a frenzy over government involvement in lowering the price of health insurance as a form of government tyranny, yet they didn't mind the spying, infiltration of organizations trying to counter repression and injustice, and deregulation of the banking and mortgage industries that looted everyone's pensions and 401K plans. And a smart guy, from a single-parent home, who made his way through the world with his brains and his good looks, who has some refreshingly different ideas about how government can function, well, he just isn't to be trusted... Isn't innovation and being able to rise up to higher levels of society supposed to be, uh, the “American Dream?” The real conspiracy is that the “American Dream” is a nightmare, not because of any international overloards maliciously manipulating everything from above, nor because envious socialists want to get their hands on everything in sight, but because of plain old greed and a thought system that praises selfishness, and the most greedy and selfish will play on the fears and ignorance of those who do not bother to see the world as complex, yet knowable, if they would only continue to seek answers from many different sources and viewpoints.