Re: Ted Rall Subscription Service (fwd)

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

Yeah, Trump's team did do a good job using the new media and by leveraging
tech bros to his side.  Definitely what separated the men from the boys,
so to speak.

If Trump is Mussolini, who are the black shirts?  That's what I want to
know.

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2025 06:57:05 -0800 (PST)
 >
 >  > From: Ted <http://www.96714821.mailchimpapp.com/~tedrall>
 >  > Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2025 21:38:05 +0000
 >  > 
 >  > The Ted Rall Subscription Service
 >  > Thank you for supporting independent political commentary
 >  > Here is this week's column. Thanks for subscribing to the Ted Rall 
 >  > Subscription Service.
 >  > 
 >  > A Movement Beats a Party Every Time
 >  > by Ted Rall
 >  > 
 >  > As Democrats continue to deconstruct the root causes of their recent defeat 
 >  > and attempt to regroup for next year’s midterm elections, they might 
 >  > want to consider a new factor in American politics: the seductive power of a 
 >  > 
 >  > movement compared to a boring old party.
 >  > 
 >  > On the surface, the 60^th American presidential election was the usual 
 >  > two-way contest between the Democratic and Republican parties. But, as 
 >  > Democrats tried their best to run as normal and competent as they could despite Biden’s ill-timed 
 >  > withdrawal, Trump had re-branded and re-organized the Republican Party as a 
 >  > vessel of his MAGA movement  .
 >  > 
 >  > A movement is dynamic. Its number-one goal is building excitement and a 
 >  > sense of belonging.
 >  > 
 >  > A party strives for constancy. It represents a set of principles through 
 >  > thick and thin.
 >  > 
 >  > All things being equal, a movement beats a party.
 >  > 
 >  > “The difference between parties and movements is simple,” the 
 >  > progressive pundit David Sirota wrote back in 2009. “Parties are loyal to their own 
 >  > power regardless of policy agenda. Movements are loyal to their own policy 
 >  > agenda regardless of which party champions it.” Democrats who were 
 >  > skeptical of military interventionism under Bush embraced it under Biden yet 
 >  > remained Democrats; the abortion-rights movement would vote Republican if 
 >  > the GOP were to come out as firmly pro-choice.
 >  > 
 >  > Donald Trump has scrambled Sirota’s formulation.
 >  > 
 >  > Trump has built a highly-personalized movement detached from any discrete 
 >  > policy prescription. Rather than remain independent of party politics, his 
 >  > MAGA movement seized control of the Republican Party. Despite having 
 >  > achieved a sweeping victory, MAGA continues to act like an outsider 
 >  > insurgent movement.
 >  > 
 >  > Personality is everything. The dauphin J.D. Vance notwithstanding, it is 
 >  > impossible to imagine the MAGA movement without Trump . While I don’t give much credence to arguments 
 >  > that the president is a Nazi-in-waiting, there is an echo of the Führer 
 >  > Principle that gave the force of law to anything Adolf 
 >  > Hitler said. MAGA Trumpism is anything that Trump says at any given time.
 >  > 
 >  > At first glance at the man on the golden escalator in 2015, this highly 
 >  > individuated politics seems ill-fated. Trumpism is riddled with internal 
 >  > contradictions and existential hypocrisies. Trump’s habit of reversing 
 >  > himself, as he did recently by threatening Russia only to turn around and embrace it after a call to Putin seems destined, by 
 >  > traditional political standards, to turn off supporters who care about those 
 >  > issues. So does the conflict between his personal and political lives; 
 >  > surely evangelicals will turn against a crude serial adulterer who screws 
 >  > porn stars and doesn’t appear to have ever darkened the door of a church 
 >  > in session.
 >  > 
 >  > People who evaluate Trump by traditional metrics fail to understand that 
 >  > everything has changed. For a party, Trump’s inconsistences and 
 >  > flipflopping changing his mind 180° would be weaknesses to overcome or 
 >  > explain away. Not so for a movement. First and foremost, a movement moves. 
 >  > Where and how it moves is beside the point.
 >  > A movement is entertaining. Think about Trump and his wild and crazy rants, 
 >  > not as appalling or racist but as unpredictable—and thus interesting. 
 >  > Think about Trump supporters and their giant flags, their sense of 
 >  > community.
 >  > 
 >  > Trump kept holding rallies throughout his first term—a party doesn’t do 
 >  > that. A movement does. A party doesn’t stick with an individual politician 
 >  > through thick and thin, as Trump supporters did through his legal troubles. 
 >  > A movement does. It has to, because it’s all about one man.
 >  > 
 >  > If there is a 20^th century authoritarian parallel to Trump, I have argued 
 >  > before, it is not the totalitarianism of Hitler but the culturally-centered 
 >  > rule of Mussolini. As the Italian novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco, who 
 >  > grew up under Italian fascism, noted, “Contrary to common opinion, fascism 
 >  > in Italy had no special philosophy.” Mussolini, who started out as a 
 >  > socialist journalist, came to believe that people were drawn to action—any 
 >  > action—for its own sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be 
 >  > taken before, or without, any previous reflection,” Eco wrote in an influential essay about fascism in 1995. “
 >  > Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
 >  > 
 >  > Writing at Salon, Chauncey DeVega complains: “President Trump and his MAGA Republicans and their forces are 
 >  > smashing American democracy, the Constitution, the rule of law, the 
 >  > institutions and norms. Trump has enacted over 50 executive orders since Jan. 20, the most in a president's first 100 
 >  > days in more than 40 years. Some of the most egregious ones are blatantly 
 >  > unconstitutional and violate current law.” DeVega blames the media for normalizing Trump and Democrats for 
 >  > not taking him seriously enough to convince voters.
 >  > 
 >  > What such mainstream analyses dismiss is is how soul-deadening the 
 >  > technocrats who run the West have been. Not only have they been unresponsive 
 >  > to people’s complaints about internationalism and declining living 
 >  > standards, they have been boring.
 >  > 
 >  > Democrats (and many Republicans) have repeatedly run on not promising 
 >  > anything. The only surprise is that they got away with it for so long.
 >  > 
 >  > Whether Trump is influenced by Mussolinian tactics or his acute political 
 >  > instincts rediscovered the potency of a “cult of action,” the United 
 >  > States was primed for the politician Trump became by the time he ran a third 
 >  > time in 2024—energetic, focused, retributive, imaginative—and stormed 
 >  > out of his inaugural ceremony with a blizzard of pardons, sweeping executive 
 >  > orders and bold diplomatic initiatives .
 >  > 
 >  > Asked if she would have done anything differently than Joe Biden during his 
 >  > presidency, Kamala Harris said : “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”
 >  > 
 >  > And, four years earlier, Biden told a group of wealthy campaign donors that, were he to 
 >  > be elected, “Nothing would fundamentally change.” Turns out, he was 
 >  > truthful. Nearly a third of those who voted for him in 2020 didn’t turn 
 >  > out for Harris in 2024.
 >  > 
 >  > Liberal Democrats I talk to are depressed and disengaged in this, the first 
 >  > month of the second term of Trump. They’re also jealous. Why, they ask, 
 >  > won’t the Democrats run a candidate who campaigns and governs as 
 >  > aggressively as Trump is doing now?
 >  > 
 >  > As for those Democrats, the party faces a choice as it prepares to challenge 
 >  > MAGAism. It can reconstitute itself into something that looks and feels more 
 >  > like a movement, far less careful and far more energetic. Or it can keep 
 >  > going as a party that promises that nothing will ever fundamentally change.