SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
ronald reagan
Trump Is Clearly Moving in an Authoritarian and Potentially Fascist Direction
Without resistance this regime will ensure that Americans are more vulnerable to climate change and to political chaos, moral decay, and social disintegration.
Jan 29, 2025
The Donald Trump administrative strategy is to remake the structure and nature of the U.S. federal government. His frenzied pace of administrative orders—what I call edicts—is an obvious effort to deregulate industry; shrink the civil service; banish language references to diversity, equity, inclusion, and climate change; assume authority for domestic military purposes; and pursue conspiratorial "replacement theory." And, of course, his own personal emoluments and profits are accompanying corollary benefits.
He promises to move aggressively against the media, positioning himself to achieve this goal with the invaluable assistance of the Big Tech CEOs who control social media, the powerful and growing online communication space. Forbes reported that the combined wealth of those CEOs (Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, and Shou Zi Chew) who sat behind Trump at his inauguration is $1.5 trillion. Four of the five wealthiest people in the world were among them. The oligarchic control that these CEOs have over much of the network of media companies not only facilitates Trump's ideal of limited loyal opposition but also entrenches the tech industry's power in the emerging political establishment.
Trump is moving at high speed to consolidate his authority over Congress, to diminish its oversight, law- and policymaking, and its approval of executive appointments. It doesn't take much imagination to see the authoritarian and potentially fascist direction he is taking the nation. If he can tame his media critics, emasculate Congress, and expand control of the justice system, from local prosecutors to Supreme Court justices, he will have retooled the government. And that government will progressively integrate corporate and private interests into it.
There is little doubt that virtually every American, including here in Maine, will know a neighbor or have heard of someone who was ripped from his or her home, taken to detention centers, and deported.
Under the new Trump regime, there will be greater privatization of government services. Elon Musk has already eclipsed NASA in private space exploration and satellite communication. Private healthcare insurers are contracting with Medicare to provide its statuatory services. Social Security will definitely be diminished in important ways ( e.g. raising the retirement age, cutting benefits), eventually leading to all retirement and pension funds being exclusively 501(k) investment plans.
The current political direction has a history that is important for Americans to understand. With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the rise of political conservatism dealt a death blow to the programs of the welfare state introduced in the long tenure of FDR's presidency in the 1930s. Over the succeeding decades the Republican Party promoted deregualtion of industry and concentration of wealth. Predictably, corporate investors and CEOs have received the proponderance of wealth generated in the decades following 1980. This distorted evolution has led to a Project 2025-style assault on broad democratic participation across society.
The populist affectations of the Trump campaign and election were mere theater. The populist appeals were without actual programs except for immigration and extending tax breaks. But, in an age of digital wizardry, appeals to people are more convincing than actual programs. The daily deluge of commercial advertising—itself a result of lax regulation—cultivates consumer and materialist behavior over citizenship and civic responsibility. Thus people are vulnerable to specious persuasion such as corporate advertising and political demogoguery.
The Democratic Party also holds part of the responsibility for the present politics. With the election of Reagan, it too, moved in a more conservative direction. Instead of pursuing a populism that would revive the support of working class, rural, and poor Americans, it engaged in identity politics as an electoral strategy. As it distanced itself from the majority of Americans, it became clear that Republicans were often outmaneuvering the Democrats in Washington even if they lost the presidential elections. One represenatation of this manipulation of the Democrats was Sen. Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) holding up then-President Barack Obama's nominees to Supreme Court. The Democrats, thereafter, were bowled over by the three consevative justices Trump appointed to the Supreme Court.
Authoritarianism and fascism are not-so-distant cousins. They are both hyper-nationalist and feel that the historically dominant ethnic or genetic group should make sure its "blood" is not diluted or corrupted by those from other groups. One of the tactics both authoritarians and fascists employ is supporting extra-legal and extra-judicial methods of civic and social control. Trump's pardons and commutations of the January 6 insurrectionists give encouragement to vigilante forces and militia.
These groups can assault the halls of government and, even then, they will be considered heroic Americans. Private militia and other armed groups of vigilantes are very useful to a repressive government. They can instill fear through threats, militant marches, and other displays of armed resistance and offense. They may even be used to enforce policy or law at local levels. Meanwhile, former Trump administration officials who criticize him, and have been targets of Iran's death threats, are denied secret service protection. Authoritarians and fascists alike see all criticism as real or potential disloyalty to the state, i.e. to the president in this case.
"Great Replacement" thinking drives some of the most violently aggressive rhetoric into the public sphere, even though it is a debunked white nationalist far-right conspriritorial theory. It is used to justify everything from the forcible removal and breakup of families to militarizing the border. There is little doubt that virtually every American, including here in Maine, will know a neighbor or have heard of someone who was ripped from his or her home, taken to detention centers, and deported. It is important to remember that fascist regimes have historically singled out groups to silence them and threaten them with violence. As one Germany priest noted during the 1930s:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
The Trump adminstration must be challenged in the media and in the streets. Without resistance this regime will ensure that Americans are more vulnerable to climate change and to political chaos, moral decay, and social disintegration. We have a great responsibility.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Nobody Can Embargo Sunlight': Jimmy Carter and the US Solar Revolution That Wasn't
Why didn't we listen? We could so easily have listened.
Jan 07, 2025
As Jimmy Carter is laid to rest this week, I think it’s worth paying attention to just exactly how out front he was on solar energy.
Driven by both the upheaval of the OPEC embargoes and the lingering echoes of Earth Day at the start of the 1970s, and with “Limits to Growth” and “Small is Beautiful” as two of the decade’s big bestsellers (Carter had a reception for E.F. Schumacher at the White House!), the administration decided that solar was the way out. (The idea of the greenhouse effect was beginning to be talked about in these circles too, but it wasn’t yet a public idea, and it wasn’t driving policy).
Everyone knows about the solar panels on the White House roof, but that was the least of it. Jimmy Carter, in his 1980 budget, pledged truly serious cash for solar research, and for building out panels on roofs across America. “Nobody can embargo sunlight,” he said in his most important speech, from the government’s mountaintop solar energy lab in Golden, Colorado. “No cartel controls the sun. Its energy will not run out. It will not pollute the air; it will not poison our waters.” Carter—with characteristic bad luck—was giving this speech outside in a driving rainstorm, not the backdrop his handlers had hoped for. But he was resolute. “The question is no longer whether solar energy works,” he said. “We know it works. The only question is how to cut costs.”
Reagan took the solar panels off the White House, but again that was the least of it.
His goal, he said, was to have America getting a quarter of its power from the sun by the year 2000. And that was almost certainly an achievable goal—the history of it is that when you pour money on panels, they get better and cheaper fast. The money finally came from Germany, with its feed-in tariffs, which subsidized the development of low-cost Chinese panel manufacturing beginning around 2005. But that was a quarter century after what might have been, had we listened to Carter.
Just for kicks, here’s John Hall and Carly Simon singing about the “warm power of the sun” outside the Capitol in 1979. (If you look really closely, you can’t see me, but I was there). I think the movement probably made a mistake spending as much time opposing nuclear as backing solar—but opposing is easier, it must be said.
"Power-No Nukes" concert with Carly Simon
Anyway, of course, we listened to Reagan, with his siren song about ‘morning in America,’ and his version of ‘drill baby drill,’ and we went ever deeper down into the hydrocarbon hell we now inhabit. Reagan took the solar panels off the White House, but again that was the least of it. The real problem was that he slashed federal research funding to the bone. Tens of thousands of people in the nascent solar industry lost their jobs; a generation disappeared.
In fact, it’s only now that we’re getting back to where we were. The Inflation Reduction Act will forever be Biden’s signal achievement, even if he and Harris never figured out how to talk about it (and didn’t even really try during the fall campaign). But it’s done what Carter envisioned—jumpstarted the future. And if you want a musical tribute (not quite John Hall and Carly Simon, but pretty good anyway), check out this video about the DOE’s Loan Program Office, which—under the inspired leadership of Jigar Shah—has been at the absolute center of the IRA rollout:
Now, of course, the Trump administration is going to try and do what the Reagan administration did in the 1980s—slow down the transition to clean energy, at the behest of their friends in Big Oil. Trump’s a true believer—he told the British government last week that they should take down the wind turbines in the North Sea and drill for more oil instead. Biden got the final word here, though—in one of his last acts, he put an awful lot of the U.S. coast off-limits to drilling and in ways that won’t be easy for the next guys to undo.
The administration will still do serious damage, of course, but it’s possible that it won’t be as fatal as the last time around. For one, the energy revolution is now global, and so even if the U.S. lags, China will drive the planet forward. For another, the IRA has two years under its belt already, and so there’s lots of money already out there, lots of it in unusual places. (The biggest solar panel factory in the western hemisphere is in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district). The GOP has announced they’d like to cut $700 billion in clean energy funding to help pay for a $5 trillion tax cut—we’ll see how the politics shakes out.
The GOP has announced they’d like to cut $700 billion in clean energy funding to help pay for a $5 trillion tax cut—we’ll see how the politics shakes out.
But the biggest reason is that the movement of people who care about the future know what happened last time, and we will do our best. Some of that will mean trying to keep IRA money funding through the Republican Congress; much of it will mean figuring out how to celebrate sun and windpower, and make them ever easier to install at the state, local, and street level. That’s much of what we’ll be working on at this newsletter in the year ahead—for now, I’ll just tell you to keep the weekend of the autumnal equinox (Sept 21) free on your calendar.
And also just a reminder, as the press reports on the funeral of the pious and extremely good Baptist peanut farmer (all of which is true) that the 70s were also kind of cool. I mean, Carly Simon! And that White House roof, where the solar panels were? That’s where Willie Nelson smoked a large joint after an Oval Office visit. Jimmy, we will miss you—you were a great ex-president, but a great president too. If only we’d listened.
Keep ReadingShow Less
As Trump Returns, Lessons From the Anti-Apartheid Movement Under Reagan
For those of us engaged in solidarity with Palestinian struggles for liberation and return, or in any movement for peace and justice, we should take note that an all-powerful conservative president is not all that powerful after all.
Dec 01, 2024
The Biden administration’s insistence to continue arming Israel despite it carrying out what a growing consensus of scholars and human rights organizations are calling a genocide in Gaza has been one of the greatest moral failures in modern American history. While the Biden administration’s approach to the situation has been disastrous, there are legitimate fears that Donald Trump’s second term in office may prove even worse for Palestinian survival, much less liberation.
In the wake of these traumatizing times, it is worth looking back at the South African anti-apartheid movement during a similar moment in American history for some hope and guidance.
Ronald Reagan was elected to a second presidential term in 1984 by a landslide. With a platform focused on economic austerity, hawkish cold war politics, and repressive domestic policies important to the religious right, Reagan won every state but Minnesota and nearly 60% of the popular vote. Reagan’s position on South African apartheid was steeped in racism and an approach called “constructive engagement,” by which the American government worked with instead of against the apartheid regime to slowly reform its policies. As the president’s Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs throughout his two terms in office, Chester Crocker, put it, “all Reagan knows about Southern Africa is that he is on the side of the whites.” Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu, who more often focused on the positive qualities of even his bitterest enemies, was blunter: “[Ronald Reagan] is a racist, pure and simple.”
And yet it was during Reagan’s second term in office that the anti-apartheid movement in America made its most significant gains. For more than three decades, a loose, multi-racial coalition of faith-based, labor, student, and peace organizations worked in solidarity with their South African brethren to try to help end the country’s legally sanctioned system of white supremacy. After the African National Congress in 1958 called upon the world to put economic pressure on the apartheid regime, many in this American coalition used boycotts, shareholder resolutions, direct action, divestment, and advocacy for sanctions to force US corporations to leave South Africa. By the early 1980s, the movement had successfully pushed a few religious institutions, labor unions, universities, and local and state governments to divest from some companies operating in South Africa. Kodak stopped doing business with the South African government after a years-long boycott campaign. And the United Nations had issued an arms embargo. But the United States was finding all sorts of ways around the arms embargo, and most major institutions in America were still thoroughly invested in banks and other companies that were directly or indirectly supporting the apartheid regime.
Despite Reagan’s renewed presidency, the anti-apartheid movement set its eyes during his second term on more divestment and the biggest prize of all: U.S. sanctions on South Africa. Congress passed a sanctions bill in 1985, but Reagan vetoed it. Feeling the pressure from the movement and from many in the Democratic-controlled Congress to do something, Reagan responded by issuing a set of limited sanctions by executive order. But as Tutu described them, they were “not even a flea bite” on the monstrous apartheid regime. The anti-apartheid movement pressed on, as clergy, labor leaders, students, and other activists engaged with each member of Congress, urging them to pass a more comprehensive sanctions bill. Meanwhile, thanks to equally dogged campaigns, many of the biggest institutional investors were beginning to divest. The Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Harvard University, Columbia University, TIAA-CREF, and the New York City Pension fund, among other institutions, all divested, in 1985, from at least some companies involved in South Africa. Responding to the threat of divestment, fifty multinational corporations ended their business activity in South Africa that year, including PepsiCo, General Electric, American Express, Motorola, and Boeing. When Chase Manhattan Bank, long a target of the anti-apartheid campaign, suddenly froze the apartheid regime’s line of credit and demanded it repay its outstanding loans, the South African economy began to collapse.
By September 1985, the South African government announced that it was freezing its repayment of foreign debt until the following year as a means of slowing down foreign withdrawal from the country.
Momentum was building in 1986, ahead of midterm Congressional elections, for a more comprehensive sanctions bill. Congress, again, passed sweeping sanctions against South Africa, and Reagan, again, vetoed the bill. But this time, with deeper relationships between activists and Congresspeople, and elections looming in a matter of weeks, a bipartisan Senate and House garnered the necessary supermajority to override the president’s veto. The sanctions bill, while still a compromised version of what many opponents of apartheid were calling for, significantly curtailed US trade with South Africa. Other industrialized nations had their own sanctions in place. Beset by this foreign economic pressure and increasing agitation from Black South African freedom fighters within and just outside its borders, the apartheid government could see the writing on the wall.
A little over a year after Reagan left office, amidst the one and only term of his former vice president, George H.W. Bush, South African President F.W. de Klerk announced that all political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela, would be released, anti-apartheid political parties would be unbanned, and free democratic elections would soon take place.
Somehow, an international coalition of activists, working in solidarity with the African National Congress, managed to help end apartheid, despite the best efforts of one of its most powerful foreign enablers to stop them.
For those of us engaged in solidarity with Palestinian struggles for liberation and return, or in any movement for peace and justice, we should take note that an all-powerful conservative president is not all that powerful after all. We must press on, waging struggles with the power that we have, as workers, consumers, members of institutions with sizable investments, and as voting citizens, who can remove a person from office as quickly as we can put them in if they do not earn our votes.
Indeed, drawing explicitly upon the South African example, Palestinian civil society is still calling upon us to use this power to employ boycotts, divestment, and sanctions until Palestinians have a full slate of human rights. In the shadow of tens of thousands of dead Palestinians and millions struggling to live on, the urgency to force the American and Israeli governments, and the businesses that support them, to end this bloodshed couldn’t be greater. And while the context is different, and the struggle may be more difficult, one of the lessons that the South African anti-apartheid movement gives us is that we can do this, regardless of who might be in the White House.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular