Is it alarmist to worry about the future? In the abstract, anything can happen to you tomorrow or next year. Lose a job, get hired, meet that special someone, get married, get divorced, have a child, get really sick, get injured horribly, default on debts, ruin, death. All these are possibilities in the best of times. But we don't live in the best of times. I have been having this recurring nightmare; Trump on the podium, recites the oath of office, turns toward the cameras and nods, sending the signal to his alt-right minions to execute Order 66. It may be unlikely, practically out of the realm of possibility but who or what exactly could resist an all out slaughter and reign of terror? If Dubya proved anything to the slave power aristocrats ("slave" is meant rhetorically), it is that the constitution is just a piece of parchment if no one can or will stand up for it. Norms and traditions are for small minds, and reality is determined by those with the power. The theory and practice of oligarchical collectivism states that nothing in Oceania need be efficient save the Thought Police. The threat to power comes from the middle, beginning with the opposition party and trickling all the way down to dopey bloggers like myself.
Does our society actually "need" all of the symbolic analysts or whatever the term is for the bulk of what formerly constituted the middle class in this country do? How about the bureaucrats who actually run things day-to-day? Journalists? Humanities professors? Librarians? Labor Union leaders and officers (the few that actually still exist)? Executives of goo-goo NGOs? I don't know, and neither do the fascists about to take over our country. But they sure hate liberals with the heat of a thousand suns (liberal being anyone who doesn't share their love of hate). Skeletal Ann Coulter let slip the plan once when she said they planned to keep a few liberals alive for display at a zoo. It was easy to laugh at that pile of shit, and everyone should still do so. But we are in completely uncharted territory for the United States. Sure we can study how fascism and authoritarian regimes played out in other counties, but are Americans exceptional in their inhumanity?
Even if only one percent of the trolls who claim they can't wait to start "crushin' libs" are not just internet tough guys and would actually pull triggers, that could still be a large Einsatzgruppe. I hope I'm wrong. But think about society from a Marxist critique of corporate capitalism for a moment. Sure most corporate executives are human beings with feelings of decency for their neighbors in real life, but in the boardroom they look at society as a market. Individuals have value only insofar as they contribute to profits for corporate America, those who do not are considered "superfluous." For regular sales it is up to some other sucker to pay a decent wage to their rental laborers so they can buy our stuff. Engels wrote about the British working class, that they were paid a "reproduction wage" to ensure that enough workers were able to have children and therefore provide a next generation of workers. In order to make a reproduction wage in America, many of the working poor require public assistance. So what will happen when Paul Ryan rams through his granny-starving budget and cuts off that tenuous connection to a subsistence lifestyle?
The other side of the superfluous equation is the "reserve army" of labor. A capitalist economy wants a vast pool of desperate proletarians to keep wages as low as possible. Indeed, they have succeeded to the point where wages have fallen below the replacement level that would be unsustainable without those horrible food stamps and rent assistance or medicaid that make everyone "dependent" on government. Reducing the reserve army could put pressure on wages, so our would-be Final Solution would likely have to stop short of that.
What would the ceiling be then? How high could the death toll reach without reducing profits for the worst, most amoral, business corporations in this country? Your guess is as good as mine. But this kind of macro-thinking might be worth entertaining the next time someone claims that "oh, they would never go that far" if you worry for your safety. If most of Trump's base are as committed to the eliminationist rhetoric as they claim; if Trump himself is as serious about "his enemies" and getting revenge as he has claimed then my nightmare is about as realistic as him suddenly respecting ethical guidelines and emerging as a presidential figure.
Again, I hope this doesn't come to pass but the future looks pretty awful and it is not alarmist to speculate about the possibilities. Nor does it normalize the depravity and inhumanity of a standard reactionary, authoritarian regime to imagine the extremes. The level of awfulness is completely unpredictable and no one should breathe a sigh of relief if all they do is cut taxes, yank away health care from millions, destroy the social safety net, jack up interest rates on student loans, and so on because that would still lead to an unacceptable death toll and misery.
Whatever happens, resist! It is never too early to start planning strategy and tactics for making the Final Solution and terror more difficult for them. I would take back everything I have ever written if the republicans in power now did nothing, just kept everything the same. It's not too late.
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