The Republican defense of Constitutional minority rule and our generalized fascism

Comment published on New York Times blog, in response to editorial by the Times Editorial Board, “This case should not have made it to the Supreme Court,” December 9, 2022:

The United States is a manipulated pseudo-democracy, and the Republican Party is now openly fascist.

Most citizens care about what happens, are highly vocal, and expect to have an effect. But the wealthy who rule have developed ways to use the system to get what they want. They are committed to nothing else.

It is not new; the Constitution was written to allow minority rule. And because of our racial and class stratification, the country has long been selectively fascist. The poor suffer from it, the rich do not. And beyond the open military/police repression, which has made this country vastly different from the America I grew up in in the 60s and 70s, people who fail in the economy and luck are just allowed to die: from a hurricane in New Orleans, poisoned water in Flint, the AIDS and Opioid crises... People who find life difficult under capitalism are declared "mentally ill" and threatened with medical prisons.

As the right wing is open about wanting dictatorship, they are apt to turn to blatant martial law. Trump is their man, and they are waiting for an excuse. The liberals lose in these situations because they have principles of fairness that they cling to, and resist being Machiavellian. If they were less scrupulous, they would just be less of a lesser evil.

As a writer who was harassed by covert police on Obama's watch and threatened with a Pinochet-style "elimination," I believe the only politics worthy of the name is one of protest. Resistance is not futile.