Random Destiny

Random Destiny

by Marco M. Pardi

Destiny, n. A tyrant’s excuse for crime and a fool’s excuse for failure.” Ambrose Bierce. The Devil’s Dictionary.

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I can’t speak for the Devil, but when I encounter the word random my first thought is: code for “I dunno”. For me it falls into a class similar to “You know” and “They say”. It calls upon an illogical determinant, something which just is and just happens and relies on unquestioning acceptance. I’ve read accounts of avid sunbathers saying their melanoma cancer was just a random event. Even the more literate among them sometimes say, Oh well, a random subatomic particle emitted in a faraway star system or even our own star just happened to hit a chromosome in such a way as to alter it toward development of cancer. Pardon me, but NO. Granted that we are limited in our abilities to predict these emissions, but we can predict the probable outcome of your stupid habit.

But our young children routinely show us the pre-acceptance state. When parents or teachers who believe in a God try to teach a child that God created everything the child’s first question usually is, Who created God? The common answer is: Nobody created God. God always was. Of course, if one really wants to silence the child one might invoke Sui generis, self generating. In other words, the lesson in causality being taught, Cause = God; Effect = Everything, is suddenly negated by the existence of an entity which, in this case, is neither Cause nor Effect. It just is, and it just causes things. Soon enough the child learns that, at least around a parent or teacher, acceptance = survival. Even in the face of illogical gibberish. For now, at least.

There’s a deeply embedded caveat in that acceptance: The strongly implied admonition to not look too closely into causes, to not “obsess” over the past. But while living in the past is destructive, ignoring the past is catastrophic.

Within a matter of days the people of the United States will be faced with a question, one which has arisen before: Do we punish the newly defrocked President and his henchmen, or do we simply go on, albeit while struggling to undo what we can of the enormous damage these past four years have brought us and the rest of the world? Some have compared this dilemma to that which faced the nation with the forced resignation of Richard Nixon. But that is a false equivalence. No President, or elected official for that matter, has done more to undermine the fundamental principles of Democracy, the rule of law, the mores of common decency, and the safety and future well being of life on this planet than has Donald J. Trump. The litany of his misdeeds and the examples of his depravity would go far beyond my ability to recount and the readers’ interest in considering.

But dwelling solely on this intensely damaged individual would be missing the largest lesson apparently many have yet to learn. Donald Trump was not sui generis. He was not random. Nor is there any reason to think we were destined to have him. Just as Adolf Hitler did not walk out of a Munich beer hall and take over Germany all by himself, Donald Trump did not push out the aspirants to the White House all by himself. He was managed and massaged, especially his profoundly narcissistic ego, by the latest generation of a population which decades ago erupted into the “Red Scare” of the 1920’s through 1960’s (the growing mega-corporations which wanted to kill the Labor movement and any chance at decent working conditions were behind this); the American Fascist Party, soon to morph into the American Nazi Party (funded by major industry barons and luminaries including major newspaper editors across the country until WWII drove them underground); and, ironically enough, by the very victims of those industry barons – the under and ill educated White working class. And, there is good reason to suspect that the Republican Party intentionally threw the nomination debates in favor of Trump.

If a random event is something which is without ascertainable cause, and which we will not likely see again then the rise of Trump was certainly not a random event. The themes which Trump played throughout his campaign rallies and social media messaging were long and well developed tropes adjusted and adapted to current times: Fascism presented as Republicanism.

Did these themes work? In 2016 51,201,031 people voted for him. Have they continued to work? Hate crimes surged by 20% under Trump (FBI). White Nationalist hate groups increased by 55% under Trump (SPLC). “There is a clear correlation between Trump campaign events and prejudiced violence.” (FBI. Brookings Institution.) No, Trump was not sui generis; he was the surfacing of the American Fascist ideology which began taking over the Republican Party in the late 1970’s, giving us Ronald Reagan as its first elected figurehead Fuhrer.

Having lived through the chaos, lies, corruption, lawlessness, attacks on science, and naked attacks on the core values of American Democracy these past four years, have the American people awakened? In 2020 74,222,484 people voted for him. An increase of 23,021,453. Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda under Hitler, would be proud. The Big Lie really does work.

There can be no question that Donald J. Trump must be charged with a variety of civil and criminal offenses (why else would he talk about pardoning himself?). But even if successfully brought to the logical conclusion of a prison sentence, America would be catastrophically remiss if it did not address the broad based attitudes and beliefs which brought him into office in the first place. I’m not speaking here only of the obvious issues we have faced before, racism, misogyny, exploitation of workers, etc. Those must be addressed….again. No, I’m speaking of the frank nuts & bolts basics that should have been stressed in repeated and graduated civics classes: Democracy, Socialism, Democratic Socialism, Fascism, and Totalitarian governments of any stripe. Communism is a non-starter. Anyone who knows even the basics of communism knows it has never worked at higher than the Band level of society, 80 or so individuals tops. Governments can call themselves whatever they want; that doesn’t make it so. But if Democratic Socialism is so bad, why aren’t the citizens of the Scandinavian countries storming our seaports and airports? Could it be that they actually merit their yearly designations as the happiest, most interconnected and productive countries in the world? Oh, but we excoriated Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for exclaiming he was a Democratic Socialist. We did that without knowing what Democratic Socialism was.

As so many statesmen have said before, Democracy takes vigilance and work. It will not survive if we continue to teach it in primary school classes in ways that render an insomniac senseless. These last four years have seen the most relentless and dangerous attack on democracy this country has ever seen. We now have enough factual material to develop case studies to carry students from primary school through graduate school. Will we muster the courage to do it?

I suggest an immediate impaneling of Sociologists, Political Scientists, and Historians to meet and devise chapters to be universally included in primary, secondary, and higher education textbooks explaining the honest history of the Fascist movement in this country. This material should also address the growing militia and White Nationalist movements, making clear their heritage from the Italian Black Shirts and the German Brown Shirts. Teachers of Civics, American History, Social Studies, and Political Science should be required, as part of their CEU (Continuing Education Units) requirement, to achieve and maintain proficiency in the understanding and the conveyance of this material. Private and Charter schools, up to now a dodge from secular and/or integrated schools, will comply or face closure. Seem Draconian? You haven’t seen Draconian if you haven’t seen Fascism.

We must reject the already developing tendency to excuse this administration as a “random” event, an aberration. It most certainly was not. But at the same time we must resist the temptation to excuse ourselves with the claim that we were destined to it anyway. That’s exactly the head down subservience that is the life blood of Fascism.

If you’ve gotten this far, I hope you have developed the interest to comment. As those dreaded words have often said, “We need to talk.”