http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/24/media/cnn-blocked-white-house-gaggle/index.html
This story is about the current White House policy to exclude certain new organizations from an off-camera press briefing. Without saying so, an off-camera press brief already excludes television broadcasts of any station. Soon they'll allow FOX in only. They just haven't thought that far ahead, which to some extent is scary.
So-called President Trump is trying to run this country by the seat of his pants, and it looks as if he has no idea of what he is doing. He's had to change foreign statements several times, the "One China" policy and the importance of NATO. High ranking government officials, the VP, the SoS, to name two, have, as they say, walked back, these two issues.
The Democrats are successfully obstructing many of his nominees. This adds to the confusion, but the number of appointees is large and it doesn't seem as if the White House staff has gotten very far.
Gen. Flynn, his appointment to the National Security, blew up in his face and he had to start over. This time he went for, what we would call, an old military hand. Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster. A true military intellectual. He's written insightfully about the political decision making during the Viet Nam War and was one of the officers in Iraq who along with Petraeus changed the Army's anti-insurgency policy which succeeded in pacifying the Sunni population. Here is his Wikipedia entry (which I've read and I think is realistic.): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._McMaster This includes the so-called "Surge." (As if putting more troops in was an act of genius and far-sightedness, when in fact, everyone knew they should have had more troops.)
Now people consider him, Secretary of State and the Vice President as the backbone of the administration. As in, they're the only ones with any backbone. Although Comey, head of the FBI, may be coming around. Here's a link to his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Comey His refusal to buckle in to Trump's demands over following up on or publicly communicating about the connections between his staff and "un-named" Russians. As they say, we know Flynn both did it and lied about it, who knows who else is taking the same stance. Until they get exposed, we'll never know.
The White House staff, Bannon and Priebus, are believers. They people think they know what's best for America. It's ironic that Bannon is having his staff read David Halberstam's classic, "The Best and the Brightest." Here is Ellsberg's Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Halberstam Bannon says the book teaches how little mistakes can turn into long term, far reaching and accumulating consequences. He doesn't see that the book is really about the hubris of people in the government, McNamara and his defense department wiz kids like Daniel Ellsberg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg really thought they knew more than other people because they were privy to classified information both about the country's politics and about its social structure, and, of course, the war.
This is about the tendency toward authoritarian or fascist sentiment among the White House staff and evinced by Trump's political appointees and his conflation of his personal and political roles. His management of the media and the attempt to control the intellectual landscape is one of the ways fascist/authoritarian governments control their population. North Korea is the prime example of this. His exclusion of supposedly un-friendly media, which for him and his adherents are represented by the meme, MSM, or main stream media. This includes most of the print news reporting outlets, but especially the New York Times and the Washington Post. Not only that, but the press conference was off-camera. That excluded the MSM broadcast networks, especially CNN. This is clearly an attempt to strictly control what the administration wants the public to think.
I would say that all journalists should cease attending all press conferences and broadcast networks cease covering him. This administration more than others thrives off gratuitous media coverage. It's time to stop treating Trump like a clown and take him seriously. As a serious threat to American political culture. Bannon said they were going to change the character of the administrative state. I don't know what they'd replace it with. Like I said above, they really haven't thought that far out yet.
His attempt to control the FBI and its investigations is clearly megalomaniacal. That's the only word I can think of. Soon he'll be wanting the IRS to turn over peoples' tax returns so he can prosecute them, or ordering the IRS to audit perceived enemies.
One aspect of fascism is the one-party state. Other political parties are outlawed and forced to disband. Although, how much more disbanded the Democrats can get, I don't know. But the Republicans are approaching that situation with their dominance of all three branches of the government. I don't think they can outlaw a political party, other than the Nazi or Communist parties, in the U.S. Per Scalia, we shouldn't use foreign law as a basis of American law. In Europe, Nazi Parties are banned. There is not historical reason to ban a Nazi Party. There is a Communist Party allowed to organize in America. But there's no history of fascism in this country in the Nazi sense.
In summary Fascism has the following aspects:
One aspect of fascism is racism. At least historically. Fascists use race to create and excite a difference between an "us" and a "them." I only put them in quotes because this is a social creation. There is a very primitive drive to associate with those like you and in a finite world finding that banding together is better than standing alone in the hunter-gatherer past. This lead to the idea of "family" and then "kinship." This feeling of identifying with a group is very basic to human psychology. One could call it a structure. Fascism inflames this antagonism in order to both motivate and inflict violence on the stated "other."
It believes that military action is a good thing. Say that war imposes one Nation's will over another. A fascist government/party glorifies war. Fascism, Nazism, believed that war "purified" the nation's "blood-line" A culling of the weak, so to speak. We would refer to it today in genetic or evolutionary terms.
One aspect of fascism is extreme nationalism.
Both nationalism and racism serve to distinguish between "us" and "them." "Us" is then dealt with through the application of political violence, both formal and informal. That between political violence meted out the government edict and therefore public policy and the civilian organizations that arm themselves and attack the "other." This takes place on both a public/group and private/individual level. It's like the difference between the SS and the SA. The SS being an arm of the state; the SA being an arm of the Party and therefore a private organization.
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