No left turn

I do not expect much of a turn toward the Democrats in today's voting.

America is always on the verge of fascism. I was born in 1946, the year Truman, under pressure from rightwingers, established the security state and the loyalty oath. On the national level we soon saw McCarthy, Nixon, Reagan and now Trump -- all frightened of and determined to suppress democracy.

There's been no time in my life when the United States pursued a policy favoring the democracies overseas, and it is always undergoing a struggle within our borders to realize the democracy envisioned by the Founders.  The pressure of the rightwingers against participatory government is relentless.

It works because Americans are to great extent looking for a fuhrer. This should not surprise anyone despite the cant about being free and brave and independent.

For at least a third of the American electorate, freedom and independence are the last things they want.

We can start with religion. About two-thirds of Americans belong to authoritarian cults which either deny or discourage any sort of independent thought. This group includes the Roman Catholics, the other Catholics and evangelicals. The preachers are not overwhelmingly successful in stopping their adherents from thinking on their own, but they are always working against it. 

If we then turn to economics, the myth of that sturdy yeoman farmer, the man the Jefferson thought would make America democracy secure by cultivating his own vine and fig tree (probably the most inapt of Jefferson's political statements) has never been a genuine part of our system even when the land taken from the Indians was offered to the whites at rock bottom prices. It took substantial capital to become an independent farmer, so that, for example, when Iowa was settled in the 1830s and '40s about third of the people there were always landless, and this has been the case throughout our history. Economic dependence does not foster political independence.

Socially, you only have to scratch the skin of America to see it bleed racism, xenophobia and fear.

These attitudes have never quite predominated nationally -- America is so big that when one section goes fascist another can remain more or less immune. But authoritarianism is so close to taking over at all times that any time a slick talker blowing a tin horn comes into town millions rush to follow him. There's never been any shortage of cynical rich men willing to fund that parade. (But not only cynical; the rich are perhaps more fearful than even the poor.)

This election has not been about health care or jobs. It has been about fear. It is not hard to terrify an American.

To a degree we confront our racism and classism, but in public discourse never our fear. Not a word about this is ever taught in our schoolbooks -- no one says anything about the mayors of the east coast cities who in 1898 each demanded that the navy send its fleet to his city to protect his harbor from the largely imaginary Spanish navy.

Is not difficult to terrify an American.