Americans don’t understand fascism. They only understand binary choices between capitalism and socialism and are very hung up on labels. They also allowed their media to assign those labels to best suit their advertisers, which is kind of the definition of fascism. Hardly 1 in 100 Americans can accurately describe what those labels stand for, so they meekly accept what they are told.
Trump is a capitalist because he is rich and capitalism is good, right? Bernie is a socialist because he wants the government to benefit the people directly without the filter of corporations deciding winners and losers. Socialists are bad, right?
Greed is no longer viewed as a negative in America because decades of propaganda touting profit-seeking corporations have convinced Americans that we’d all be following mules around our small farms if not for the wonders of the “free market” and generosity of the capitalists. We even invented a new word for fascism so the so-called “left” could join in support of it, neoliberalism, the worship of markets as the best way to distribute resources, even those like power, food, and water. Once the description was changed to something more palatable the word “fascism” was free to sling at anyone who objected to total corporate rule.
Black is now white and up is down. One only needs to be persistent and pay well those public figures willing to whore themselves. Make the lie big and repeat it often, daily in the case of our current President.
That large and well-funded propaganda machine will never tell Americans that insulin, a hot topic currently, was “gifted” to the people by its discoverers and only minimal changes have been made to the formula to keep its patent current. It will also neglect to inform them that of the over 2000 drug and medical devices approved between 2013 and 2016 none (as in zero, 0, nada) were developed with private capital.
Every damn one was originally funded with government (public, our, socialist) money and then granted a patent to prevent competition. In fact, the average American doesn’t even understand that the patent itself, not to mention the dollars made in profits, are both “socialist” constructs of our government intended to organize the economy around the “public” currency. If one asks the average American where their money comes from the most common response will be “banks/business”.
It would appear that the Achilles heel of democracy is democracy.
