It is a country run essentially by the corporate
sector, which has overwhelming influence on
the government and which describes quite correct—it
is kind of symbolized by the richest man in
the world, Jeff Bezos, who made $13 billion
in a single day.
They’re just running wild, using Trump and
the administration or using the cover of the
pandemic to increase their dedication to enriching
the very rich and the corporate sector who
are, of course, eating it up.
They love it.
I mentioned military industry.
That is another example of it.
You might regard it as a last-ditch effort
to try to impose the maximal rule of extreme
wealth and corporate power running parallel
to the Mitch McConnell-Trump campaign to pack
the judiciary top to bottom with young ultra-right
Federalist Society lawyers who will be able
to make sure that no matter what the public
wants, nothing but their ultra-reactionary
policies will ever be able to be implemented
for at least a generation.
They are running on all stops to try to maintain
what they have succeeded in largely getting
through the neoliberal period, the last 40
years, an enormous concentration of wealth,
concentration of political power, general
population stagnating, declining, even to
the point where there is an increase in mortality
in the last few years among working age people,
white working age men and women, mostly men,
some women.
Nothing like this happens in functioning developed
societies.
The Republicans know very well that they are
a minority party.
Trump, in fact, pointed out not long ago that
if there were fair elections, the Republicans
would never win political office.
The country, basically, for a long time, has
been pretty much a one-party state, the business
party.
Two factions.
They have changed over time.
The last several decades pretty much since
Gingrich, and extensively since McConnell,
the Republicans have just gone off the spectrum,
off the political spectrum.
If you look at international rankings, they’re
alongside the European parties with neofascist
backgrounds.
Political analysts, serious political analysts,
describe them as a radical insurgency that
has abandoned parliamentary politics.
We talked a couple of days ago with Greg Palast,
whose very interesting work has shown the
extent to which they’re desperately trying
to purge electoral lists to prevent the wrong
people from voting so somehow they can hang
on.
All of this is happening in parallel along
with what you describe, the massive enrichment
of the superrich and the corporate sector
under the cover of the pandemic.
Every couple of days, some other executive
decision or decision of one of the corporate
clones, the corporate figures Trump placed
in charge of the various agencies like the
EPA, passing further legislation to smash
the public in the face and enrich the rich,
like cutting back pollution standards, which,
of course, is great for the coal companies.
They are hanging on by a thread, but we can
keep them going longer to cause maximal destruction
to organized human society.
Also the pollution which right in the middle
of a respiratory pandemic, increasing pollution,
of course, maximizes deaths.
And it is selective.
It is the people who live near the polluting
factories.
Who are they?
The people who can’t afford to live anywhere
else.
You don’t see Goldman Sachs executives living
there.
What you see is poor, black, Hispanic, Puerto
Ricans.
They are the ones who will take the brunt
of it.
They are already suffering much worse from
the pandemic.
This will make it worse.
This is a situation which has never arisen
in a functioning democracy apart from the
fascist takeovers in Italy and Germany, some
other countries, in the interwar period.
Trump is sometimes, even by experts in the
topic, called moving toward fascism.
I think, frankly, that gives him much too
much credit.
Fascism was a serious ideology.
I think it’s well beyond his ken or concern.
This is more like a minor dictator in a small
country that is subjected to military coups
over the years.
There is no conception of introducing real
fascist ideology.
In fact, in some ways, we are almost the opposite
of it.
The fascist systems were based on the principle
that the powerful state under the leadership
of the ruling party and the maximal leader
should basically control everything.
They should run and control the society, including
the business community.
We are almost the opposite.
It is the business community controlling the
government.
And any infringement on their power would
lead to a kind of confrontation that is almost
unimaginable.
So I don’t think it is fascism.
It is essentially tin-pot dictatorship.
And he is desperate, will do anything, almost
anything imaginable to try to keep himself
from being tossed out of the White House.
How this will eventuate, we don’t know,
but it is going to be a very difficult couple
of months ahead.
