Issue #73
Last Update May 10, 2013
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National Last Days of the Republic by Gerry Krownstein October 31, 2010 Anyone with any knowledge of history finds it easy to draw parallels between the present moment and some inflection point in history when the world changed forever. Unfortunately, the parallels that present themselves now are the last days of two republics: Rome and Weimar. In both cases, government was widely perceived to have failed, and in both cases the republic morphed into a dictatorship, while preserving outward republican forms for a while. The underlying conditions that put each government under stress were, in the long run, less important than the cynical decision to have the government fail that was made by the powerful of the time, ultimately with disastrous results.
In Weimar, the Great Depression and mega-inflation made life intolerable for the working people of the republic. The aftermath of World War I, with crippling reparations insisted upon by the Allies, the shame of defeat, and the explosion of changes to traditional morality and mores, left the ordinary German angry, resentful, frightened and looking for scapegoats. Two groups vied to harness this tide of negative emotion: the communists and the Nazis. The Nazis, backed by the major industrialists and bankers of the republic, won, and ultimately all but destroyed the country while slaughtering millions at home and abroad. The Nazis won over the populace by offering a simplistic program of return, purification and superiority: return to a mythical past of order, women knowing their place (and breeding as much as possible to replace the lost generation of WWI), rejection of foreign influence and control, and the right of the Ubermensch to take what he needs from the lesser people of other lands.
The Important People of both Rome and Germany saw a dictatorship as a way of eliminating the chaos that they themselves were stoking, and believed that they could control the dictator for their own ends. In both cases they were wrong; ruinously wrong in the case of Germany.
The same thing is happening now in the US. There was a dry run in the Clinton administration; gridlock, Newt Gingrich's attempt attempt to shut down the government, and finally impeachment, but Clinton was too good a politician, and the attempt failed. In George W. Bush they had the perfect puppet, so further action was unnecessary. With Barak Obama, the drive to cripple the government began even before he took office. The Birthers, the movement to brand him a Moslem, charges of socialism, health reform killing your grandmother, and other lies and rumors were an attempt to delegitimize the political process that has proven surprisingly effective.
If the Republicans and their Tea Party allies/adversaries succeed in the 2010 election, they have openly promised to create a governmental gridlock that will make Newt Gingrich look like a compromiser. Coupled with threats of a "4th amendment response" and arrant thuggery at public gatherings, the attempt to make America ungovernable is gathering steam, and too few voices are raised in protest. The Kochs, the Scaifes and all the others who want to be free to loot the economy and pollute the world, the Glen Becks and Rush Limbaughs who get rich as the mouthpieces of anarchy, all think they can drive America into chaos and then control the result. They are wrong on the second point – once the steamroller of anarchy gets rolling, they will be crushed in its path along with the rest of us.
A small, vocal minority, if well enough financed, can destroy a country. Don't let it happen here.
New York Stringer is published by NYStringer.com. For all communications, contact David Katz, Editor and Publisher, at david@nystringer.com