A Necessary Speech
Published at 19:43 on 2 November 2022
Biden’s speech was necessary. It wasn’t the speech I would give about the current situation, of course, but Biden is in a vastly different situation than I am in and his politics are not mine. That said, the basics were correct: the coming election is a choice between autocracy and democracy.
The question is: do enough Americans care enough about democracy? To paraphrase what I wrote in an earlier article, if we have a fascism-friendly public, then fascism becomes basically inevitable. I chose the term “fascism-friendly” deliberately; it is not necessary for the public to be majority fascist. All that is necessary is for enough of the public to be friendly to the idea of maybe giving fascism a little whirl and seeing how it goes.
Of course, the very concept that fascism can be given a little whirl is fatally flawed: once fascists get power, they don’t easily give it up. Then the regrets kick in, but it is too late.