George W. Bush, Cryptofascist
Published at 06:02 on 12 November 2024
One of the little-known footnotes of America’s transition to fascism is that former president George W. Bush promptly congratulated Trump on his recent victory. He did so after remaining absolutely dead-silent on the Trump 2024 campaign, all the while many other former Republicans (most of who had already quit the party in disgust over Trumpism) denounced Trump and begged Americans not to vote for him.
This is, I believe, highly significant, as it was the actions of the George W. Bush presidency that convinced me of the fundamentally fascist nature of the Republicans at the time. The George W. Bush Administration was when I started routinely using the f-word to refer to Republicans and Republican administrations. It had by then become obvious: the bald-faced lying to get into the Iraq war, the attitude that truth is irrelevant and what matters is myth construction, the glorification of militarism (witness Bush’s flight suit “mission accomplished” stunt), the willingness to break laws (they literally went so far as to make torture an official policy).
The fundamentally fascist nature of the whole enterprise was clearly evident. When it was all over, after the dust settled and a new administration was in power, what happened? What was done to hold the architects of the fascism accountable? Nothing. Nobody served so much as a single night in jail. Of course not. The Democrats are, and long have been, a party of institutionalized weakness. In this, there was a lesson: fascism works, and it is a viable political tactic in the USA.
I knew then that the USA was in serious trouble, and that it was only a matter of time, unless some sort of revolutionary movement could prompt change from below (most likely as a result of giving the ruling class a good scare and frightening them into reforming). But the revolution never came, so here were are.