Hybrid terms

   A term like "Christo-facism" is like a description of a compound.  To me, I intellectually understand why we come up with ways to describe even not fully formed happenings, like warnings.  But Christianity is actually opposite of facism.

  I'll write more after work.  It's terrifying to hear people telling us that Christianity and wealth/prosperity/success is Nazi-ism.  Makes a cloudy day spooky.

  Day was not spooky here.  Bunch of professionals getting work done.

  So, we heard the hybrid term "Christo-fascism" on the program "On the Media".  And I am so grateful to author of Erasing History Jason Stanley for writing up some description and warning about what can happen when very complicated political theory (largely revolving around "hate") is being brought to life by popular movements.

  He points out the many comparisons between factors in the world today and stuff that happened back in history.  In the United States we have not fully erased our history of freedom and liberty for all citizens, but elsewhere in the world that is happening.  People erase or omit parts of history and often replace the vacancy with a one-sided version or what is called "propaganda".  He also made the point that being aware of history is a really positive way of not letting it be erased.

  There is fear that we can't go back in time and correct mistakes and horrors, or even truly compensate for history.  Some people have come to settlement--legally, financially, through learning and growing, and through commemoration and memorial.  And some have had to come to terms inwardly and privately.  Sometimes people can forgive.  Sometimes forgiveness is not possible.  Sometimes not forgetting though forgiving is what has been forged.  And even when people forgive and forget (move on) there is cause to put the event or actions/feelings into a state of remembrance about, so we're not forgetting pain caused, pain felt.

  Historical happenings are collective re-experience, so it's difficult to pin one perspective onto time periods and social/political experience.

  The "On the Media" program introduced us to a baseline wondering in thinking about fascism as "ideology", or,  "a way of doing politics".  There are examples in history of nations, groups, leaders whose "politics" did evolve from idea into mechanized or systematic.  The classic examples are Hitler and Stalin whose political ways dragged the world into phases of warring.  And whose dictatorships sculpted generations of people into "like-minded" and without choice (survival wise) about "supporting" what came across as the "popular" or majority-driven, overall way of their nations.

  Some countries adopted political structuring according to dictators' plans.  Other places became a mix of tendencies and trajectory.  Still other territories were designated in the orbits and spheres of dominate rule.  Some places have developed along world religion lines.  Some have developed with a decaying religious rule propped up by secular solution.  And many have declared to be democracies or not under authoritarian rule.  That doesn't mean there aren't rules and dominating trends.  And it doesn't mean there's clearcut paths to solutions.  A secular solution in the West has been rule of Law.  But almost everything about laws and even the legal systems has also come under scrutiny and had contentious debate surrounding it.

  Jason Stanley's book discussion on the program is sort of a messenger about some major turbulence in the world resurfacing in our own times.  He looks at how the United States has "often used fascist solutions to national problems" and so clarifies some of the friction that exists in calling ourselves both a democracy and a Republic.  A grave danger is that such a potentially "great" nation can be co-opted or used by forces and people who make the effort to strip America of it's unique properties (found in our Constitution) or who endeavor to get hold of our nation and use us to power their group's thing.

  Stanley also argues that degrading any human as not human, or worse, vermin, beasts, trash...villifying or monsterizing some lends itself to making some of the people targets and others the targeting.  When hate gets political, in other words, we all lose ways to transcend the outcome which is destruction and death.

  Historical research and analysis of philosophy and social movements, law, and civilization shows that people and places can change into something different from principle.  History gives us a lot of samples.  And current events display national differences.  Fundamental shifts in world politics and warring have brought us into having to have critical awareness of ourselves first and how we as a nation-- that is not a fascism-- can survive and thrive.

  One way I'm processing "the fascism debate" is thinking about the issue of "abortion".  The political "left" of center is saying it's proof of "fascism" for the political "right" of center to have made abortion (a medical procedure) a State rather than a Federal issue.  Un-federalizing the medical procedure is as much about how tax dollars get spent as it is a moral issue on the whole.  So while the left side is saying, that's them (the right side) taking away a woman's control of her own body...the right side is not out to control a woman's body so much as not being forced to pay for abortion as a national chore.  Also, it's a move to demechanize abortion as a federal tool.  Putting it back to State puts the medical procedure back to a more local level.  It deflates the federal power regarding the procedure which is more in line with a goverment not being authoritarian.