America chose fascism

The ludicrous sight of Democrats looking for someone to blame for the election of Donald Trump is embarrassing. Blame Biden. Bame Harris. Blame the party. Blame the campaign. How about we blame ignorance? Intentional ignorance.

Blame Biden? Because he did not do a selfless thing soon enough? After Trump’s victory, Mr. Biden was asked: Will you accept the result? He repeated a mantra: “You can’t love your country only when you win. You can’t love your neighbor only when you agree.”

That’s a patriot.

Blame Harris? Ms. Harris was a trooper. She did an impossible job, on a short timeline, with skill and grace. She was a good candidate and would have likely made a good president.

We know Donald Trump

We know what kind of president Donald Trump makes. We did this once. We know what kind of man he is. Some 50.4% of the voters picked him anyway.

In spite of? Or because of? That’s the scary question we must face.

Our problem is much bigger than blame. And it can’t be addressed with an issue tweak or a magical, mystery candidate who is a combination of FDR, JFK, Obama and AOC.

Some 74,800,000 voters (3 1/​2 million more than Ms. Harris got) voted not just for an outsider who would cut taxes and “drill baby drill,” but for brutishness, lies, and autocracy. Not just against political correctness and “the establishment,” but for ripping up the federal government and expelling immigrants.

These voters elected an anti-democrat to the presidency for the first time in our history. They voted against democracy and against themselves. It’s fascism, stupid.

Does that mean I believe half the country has gone full fascist? I do not. But a good chunk of that 50.4% are fascistic, though they would not use that word.

And the rest voted for a platform overtly out of the fascist playbook: A strong man who says he alone can fix it; a promise to identify “the enemy within” and expunge it; a package of slogans and myths that explains all that ails us, all of politics and all of life, in simple terms.

That’s fascism. Call it anti–democracy if it makes you feel better. But that is what so many of our neighbors voted for and what we must encounter and defeat.

Moreover, the majority have given our first anti-democratic president what even a normal president should not have: carte blanche — the executive branch (with mandate), the Congress, and the courts. This too must be faced.

The brutal reality

Democrats, and democrats, have no time to weep or blame. And they cannot combat Trumpism with a “can’t we all just get along?” centrism. They must engage with this brutal reality, and begin to argue with their fellow Americans.

The first task is to turn the 50.4% back to 49 and then 47.

We need to confront propaganda with truth, starting with factual truths. About the Biden economy versus the economy Trump left him. About Trans kids. (Not an epidemic and not a threat.) And about immigrants. (They built the nation. They were our fathers and mothers. They are still building it.)

Truth. Truth versus propaganda and ideology. Democracy versus anti-democracy. Persuasion not polling.

Here is a deeper truth we must also face: The fascist temptation never goes away. It reinvents itself.

We need to speak to and respectfully debunk the far right tropes, manufactured facts, and myths. And counter simplistic, snotty stupidity. A small example: After the election a man said to me that neither Harris nor Walz had ever held a “real job.”

That is the sort of thing that deserves an answer. Is being a prosecutor not a real job? Then I guess being a cop isn’t. Is being in the National Guard not a real job? Tell that to the kids who went to Afghanistan and Iraq. Is being a public school teacher not a real job?

Wokeness and political correctness are fair game. But when attacks on wokeness are covers for bigotry and misogyny — like insisting that Ms. Harris is dumb, all hard Trumpers got that memo — we must call out the fakery.

And Bernie Sanders is right. We need to pitch liberal economic populism to our fellow citizens: Know why we still have inflation in a booming economy? Corporate greed.

We need discipline

But liberal populism is not enough. Here’s why: Historically speaking, and in current American politics, fascist populism will beat it. Trumpism beat Bidenomics. It eclipsed Sanders.

And there is a reason. Resentment can’t grow or build. It simmers and corrodes. This is why populism can turn so easily to fascism.

People need something beyond self-interest to rise above self-interest. What is that something? Any discipline and any community that teaches citizenship, critical thinking, and mutual obligation. We must begin formulating such disciplines and groups now.

Keith C. Burris is the former editor, vice president and editorial director of Block Newspapers: burriscolumn@gmail.com.