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A Few Questions For You:

Howell Hurst Uncategorized

A reader of my last Blog, where I provided a Link to various definitions of fascism, asked me if I believe Donald Trump is a fascist? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.

If you read all of the several definitions given, his behavior certainly favors many of the common traits attributed to fascistic personalities. However, could not that also conceivably be chalked up to a well-meaning person with a deep-seated psychological quirk?

For example, one person I know with solid mental health credentials contends Mr. Trump has many of the idiosyncrasies common to narcissistic psychopaths. Another reader simply believes the man’s gotten into water over his head: he just doesn’t know how to do the job he’s talked himself into.

I wonder about many things regarding this fellow. He has pointed out that our unemployment rate is actually higher than the official standard of five percent. He says that, quite rightly, some 20 -30 million Americans after the recession finally just gave up and stopped looking for work.

So why, I ask, does not Mr. Trump propose to introduce a major educational initiative to immediately supply all those people new job training and help them connect with companies now offering jobs, but having trouble finding the properly trained people? As a byproduct, that would also instantly create thousands of new education jobs teaching the unemployed how to do their new work.

The argument generally offered by those opposing such an idea is that none of these 20 million are capable of absorbing training and fulfilling the jobs. Really? All 20 million, most of whom were successfully employed before our wealthy financial experts bankrupted the nation with their mortgage scam, are not smart enough to be retrained and put back to work?

I doubt that.  Instead, I think we Americans – all of us, the financial leaders, the politicians, the truck drivers, the plumbers, every one of us – are in denial. I believe we have all bought in so hypnotically to the idea our individual goals in life must be to make money, that we are blindly aiming at the hole in the donut.

The donut should be to have life goals that contribute to the well being of all of us. If all of us Americans don’t make it, then the country doesn’t make it. Having designed an economic system that awards only greed obviously doesn’t work worth a hoot except for those whose greed gene is top priority. In addition to the millions who gave up on jobs, we have tens of thousands of homeless living in the streets.

Mr. Trump has focused on blocking immigrants and refugees from coming to America.  So, why don’t we do the exact opposite and reinvent our nation by investing in these unemployed and immigrants, giving them the best job trained educations in the world, and building more and more ventures supporting them to more deeply penetrate both domestic and international markets?

Why don’t we back off on some of the computerized automation schemes, that are making a handful of wealthy people wealthier and wealthier and yet even wealthier, and let more of that work again be done by our people? If we create jobs by sharing work we will create millions of new consumers, corporations will make more money, everybody wins.

A little quality control like this will unquestionably help oil the economy. Now, that’s a real idea. Let’s all make money by focusing on education and jobs for people, simultaneously rebuilding our nation by inviting people in, not building walls against them. Quite a Christian concept too, isn’t it? I think so.  The plan in a nutshell? Let’s get bigger. That’s good capitalism. Right?

Would that be complicated and expensive? No more complicated than any other endeavor, such as conquering space, diving to the bottom of oceans, going to Mars, crafting mortgage scams that upset the whole world, and voting in lifelong health programs for politicians that ordinary citizens don’t get, just to name a few complicated things we have mastered.

If we claim to be capitalists, the expense of a national education initiative would be an investment in our national future.  If every American could immediately obtain job-training education coupled with a collaborative job-placing effort between government and corporations, the long-term effect would be remarkable.

Another long-term perspective: why doesn’t Mr. T pass an executive order requiring all defense-related industries be made non profit? Let’s take the profit motive out of defending America. Let’s take it out of medicine too. Let’s require you do both because you patriotically believe that the health of our people and defense of our country are attractive enough. The cost of defense and medicine would drop while the incentive to be in both would increase for those lacking the greed gene.

I know lots of unemployed Americans who would be glad to be in defense or medicine on a non-profit basis. I bet you know some too. And while we’re at it, why don’t we create a national internet waste exchange program to recover and recycle all the million of dollars of resources still annually buried in landfills? The waste of America is immense: a totally ignored subject of billionaires and politicians.

Uh oh! In all this speculating I misplaced the subject of fascism.  The whole purpose of having you read definitions of if was to get you thinking. To motivate you to consider if it is relative to anything going on today. And if not, to have you raise alternative ideas about what is going on.

Because something troublesome to define is going on. And I think it’s time we figured out what it is. It’s worth a try.

hat do you say?

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