07 September 2009

The Will to Power and Its Followers in the Socially Immature


"I am afraid we may have, in the near future, friendly fascism. And I do not use the term lightly. I grew up under fascism, in Franco’s Spain, and if nothing else, I recognize fascism when I see it. And we are seeing a growing fascism with a working-class base in the U.S. This is why we cannot afford to see Obama fail. But his staff and advisors are doing a remarkable job to achieve this. Ideologues such as chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel (who, when a congressman, was the most highly funded by Wall Street) and his brother, Ezekiel Emanuel (who did indeed write that old people should have a lower priority for health care spending) are leading the country along a wrong path."
Vincente Navarro, Obama's Mistakes in Health Care Reform

Vincent Navarro writes an amazingly insightful political analysis of health care reform and the Obama Adminstration. This is as we would expect, since Navarro, is an M.D., Ph.D., and professor of Health Policy at The Johns Hopkins University and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Health Services.

But then he goes on to end his essay with this remarkably bad prescription.
"Given this reality, it seems to me that the role of the left is to initiate a program of social political agitation and rebellion (I applaud the health professionals who disrupted the meetings of the Senate Finance Committee), following the tactics of the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s and 1970s. It is wrong to expect and hope that the Obama administration will change. Without pressure and agitation, not much will be done."
The Will to Power has a bewitching siren call. It offers simple solutions to complex problems. It provokes the cycle of problem - reaction - solution, and the eye for an eye approach that 'makes the whole world blind.'
"Communism and fascism or nazism, although poles apart in their intellectual content, are similar in this, that both have emotional appeal to the type of personality that takes pleasure in being submerged in a mass movement and submitting to superior authority." James A. C. Brown

And yet, like most dark powers, it decimates and destroys who pick up the sword, and lays waste to them, their country, and their children.

This is the lesson of history, the abyss of madness into which a great leader can bring a nation once it loses its sense of proportion, that people in their passionate desire for power often forget.