Jon Huer’s gloomier-than-thou columns leave me wondering why he bothers to write at all. He has certainly staked out the doom beat, but his arguments are inconsistent and unproductive.
Some time ago Huer told us that hope is an opiate that prevents people from acting for change. In that column, he advocates for despair because, he says, only people who have despaired will break their bonds. People with no hope, however, have no reason to act. Only hope for something better leads people to take action.
Huer uses the example of Haitians leaving their country as an example of the superiority of despair. But surely it is hope for something better that spurs them into motion? In a time of climate crisis, despair is not only unhelpful, it is wrong. We can still make a difference. And Huer’s message is self-contradictory. Isn’t writing an act of hope?
In his most recent column, Huer says we have only the choice between fascism and capitalism, with no discussion of the moderation — regulation — of capitalism. Franklin Roosevelt defined fascism as private ownership of the government. Fascism is unregulated capitalism.
Franklin Roosevelt, like his trust-busting cousin before him, introduced guarantees and programs to soften capitalism. In so doing, he helped keep government more powerful than private businesses. As a result, up to now, we have been governed by the government, not by, take your pick — Exxon? AT&T? Metabook? What’s your least favorite company? Your least favorite corporate executive?
By simplifying capitalism to an utterly unregulated market, Huer is dangerously wrong to say fascism is simply more honest. Fascism does not allow for regulation or moderating forces. Our form of regulated — governed — capitalism can. That alone makes fascism much, much worse than what we currently have and what we very well may be losing.
I heard an interview with an Iraqi immigrant about her book, “A Beginner’s Guide to America.” The author, Roya Hokakian, pointed out something I had never considered. When people live in an authoritarian state, they have no reason to work together on anything. With no sense of participation in or control over laws, rules, and the civic order, people look out for themselves. Her example was traffic. In authoritarian countries drivers ignore the rules of the road, running stop signs, fighting to merge, speeding, and so on. Noncompliance becomes a form of resistance.
When we toy with authoritarianism and fascism, we Americans haven’t got a clue about how hard life would get in unanticipated ways. We don’t understand that when we give up control, we also lose a sense of investment in making things work. Cooperation and community break down to competition and clans. It’s not even good for business. Money flees the markets because all trading becomes insider trading. Bribery becomes its own currency. Uncertainty contaminates everything.
I understand that Huer is not actually saying he wants to live under fascism. I do know that capitalism is a rolling climate catastrophe and must be controlled. But at least that is possible. Huer’s tone does not convey what is at stake, what a horror fascism inevitably becomes. Everything falls apart.
We each, right now, are making a choice. We can care about and value each other at least enough to be equal under the law or we can say some people are better than others and hope to stay in the preferred group. As you make that choice, remember that each of us is a minority in some way.
Think of all the wrong, slanderous, and divisive descriptions we have already heard: Poor people are “takers.” Rich people are “elites.” Scientists obviously hate freedom. Gays, feminists, immigrants, non-Christians, the wrong kind of Christians, people with “impure” DNA, and on and on are all said to be less than — who? Each of us could be in the next unfavored group.
It is coming down to the wire. We can have government we can influence or not. I do not want to see what’s on the other side of that barbed wire. Yes, let’s work on capitalism’s flaws, but let’s not pretend fascism is no worse. This is no time for cynical posing.
David Gilbert Keith is a resident of Deerfield.