Stealth Fascism II: The dissolution of civil society

I wrote the following in April just to illustrate a term I invented to capture the character of what is happening today, in 2020, because of the coronovirus and about the changing character of America:

Stealth Fascism

Stealth Fascism

Taking my cue from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead , what would Howard Roark do or not do? Imagine he is faced with the likes of the Coronovirus in the 1920s and 1930s. He would laugh.

He would touch his face, while scratching his head over a designing problem.

He would not regularly disinfect his architectural drawings to show to prospective clients or employers.

He would take occasional trips to shop.

He would not constantly wash his hands, using a disinfectant; or a hand sanitizer.

He would go out, not stay at home, and wonder what the hell ws “discretionary” or “essential” travel.

He would go to work.

He would not use his elbow to sneeze into.
He would not wear a mask.He was already in conflict with the collectivism of his time.

He would eat and drink in a speakeasy, when he had the money.

He would not maintain a social distance from Dominique Francon.

 He would perform other actions or non-actions we should take for granted, as sane behavior, as normal in his world.

I’m really surprised and disappointed by how readily Americans are to submit to stealth fascism. It’s not a world I want to live in. It's becoming less and less tolerable for me.

I have a good mind to order a Lone Ranger mask from Amazon.

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The most visible anomaly I observe today is the ubiquity of face masks; almost everywhere I go now I encounter a  clot of people wearing  them , in restaurants and even in gas stations. People have been told to wear masks to help arrest the spread of the virus.  And to treat it as one’s “patriotic duty.” Overall, I regard face masks as a subliminal order to “shut up,”  and to obey.  Nobody I know of is willing to question or doubt the practice and effectiveness of wearing the masks, which I regard as an absence of intellectual acuity. People wear them because “authorities” insist on it and say they must if they do not want to catch or transmit a virus germ.  They wear them to flaunt an imagined civic virtue. I heard one person during a radio call-in show say that he did not wear a mask, but when he went into a convenience store, the manager yelled “evacuate!” and most of his customers, who were wearing masks, ran screaming out of the store. This was an instance of “herd” mentality. I take Roark’s silent attitude about the conformity without even a grain of salt: I greet such behavior with an aloofness or indifference  which not quite verges on contempt.

The next ludicrous anomaly I’ve witnessed is the “social distancing” rule, which at the moment is six feet..As with face masks, the necessity of maintaining one’s “social distance” seeps into the public mind through official decrees, media propaganda, and constant reminders and badgering  that  citizens must do their bit.  I’ve shopped in some major stores, such as WalMart and Publix,  that have marked out  aisles with chalked 6-foot signs on the floor that wend through various product sections all the way to check-out, where the cashiers wear gloves and “sanitize” bags and purchased items with spray, and even the shopping carts. God help you if you infringe on someone’s “space.” In one store a masked shopper yelled at me, “Get away from me!” I was tempted to reply, “I wouldn’t ask you out to dinner, either.”  That has happened in more than one instance. In smaller stores the proprietors conscionsstiously mark where people must stand to get their purchases rung up.  You can even be castigated in a parking lot. I’ve been upbraided just getting out of my car if it’was too close to another. Another curios development is the rush on toilet paper as reported in various news items. You’d swear that TP had acquired the economic value of silver coinage. And has become an item difficult to keep stocked and shelved.

Park rangers, local cops, municipal officials and others emboldened by lockdown authority have become petty tyrants, closing or fining businesses, raiding gatherings in homes, public parks,  beaches, and even funerals, to break up groups of people assembled “Illegaly.” . Doubtless hovering drones report them to the authorities and vests them with omniscience. Across the country protestors are demonstrating enmasse against the lockdowns. lone Individual citizens are giving the “authorities” backtalk they do not like. Most lockdowns and “stay at home” orders are mostly state government decrees. The states demand full, obedient, immediate, and thoughtless compliance by the electorate.

Our culture today does not resemble the free culture of yesteryear. Tom McCaffrey, in an article on Canada Fee Press,noted: ” It’s hard to believe that there was a time in America when parents would set out into the wilderness in covered wagons with their children, risking injury or death every mile of the way, exposing themselves—and their children—to disease, blizzards, droughts, wild animals, outlaws, and hostile Indians. Today, such parents would be prosecuted for child abuse. …. But no one was in control back then.” Freedom to move and assemble was taken for granted. Today, that freedom is vanishing at the whim of the Gavin Newsoms and Gretchen Whitmers of the world.

What would Howard Roark do? For one thing, he would vanish, as well. You would not hear him laugh. But he would remain as a vision of all that ought to be.

What is “Stealth Fascism”?  It is an aggressive government program to ingratiate state policies and priorities into the everyday, banal concerns of private citizens, to ensure that they heed and obey those policies and priorities. And also that they look to the state for guidance and for “moral” clarity. It is insipid and evil. Patrick Henry would have nothing to do with it; nor would Howard Roark.

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