You May Be Supporting Election Deniers, and Not Know It

You Do This by Dealing with Fortune 500 Companies that Contribute to Election Deniers’ Campaign Funds

Shortly after the January 6 Insurrection, many of the largest corporations in America vowed not to support election deniers with contributions. That didn’t last very long. Soon these behemoths were back at it. And if you are doing business with these companies, you, too, are indirectly supporting these deniers.

If you believe the January 6 Insurrection was just that, an attempt to overthrow our democratic way of government, if you also believe that electing or reelecting these deniers will present huge problems in elections to come at all levels of government, you may want to adjust your spending accordingly. Even if you can’t do that, and admittedly it will be very hard given these corporations’ sizes and the control they exercise over the American economy, you still may want to know what companies are making contributions to which deniers and how much they are giving them.

Fortunately, ProPublica has made this easy for you to do. They have investigated contributions and compiled a list of the Fortune 500 companies and their contributions to election deniers. You can either scan the list and then click for additional information, including the name of the election denier and the contribution amount, or you can enter in the name of a corporation and view the information.

While you may not be able to fully change your spending habits, at least you will have a good idea of how much regard corporations have for our way of democratic life, and how they value their own political influence in relation to people who would turn our government more authoritarian. Click Here for the ProPublica article and interactive charts. w/c

Rodham Reviewed

Rodham

By Curtis Sittenfeld

In this cross between alternative history and alternative biography, Curtis Sittenfeld poses the question: What would have become of Hillary had she picked up on Bill Clinton’s red flags and walked away from him? The answer is a mixed bag: An interesting peek into a famous relationship and how it might have evolved over the years; speculation on Hillary’s solo road to the U.S. presidency; and at least one suspect association.

That Hillary Rodham Clinton has been subjected to very effective demonizing by opponents on the right and that she herself has sometimes acted in bold ways that alienated even those supporting her, these are no secrets. Buried not so deeply in this novel written by someone who appears to like her is a criticism that dovetails with that directed at her by her opponents. All the signals about Bill were there and being a very astute woman she should have picked up on them and more importantly acted on them. Had she done so her life would have been different in important ways that would have both satisfied her intellectual abilities and benefited the country. Sittenfeld softens Hillary’s real-life decision by portraying the Hillary-Bill romance in detail in the very good first third of the novel, focusing on her feelings of love for Bill and his engaging and beguiling charisma. Readers can understand what drew her to him and had her ultimately resolving herself to his flaws to remain with him.

Contrary to the real Hillary, this version of her made the painful decision to break up with him and move on. That leads readers into the last two-thirds of the novel, imagining what her personal and political life would have looked like with her as a free agent. What transpires in the novelist’s alternate world is pretty much what you would expect, with some notable exceptions that include Carol Moseley Braun and Donald Trump. Politics is a rough game and though Hillary is a person of integrity (in the novel and in real-life, irrespective of obvious human flaws), the prize can’t be had without dipping a toe in the mud. Readers will probably have mixed opinions about this trip through the political world.

Then there is Bill, and it should come as no surprise that Hillary can’t escape him, nor that she carries a torch for him, for what might have been, for a very long time. Bill fares as you would expect Bill to, an indomitable character in real-life and on the pages of this novel. Talk about the Teflon President, or even the Teflon Don, neither have anything on the fictional Bill. In most ways, this Bill gets it all, even though his political career in Arkansas blows up spectacularly, as foreseen by the fictional Hillary. But even so, he remains big, successful, and above it all, the dominate Bill.

One more thing, something we probably forget about Hillary and most prominent figures with gravitas. They are as human as we are, which means they are sexual. Get ready, then, readers, because the fictional Hillary has a good deal of sex, many sexual thoughts, and self-commentary on her physical appearance and transformation over the years. w/c

Will We Elect a Fascist State?

Now’s the time to reread what Madeline Albright wrote two years ago about where we might end up if not careful. No better time to heed her advice than now while in election season.

Fascism: A Warning

By Madeleine Albright

Who better to help former Secretary of State Madeline Albright make her point than the first fascist, Il Duce, Benito Mussolini. He advised, pluck the chicken feather by feather so as to keep the squawking discrete; in this way, disappearing freedoms go unnoticed until too late. Sounds similar to what we are experiencing in the form of lie constantly, toss out outrageous statements regularly, do all to divert attention and confuse matters.

Using fascist leaders, dictators, and authoritarian rules from Mussolini’s and Hitler’s days, Albright describes and thereby alerts us to the pattern of how these people work. Wise people should pay attention.

Early on, Albright offers a checklist for defining a Fascist, and it’s worth quoting it here, for if you go no further than this, at least you will have a handy way for judging many of today’s strong men. “To my mind, a Fascist is someone who identifies strongly with and claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use whatever means are necessary—including violence—to achieve his or her goals. In that conception, a Fascist will likely be a tyrant, but a tyrant need not be a Fascist.”

Albright reinforces her point by taking readers through the circumstances allowing, the rise of, and the methods of control employed by a real rogues gallery of tough guys: Mussolini, Hitler, Franco (Spain), Sir Oswald Mosley (England), Stalin, Joe McCarthy, Milošević, Marcos and Duterte (Philippines), Chávez, Erdoğan, Orbán (Hungry), Putin, and the list, unfortunately, could be much longer. Learning about the motives and methods of these men, it won’t be lost on readers how Donald Trump seems to be drawing from these authoritarians’ playbooks. The message here is quite clear, forcefully laid out for all but the blind and addled to see: we like to believe that American democracy and our republican governmental checks and balances afford us protection against such strong men overwhelming our way of life, but we may be much to optimistic.

Back in the dim days of the Great Depression, when fascism rose in Italy and Germany, American author Sinclair Lewis saw clearly that we too could succumb to the siren song of order and national chauvinism. It’s well worth taking a look at his novelistic toppling of our government, It Can’t Happen Here (1936), both about fascist revolution and American populism manifested by Huey Long.

Again, with Albright’s book, we have yet another red flag volume that Americans should read, and that, alas, most, especially those who should, will not. w/c