Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Managing Editor + Contributor
Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and author/co-author/editor of over 30 books. In his book The New Americanism: How the Democratic Party Can Win the Presidency (1992, available at http://www.amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com), Dr. Jonas presented his proposal for that “new vision and mission” for the Democratic Party that so many, for so many years, have been urging it to find, and still are. A new vision and mission were obviously needed then. They are needed with increasing urgency, as with increasing speed and determination the Republican/Tea Party is driving our nation towards economic and social collapse with the then very likely emergence of frank theocratic fascism. In this book Dr. Jonas found that vision and mission in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. As of the end of 2011, under the leadership of President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and the successors to the Democratic Leadership Council which still influence the Party leadership, the Democratic Party is still looking for it.
Dr. Jonas' occasional Commentaries on this subject and related ones can be found at Truthout and Buzzflash.In addition to being Managing Editor and a Contributing Author for TPJmagazine, Dr. Jonas is also a Contributor to The Planetary Movement, a Contributing Editor for The Greanville Post (http://www.greanvillepost.com/; a Featured Writer for Dandelion Salad; a Contributor to Op-Ed News.com (http://www.opednews.com/), and a Contributor to TheHarderStuff newsletter (all of which periodically republish his BuzzFlash/Truthout Commentaries).
Dr. Jonas is also the author of The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022. Under the pseudonym "Jonathan Westminster" this book was originally published in 1996. It was republished with a New Introduction in 2004 (both versions are available on Amazon and the 2004 version is available on Barnes and Noble.com). It is currently being serialized on TPJ Magazine. Under Georgite rule, major elements of the “fictional non-fiction” scenario of this work of “future history,” most unfortunately, became all too real. Although the projected historical scenario departs from what actually happened in 2008, many of the policies of the current Republican/Tea Party appear in the book. This is so precisely because in the mid-1990s, the Republican Party, under the leadership of such men as Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, were telling us very clearly what they would do if they ever took clear power in Washington and elsewhere around the country.
The similarities between those policies, which will hardly be disappearing from the national political scene anytime soon regardless of what happens in the 2012 elections, and those of the book’s fictional first fascist President, Jefferson Davis Hague, are all too real. With continuing Republican efforts to make things as bad as they can for the Obama Administration, led by Dick Cheney, “Beckoning Savagely Le-vinitating O’RHannibaugh,” Newt Gingrich, the GOP Congressional leadership, the collective "Tea Parties" and their mostly anonymous Citizens United creators/-backers, the threat of a fascist future for our nation has hardly disappeared. Certainly, the results of the 2010 election have strengthened their hand, while the response of the Obama Administration has been at best weak.
The 2004 edition of “The 15%” is available at http://www.barnesandnoble.com (search with the book title) and http://www.xlibris.com/ (click on “Bookstore,” then “Search” with the title). Both versions are available at http://www.amazon.com (go to "Books;" search with the title).
Recent Essays
By Steven Jonas MD, MPH on 05.05.13
The GOP and National Planning, you say? Hasn’t the GOP always been against planning, particularly against nation-wide planning to deal with nation-wide problems? Well, actually not always. In the immediate post-Civil War period the so-called “Radical” branch of what was then truly the Party of Lincoln was very much for national planning in dealing with the problem of how to integrate the freed slaves into the regular economic and political life of the nation. They proposed to start with three central programmatic elements: universal co-equal education,
STEVEN JONAS MD, MPH - 04.14.13 - Originally published on BuzzFlash@Truthout, Thursday, 10 January 2013
I used to think that the Teabaggers were a wholly-owned subsidiary of the GOP. They were very convenient to the not-so-Grand, but very old in its ways, party. From the time they were first organized in 2009 by old Republican hands like Dick Armey to when they marched into the House of Representatives in...
By STEVEN JONAS MD, MPH – 01.03.13
“Washington Doesn’t Work,” or “Washington Just Doesn’t Work,” or “Washington: the Gridlock has to be Broken,” or some such. One hears it on the media all the time, both reactionary and liberal: Fox”News”Channel, Joe Scarborough, Ed Schultz, and certainly on CNN. “We’ve got to fix ‘Washington.’ ” But is it really true that “Washington doesn’t work” and that it “Has to be fixed?” Well, it all depends. It all depends who you are and what your interests are. There surely is gridlock in the Congress and between the Congress and the President, most of the time, as demonstrated by what will have...