"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross."Attributed to American Author Sinclair Lewis
Populist authoritarianism is popular.
Trump is not Hitler. Trump promised us detention camps for immigrants and mass expulsions, but not death camps. As president, Trump won't send troops to occupy and seize Mexico. He will frighten media critics into self-censorship -- that has already happened -- but we should not expect him to seize media assets. The U.S. has always had an underclass. Black slaves. Jim Crow Blacks. Irish immigrants. Catholics. Chinese immigrants. Ethnic Japanese during World War II. Muslims who look or act foreign. Haitians. Trump singling out a dangerous internal enemy is nothing new. It is tradition, and popular.
When fascism comes to America, it won't be frightening in the way that German fascism of 1945 was frightening. A great many people will consider American-style fascism patriotic and overdue. The signs at Madison Square Garden weren't swastikas. The signs read: "He will fix it."
Stephen Miller, Trump's top advisor on immigration issues: "America is for Americans and Americans only.”
Comic Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico "a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean."
Multiple speakers continued the theme of illegitimate people inside America. The New York Times wrote:
Another speaker likened Vice President Kamala Harris to a prostitute with “pimp handlers.” A third called her “the Antichrist.” And the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson mocked Ms. Harris — the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father — with a made-up ethnicity, saying she was vying to become “the first Samoan-Malaysian, low IQ former California prosecutor ever to be elected president.
Trump himself said the greatest danger to the U.S. was a dark, mysterious conspiracy.
We're running against something far bigger than Joe [Biden] or Kamala and far more powerful than them, which is a massive, vicious, crooked, radical left machine that runs today's Democrat Party. They're just vessels. In fact, they're perfect vessels because they'll never give them a hard time. They'll do whatever they want. I know many of them. It's just this amorphous group of people. But they're smart, and they're vicious.
Trump addressed immigration:
I will rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered, and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail, going to kick them the hell out of our country as fast as possible. And to expedite removals of Tren de Aragua and other savage gangs like MS-13, which is equally vicious, I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
And taxes:
We will rapidly defeat inflation, and we will very simply make America affordable again. We're going to make it affordable. I will massively cut taxes for workers and small businesses, and we will have no tax on tips. No tax on overtime. And no tax on Social Security benefits for our seniors.
And energy:
I will terminate the ‘green new scam.’ And we'll cut your energy prices in half, 50%, within one year from Jan. 20th. Is the fake news hearing that?
Mark Twain said history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. A close rhyme calling Trump another Hitler discredits itself because we cannot see 1933 without seeing 1945. Trump is not Hitler of 1945. Whatever happens in America in four years of a Trump presidency, it will be the American way and will reflect American cultural symbols. Jews are safe this time. Trump doesn't hate Jews. He hires them to be his accountants and lawyers.
History has moved on. The popularity of populist authoritarianism remains, but the targets evolve. Now the dangerous people, the vermin rotting out America, are dark-skinned immigrants. And woke people. And Democrats. And homosexuals and trans people. And the media. And uncooperative election officials. And RINOs. And Mexicans. And Chinese. There are plenty of enemies, and Trump is our great leader.
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9 comments:
Nothing is ever the same as it was before. Perhaps comparisons with Hitler are too clichéd. The parallels are there, but this situation is obviously different. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it any less ominous for the future of our democratic republic. Trump’s rule here would probably more resemble Victor Orban’s, one of the dictators he draws inspiration from.
According to the program for this drama, George Soros is a visible representative of the "amorphous group." As for the Antichrist, I was told in 2008 that Barak Obama was the Antichrist, so I now have to wonder what happened with him to make Kamala Harris "it." Revelations does not say that running for President makes you the Antichrist. Who decides on the identity of the Antichrist? Does God decide this?
When I moved to Medford, a billboard along the I-5 viaduct proclaimed the pope was the Antichrist. So, when my brother-in-law forwarded an email crediting Obama with that distinction, I was able to assure him on good authority that it couldn’t possibly be true. But who knows, maybe there can be more than one, or maybe the Antichrist just temporarily possesses people. I’ll bet Mike Johnson could tell us.
Populist authoritarians rise up when the ruling elites fail large masses of the people. Like when, for instance, they decided to export all of the industrial jobs to China and destroyed the economies of so many places in this country. Like when they passed NAFTA.
“Everyone’s going to become a college-educated elite”, they thought to themselves, ignoring what kinds of people lived in those places and what kinds of lives they wanted for themselves. It was darkly amusing to watch those same elites scramble after the 2016 election to visit the places they had destroyed to try and understand what had just happened to their chosen candidate.
Trump says a lot of shit. He probably doesn’t mean most of it, and even if he did, he probably won’t remember most of it. His fans mainly enjoy the way what he says freaks out the liberal elites, the way he is a giant orange middle finger brandished in their direction.
Salena Zito, one of our smartest political commentators, once pointed out that Trump‘s supporters take him seriously but not literally, and his opponents take him literally but not seriously.
But with one week to go before the election, it’s starting to look very serious.
Thank you for that Salena Zito quote; it's spot on.
I listen to her weekly on the High Hewitt show, and somehow missed that comment.
One has to wonder who is manning the puppet strings of the Harris campaign, and why it seems that Walz has gone silent.
As as for those references to Hitler and fascism, somehow the media missed the large contingent of Jews who attended the Madison Square Garden event. As attendees, not protesters
Michael Trigoboff, it seems as though you blame "ruling elites" for a lot of things. You are now holding them responsible if Trump wins the election. I am curious, who are these "ruling elites"?
The “ruling elites” are the ones who passed NAFTA, which ultimately caused so many manufacturing jobs to leave the country with that “giant sucking sound” that H. Ross Perot predicted; the ones who helped export those jobs; the ones who have failed to fix our federal debt; the ones who allowed private equity vultures to kill perfectly good companies like Toys R Us; the private equity vultures themselves
Also the ones who are corrupting science and many other fields, and also compromising the effectiveness of our military, by implementing woke DEI policies throughout our federal government.
In other words, the people in charge.
Trump is a giant orange middle finger brandished at what makes America great: diversity, the Constitution and the rule of law.
By michael's definition:
- anyone he disagrees with is a ruling elite.
- anything he doesn't understand is the ruling elite
- people bear no responsibility for their own situation in life
- capitalism is bad
- children who walk across his lawn are the ruling elite
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