Trump's vision of fascism, supported by the neofascist ideologues behind Project 2025 and Project 47, is claiming the Democratic Party is so extreme it’s a threat and needs to done away with...
I don’t want to be too callous but I’m curious as to whether there will be any protections for Democrats voting in the fall elections.
We know the Magas will be out there ready to harass and attempt to remove Democrats from the polling places.
I think there is fear about casting a ballot and also a desire to do it in person because the USPS under DeJoy is no longer dependable for mail in ballots .
Why is he still heading this agency ? . He should be gone.
We know this election is of paramount importance .
We also know that Republicans have mercilessly removed Democrats from voter rolls , and suppressed the Democratic Party vote at every opportunity .
In a nutshell, what can we do ?
And if there is no plan to push back we’d better make one.
Patricia I totally agree about DeJoy. It is one of my major disappointments with Biden, besides his appointment of Garland. Only the Board of Governors can fire the Postmaster General
And as i stands there is a 50/50 rep on the board (the PMG and assistant get one vote each)
Two positions became vacant in Dec 2021 and Biden filled them with a Republican and a Democrat thus preserving the balance.
Two more positions came vacant in Dec 2022 and Biden has left them empty, because if he fills them,he will fill them with a Democrat AND a Republican, and he doesn't want the outrage.
So why is he slanting government appointments towards conservatives?
Raises my blood pressure. DeJoy partnered with Trump to sabotage the Census. Committed mass sabotage of Public Property to sabotage the election. Talk about strange criminal immunity! I think partial back-off on fossil-fuel committment of the delivery fleet? A true traitor/America -hater on the fat-cat gravy train.
Yep, and raises the question why Biden hasn't done what is needed to replace him.
I actually don't blame Biden, after all he isn't god, but he does have advisors, He has to, job is too big for one person alone. Problem is that we are the monkeys and all we can see is the organ grinder.
there's no reason why he has to place republicans on the board ! I hadn't heard that h'es doing that ! No wonder DeJoy is still in control, destroying from the inside !
Our county Democrats plan to send out postcards with information on mailing in a ballot, and where to get information on all the candidates. Using mail in ballots is the best protection from poll attacks. Checking your county/city website for updated info on your voter registration status is crucial.
As a poll worker and Army veteran, I am not scared of these people who want to intimidate others. I worked the last local republican primary here in march and there were a couple people who were a little over enthusiastic about voting for Trump but that was nothing compared to what's coming in November. I am wondering if I should bring a baseball bat for self defense when I report for work, seeing as how, as a poll worker, it is against the law to arm myself against these threats to democracy. I am too old to be getting into any physical entanglements with these people. I am not looking forward to this next election. It's going to be a long day.
I don't need them in Washington State, All ballots are either by mail or in a drop box. I only use a drop box if I dally too long before dropping them in the mail
You are one of the fortunate ones then. The majority of us have to deal with the eejits who aren't smart enough to recognize fascism when it is in their face.
I know how fortunate I am Terrance. There are two Washington States, West of the cascades is rational, liberal, democratic. East of the cascadesis flat, arid, desert (until you got to the North East) and Alabama.
Washingbama I call it,like Pennsyltucky. (Pittsburgh in the west, Phillie in the east and Kentucky in between.
Rural America is under the sway of charlatan preachers. they less contact they have with people of color, including migrants, the more racist and intolerant they are.
A lot of states are going through the same thing. I live near Richmond, VA and it is relatively blue here, sometimes purple but if you go out into any of the back country counties, they are blood red with confederate flags a flying. I also largely blame the media and these extremist Christian people for a lot of this isolation and tribalism. I just hope it doesn't come down to having make some hard choices someday.
The common denominator is racism. Jung identified a collective racial subconscious. Fascists like Trump are demagogues. Common themes among fascist movements include: authoritarianism, nationalism (including racial nationalism and religious nationalism), hierarchy and elitism, and militarism. Other aspects of fascism such as perception of decadence, anti-egalitarianism and totalitarianism can be seen to originate from these ideas.
Ironically the only Fascist I can identify who was not overtly racist was Batista. Mostly Black, Batista was blackballed for membership in some of the country clubs in Havana due to his race. He cultivated Santeria leaders as a terror mechanism. In essence he brought in the Mafia. led by Meyer Lansky to run gambling.
Here in Baghdad By the Sea about 20% of our population support Batista's ideas. Government is seen as the piggybank. Kickbacks. Sinecures. Fascism is the means to Trump's dreams of wealth. As President, he and his family were "in business" for power and profit.
Daniel, Donald is just using fear and racism to get elected. Once he gets power, he will only keep the young and healthy of all races fed, so they can be worked to death or sent off to war or bred to have more babies.
Very nice, Daniel, but you GUYS are devaluing the essential co-factor of perceiving females as broodmares. (literally!) America is now confronted with the down-and-dirty choice to let the sluts die, if God wills. When are we going to confront the reality, that the leading murderer of the UNBORN is "god?"
With respect, you have emphasized my point. It's specifically what you did NOT say!
You went into a long list of aspects of fascism without mentioning the fascist "role" for females that Thom actually got into in the seminal post! (Somewhere here I thanked him for incorporating that.)
1.Merrick Garland once promised that he would vigorously protect election workers and the entire election process. Here again, Trump is announcing that he is organizing an illegal conspiracy to overturn an election. Do we have to wait until he does it?
2. In a related action, please pay attention to what the Supreme Court has done today. The six “conservative” justices seem to feel that the law allows hospitals in the states that have strong anti-abortion laws that do not take federal money to refuse to help a woman in health crisis due to a pregnancy if if would possibly endanger the fetus. In other words, it’s ok to let the mother and fetus die rather than test the state’s law. I guess it’s an over-reach of the federal government to find a way to save a woman life if it means going against one of the worst Supreme Court rulings since the 1857 Dred Scott decision.
3. Also, play attention to what they do tomorrow, when they finally hear Trump’s plea for immunity.
What we are already seeing is that fascism has taken over the Supreme Court. Former Justice Breyer has tried to fame it as they are using “textualism” to justify their decisions. The fact is that they are doing whatever they want and are really just partisans and fascists. We cannot trust them to oversee the cases that will come before them in the election. It seems obvious that the six of them have already chosen the person they want to win.
Biden, and if the saints preserve us, majorities in the House and Senate have to make their first order of business repairing a Supreme Court, turned deeply fascist & corrupt, by an illegitimate, corrupt, GOP president (see NY election interference trial, the Mueller Report and the Senate Intelligence Committee Report) and an equally corrupted GOP Senate, through bribery.
The second order of business is to turn voting into an unalienable right, granted to every US citizen of eligible age, with long prison sentences for interfering or suppressing votes or involvement in voter intimidation. The third order of business is getting the corrupting influences of corporate money and money from the obscenely wealthy, to hell out of our politics. Only justices that are fools, or deeply corrupt themselves support corporate personhood and such an obvious pathways to political prostitution. The "For the People Act" HR1 would have done much to rectify our slippage into fascism, but the corporate corruption that prevails in the Republican party spilled over to capture two corrupt Democrats, Sinema and Manchin, stalling the bill.
Fixing our country starts with blowing Trump and MAGA fascists out of the water at the polls and tuning out the GOP's Putin borrowed MSM rhetoric.
Ever since his descent on the elevator announcing his candidacy, trump has given us all the signals. But liberal and progressive friends patted me on the head and said not to worry because trump is nothing more than a buffoon. I’ve taught this history from original documents. And I’m still screaming my head off into what feels like the void. (Hence, my screen name) Thom, your substack and the comments here give me a measure of peace. I’m 75 years old, have a long and good memory, have resisted locally and nationally, will be at the polls. I’m in Reno, NV, and know just how serious the neofascist movement is here. Hugh Jackman is right.
My father-in-law (1906-1986) grew up in Berlin and said that in the late '20s people made the same comments about Hitler. When he got into office they said he'd be gone in six months. As I've said on other threads, McConnell, those in the media who just want more viewers and the GOP's big financial backers seem never to have read "Frankenstein." Once you create a real monster it quickly gets out of your control.
Yes. one should study the Weimar Republic and Hitler's Rise to power.Germany had never been a democracy before the Weimer Republic 1918-1933 so called because that is where the first Democratic German Constitution was drafted. This came on the heels of a revolution where the sailors and then soldiers rebelled. It was called the German Revolution or the November Revolution. https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/189772/8b9e17bd8d64e64c8e3a95fc2305e132/november_revolution-data.pdf
There was too much rioting of various factions in Berlin for the constitution to be drafted there so it was drafted in Weimar instead, this the name of the Republic by historians. So, Germans had only had 15 years of Democratic rule, which was very unstable at that because of so many political parties getting representation. There was a lot of disorder and chaos, but you also had the Golden 20s. The Weimar Republic started off with Germany having a horrid economic post war situation where they had to both rebuild and pay a lot of reparations to the countries that won the war. Reparations is a bad idea for this reason. After the French occupied them in the mining area, the workers of the area refused to work, and so French scabs were brought in. I think many of the scabs and soldiers were from their African colonies. Then Germany without the production could not pay their reparations. So, they started printing tons of money to pay off their debts, and this led to hyperinflation. This was unsustainable and people had to barter. They were not better off than before the war. They could not get back to normal. Then they renegotiated the terms of the reparations, and also borrowed money from the US. Germany did not pay off their reparations until 2010. With this stretched out schedule and investment loans from the USA they were able to rebuild their economy. However, after a World War and the runaway inflation in the beginning of the Weimar Republic people did not really save, so they started putting the money they earned into the economy in things like restaurants and entertainment. The government remained unstable. The people did not know democracy in the way that we understand it, or Germans understand it now, it was new, and the problems that existed were attributed to the form of government by many. Then the stock market crashed in the USA in 1929 and the US called in the loans from Germany and German businesses had to sell everything and go out of business. So, people were destitute, even the middle class. In enters Hitler promising to make things better. He already belonged to a party that was racist and anti-Semetic. They wanted women in traditional roles and claimed to want to help the workers. Under Hitler Germany went back to being a feudal state with a supreme ruler. That was Hitler. Everyone else had to serve him. How does the USA today compare to Nazi Germany? So in the USA, after decades of Republican policies furthered by democrats, like decimating our manufacturing and our unions and sending jobs abroad, and also the development of the super stores, and online businesses, many businesses that formerly existed are gone. Were are the parallels? We do not newly have a democracy, but perhaps many do not understand what fascism is like, even some of those who immigrated from fascist regimes (Cuba, Former Soviet Union, Venezuela), do not seem to understand fully how to be democratic. We had high inflation due to covid and then Putin's war on Ukraine, but have managed under Biden to get the economy to be productive again and inflation down. The US also has warring parties presenting different visions of government. Thanks to Biden things are getting more stable for the little people, but people in Red States have such cutthroat governance for things like health care, right to work laws, undermining unions that they do not necessarily feel the benefits and therefore may believe the lies they are told by their Republican leaders. The Hitler clones like Abbott who is killing pregnant women and babies along with others in his border death trip abound in the party and the rhetoric is racist anti-Semitic populism. Let us hope we are not really like Weimar Germany. We understand democracy, most expect it not a king, and our country is not only doing well, but increasingly better under Biden.
Well as Thom has broadly discussed it seems that about a third of the population, even in the U.S., may like having a strong person who tells them what to do. Also they may want to hear that everything will be okay if they can only take over the nation and recreate a mythical past when things were “better”. Putin is doing something similar, using the national Orthodox Church and appealing to traditional Russian culture, which of course was always top down from a dictator. (In fact during the Yeltsin years some people saw where things were going and called the conditions "Weimar Russia".) Modi in India is doing something like this too, and in China Xi is just continuing these ancient practices of Chinese rule.
Fortunately despite selling a Bible and babbling about dangerous non-white people the U.S. is too pluralistic for Trump to get great traction by appealing to toxic religious or racial standards. And his appeal to the past doesn't have the resonance of how Hitler used crackpot anthropologists and Wagnerian music ro justify how the Nazis were making Germany “great again”. This doesn't make Trump less dangerous but it is harder for him to succeed when you have a country with democratic traditions and a people who are used to saying what they think--and some of us are in the habit of thinking critically too!
Actually, Cassandra, your head-patting friends have a large following. Easier to look the other way than face the reality. BTW, those were exactly the German words heard as Hitler took over their country.
Very good, Thom. I've been following you for some time now. You may remember me from your SDS days. Today, we are on the same page, and more. I have a theory piece on media, longish, but citing you at the end. Let me know if you want to see it.
You’re not being callous, Patricia. How far can we go to protect democratic voters in hostile environments without becoming violent thugs like the fascists? peacefulness does not mean passivity.
Trump has nearly killed one party, just not the one he had in mind. Many in their ranks, including him, are on their way out of this world anyway. It seems they are hellbent on dragging us back to the last century. Thanks Thom for the side-trip there today.
They will have to go alone. The younger generations have moved on. AND, they are not afraid to use the word fascist or some other choice words too. I can't wait till they take over. I wish that were the choice for the presidency this fall, but I am pretty confident that President Biden is listening to the younger members in his family and around him. He gets the past, the present, and wants a better future.
Trump, the fascist bastard, doesn't get any of it---he is a true psychopath. He and Mussolini fall into the malignant psychopathic megalomania category. Mussolini got 500,000 Italians killed in WWII. Trump did about the same during the pandemic. Karma's a bitch and sometimes we get to see it in action. Sometimes we can even help it along the way. I always vote and try to help others to vote too. I often thought that was a small thing---not anymore!
What a world! Seems to be some "surprise" polling that the "kids" aren't falling for, for one thing, for RKF Jr. Meanwhile, doddering Chuck Grassley, who was all in on putting the finishing touch on the Jan. 6 takeover, made a speech enthusiastic for aid to Ukraine! The weird subtext with Trump is the background that he is actually a "moron." How bizarre is it, that he made hay about Obama's birth cert., yet all Trump's school records are same place as George Bush's military records? What a world, where nobody is hounding certain select "morons" for validation?
In some ways it is back to the last century, but there was a lot of progress made for people in the last century, except of course under fascist regimes. I assume that is the part you are referring to.
But for here I am talking LGBTQ+ acceptance, environmental damage, religion, and fake social "norms". We screwed people with student debt, stale wages, and the crap they call the "gig economy". We really did make progress, Linda, and that's why they know we are not done and why they know they can fight too.
The old saying was government needs to be more like business. Business is run by a king or tyrant. When government is like business there is little need for democracy. Democracy is messy and hard to do which make it easy to suggest it cannot work. However, when you desire to change in a way that makes peoples lives better, kind of hard to do it when you have to come to the king with your hat in your hand.
The fundamental distinction is, is the goal to "promote the general welfare," or to promote the welfare of imaginary business conglomerates designed to create blanket criminal immunity against any human responsibility?
Trump is, therefore, not unlike a man with full-blown AIDS.
A man (well, a male, not a real man's persona) who is utterly hell bent to have "Raw-Dog Sex" (read: Un-Protected Sex) with as many men and women as he possibly can. And thus, before he dies, seeding Mussolini's fascist-virus from coast to coast; birthing AIDS riddled Pod-People ("Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956)*).
And in one political party [GOP], he has found a bottomless pit filled to the brim with willing hosts, female and male. Many ingesting Trump's virus whilst on their knees. The remainder, on all fours, doggy.
If you have gotten divorced half a dozen times, owe a lot of back child support, and support fascism and love to kill with your gun, you are a man! But if you don't eat meat, don't like wars, like rational thought and reading, you are sub human. They are here!
In "Myth America", edited by Kruse and Zelizer, Ch. 20 on Voter Fraud talks about a 1964 GOP plan called Operation Eagle Eye which involved launching a 100,000 member "voter intimidation program". Sound familiar?
Donald supporters are not intelligent enough to know what fascism is, and will be shocked when many of them are herded
into the concentration camps also, for being disabled mentally or physically, for being old or without a family to support them, for being a repeat criminal. If the fascists cannot make money off of you, you will be the enemy regardless of race. The fascist would much rather keep undocumented immigrant laborers who are healthy and young than imperfect American citizens. The imperfect of all races will be exterminated. It is too late for America to be all white.
Fascism will last longer without a lot of imperfect people costing the state money. So they will be exterminated. Prepare to live off the grid, it is possible today with solar, and prepare to defend your stuff. I have no faith in the attorney general Garland or any of our branches of government. The GOP caused this mess when Nixon normalized relations with China and they have been obstructing and borrowing and cutting taxes ever since to destroy America! Now they have their own BS news stations, with AI coming soon! Vote blue and try to get everyone else you know to vote for Biden. The gOP is no longer a political party, it is a terrorist organization ran by foreign and domestic, deep State globalists! billionaires!
Point made Bob. The first victims of Der Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei [c] or NSDAP), were the Sturmabeitlung (Brown Shirts) which the SS decapitated in the night of the long knives.
Again, Thom, you outdo yourself. Brilliantly researched and reported take down of Mussolini and Our Mad King (wannabe) Donald, both of eventually took total power by surviving early defeats by continuing to run shadow governments parallel to democratically elected but weak central federal governments, as did their hero Adolph Hitler. Not a good time to have a weak appearing titular head of state like our dear Ole Joe. I always think of the Facies displayed everywhere in the Federal government, including under each resting hand on the Lincoln Memorial, and their import in the Roman Empire. By definition, the US is already a quasi-Fascist state, with an ever tighter bundle of billionaires and wannabes holding real power.
I believe the true nature of our massive nation-states is the built-in hierarchical nature of humans/primates when present in large numbers and competing for limited resources. Our far less numerous ecologically balanced and self-sustaining Hunter-Gatherer ancestors were egalitarian and matriarchal by most accounts. Grain farming exploded our numbers and has given rise to our gigantic status (money) hierarchies. We are now 3,000 times more numerous than were our H-G ancestors and have vastly over-reached the planet's capacity to sustain our numbers. What could go wrong? Everything? Thanks, again, Thom, for all your efforts and the comments by thinking followers!
There are thesis written and books published that the patriarchy first arose with the invention or rather adoption of agriculture and a sedentary way of life. Excess grain was produced, and thugs declared themselves leaders and power over grain distribution. Confiscating grain, taxes, and storing it, then doling it out to those he favored and whom obeyed him.
It was also the beginning of debt and banking, but was initially monopolized by the thug.
When people questioned his authority and gathered together and rose up against him, he invented a supernatural power, that granted him and him alone, the authority to rule. A power that could not be questioned, because it couldn't be seen or interrogated, with the invention of writing, which at first was simply an accounting technique to keep track of stores, distribution, debts and taxes. It wasn't long before an origin story was written down, necessary to maintain consistency, otherwise it changes over time and contradictions are note and lead to schisms and dilution of power.
While I agree with you regarding the nefarious actions of Trump and the Republicans, I completely disagree with the cause. The main cause was the financial crisis and Obama's bailing out of the banks while austerity was the rule for everyone else. Obama protected the banksters and as Democrats do devised programs to pretend he was doing something for the "little people," but those programs did virtually nothing and we are right back in the same place some 16 years later. Obama implemented a program to reimburse mortgage holders and get them back into housing and put Larry Summers in charge. When all the program's funds were drained it turned out that 9% were used for homeowners and the rest went to Summers and his cronies. His Dodd-Frank legislation to rein in the big banks was written by lobbyists and had so many loopholes that we are seeing the same type of recklesness that was occurring prior to the crisis in 2008. He lied about the Affordable Care Act regarding "you can see your own doctor" and regarding premiums, and that legislation has helped to put the health care system on the brink of disaster, so that people who voted for him ended up voting for Trump. Your strategy of protecting corrupt and lying Democrats by calling criticism "circling the wagons" has backfired miserably, as now liberals have to prop up a judgment-addled warmongering racist as some sort of hero while making Trump and Putin the boogeymen so that American empire can continue its march to self-destruction. You know that fascism does not rise out of thin air, although admittedly our nation was founded upon racism and dehumanization and Trump and Biden both prove that not much has changed when it comes to who wields the power.
Putin is not problem, in fact he is very similar to Biden in his quest for empire. Biden has been in favor of invading more sovereign nations than Putin ever has, and has been involved in the killing of hundreds of thousands (or millions) of poor black and brown people. Of course that doesn't bother you or most of Thom's followers because it's the white people you are concerned about. I'm certainly not "a fan" of Putin any more than I'm a fan of Biden, but I can easily see that Biden has had far more negative impact on our country than Putin ever has.
I hate it when I agree with you, but this time, and in this instance I do. Then again broken clocks and all of that. Or I did until you got to making Putin the bogeyman, but I keep forgetting that you are clever, a well practiced Putin troll, because you know how to pull the liberal string, suck them in then drop the hammer for Putin.
Poor phucking Putin huh, the nasty scapegoats for Democrats.
Star light, read all of the way to the end. This was a pro Putin discourse, everything that Boris posts has the objective of defending and advocating for Putin. I should have caught it at first, but I do now and won't forget.
He is quite expert, as a Putin troll would be, at playing liberal sentiments to flip them to Putin's side.
Boris is a Putin apparatchik that posts as Barry O. Kaufman D.O. He may in fact be Barry O. Kaufman D.O. but his alter ego is a Putin troll and I call him Boris.
He kvetches about "genocide"Joe and the Democrats, but always defends the real genocider Vladimir Putin., in fact he defends Putin by attacking Biden and the Democrats.
Ummm... the bank bailout was about a trillion dollars as you point out, and was wholly due to the corruption within the banking system and those at the top making out like bandits. Americans saw them get immediate relief while they were left struggling, many losing much or all of their retirement and savings. You ignore my citing of the relief program that ended up with 9% of the funds going to homeowners and the rest embezzled by Larry Summers and his buddies. I certainly do get to pick and choose if you get to selectively cite the lies and corruption of Republicans while excusing that of the Democrats. Biden himself lies 40 to 50% of the time, which this Politifact sampling bears out. He's lied about everything from his support for the genocide in Yemen to opening up more oil pipelines to his handling of classified documents to his personal history (including three lies about his own life in one financial speech in August of 2023). You can insult me personally on the internet which is not only cowardly but shows you are cornered and have nothing to refute my claims. And of course liberals say how horrible Trump and Putin are while Biden kisses the rear of the most right-wing extremist imaginable Benjamin Netanyahu and cirvumvents Congress to send him munitions for his racist genocide. Biden is anti-abortion, backing the heinous and racist Hyde Amendment for decades until it was time for him to run for president in 2020. He can't even say the word abortion and did nothing at all in the wake of the Dobbs decision. It is said American Empire must create an illusion to keep its subjects delusional, and you and most of Thom's minions prove that beyond a doubt.
I had a surprise experience with a family connection to Orthodox Church here in CA. Wife of my table-neighbor was Russian-speaking and completely credulous of Putin media. At the same birthday celebration table was widow of an uncle who had always identified as Ukrainian, going back to turn of last century, and a couple who thought Ukrainians were Russian, and the Ukrainian Church are heretics! What can be done about selective "facts?"
“And if Trump fails, are there other wannabe Republican Mussolinis waiting in the wings?”
You have penned another excellent essay, Thom Hartmann, but it is the preceding line in particular that brought on the feeling of unease that I have been experiencing since I first read Joe Conason’s book IT CAN HAPPEN HERE several years ago, followed by Timothy Snyder’s ON TYRANNY, & most recently Christopher Browning’s THE SUFFOCATION OF DEMOCRACY. My voice is a small one, some like, few listen, but since I started writing on social platforms like Substack, I have grown increasingly bothered by the apparent resistance of the American public at large to seeing & appreciating what you have so clearly laid out in this piece. You have now added to my list of readings meant to educate about what fascism looks & feels like & how much today’s America resembles & shows evidence of previous fascist regimes like Italy’s Mussolini & Germany’s Hitler. The biggest question raised in my mind by your well-written piece is this: Why now? Are you thinking that we are not taking this fascist threat seriously? Because I am.
MSM rarely uses the word “fascism” or “fascist” in their reporting, preferring familiar & safe words like “authoritarianism” or all the other “-isms” that point to elements found in a fascist state. They describe in detail what you have described in this essay, but resist calling it what it is. Even our POTUS was scolded for using the phrase “fascist-like.” Very few anchors say “fascism” & then only infrequently. In fact, you can hear the word most often in TFG’s rally rants & on the extreme fascist right’s propaganda TV channels. Even there, it’s used to label us, the pro-democracy forces trying to fight it - a definite Goebbel’s tactic.
Thank you, Sir, for trying again. Perhaps more people will take seriously what you’re saying. As for your question about whether there are other “wannabe Republican Mussolinis” out there waiting to take over if TFG fails, I think the answer is a resounding “you betcha!” We see them in the news everyday, but we rarely call them out. In fact, many journalists (e.g., Dan Rather) spend their public time reassuring everyone that everything will be fine. Nothing to worry about, even as our precious institutions falter. Hope they’re right, but I tend to think you’ve got the more accurate view.
I doubt the movement will survive much beyond Trump. There are wannabes, such as J.D. Vance, Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, Kari Lake, and several others, but they don’t have Trump’s talent to make up lies on the spot, spew out hatred, demean and attack people personally, and also be charming and entertaining as he does his dancing bear act. He also seems to have some power to intimidate and crush anyone in the party who opposes him. No one else comes close. If he loses badly, in a year, no one will admit they supported him.
I don’t want to be too callous but I’m curious as to whether there will be any protections for Democrats voting in the fall elections.
We know the Magas will be out there ready to harass and attempt to remove Democrats from the polling places.
I think there is fear about casting a ballot and also a desire to do it in person because the USPS under DeJoy is no longer dependable for mail in ballots .
Why is he still heading this agency ? . He should be gone.
We know this election is of paramount importance .
We also know that Republicans have mercilessly removed Democrats from voter rolls , and suppressed the Democratic Party vote at every opportunity .
In a nutshell, what can we do ?
And if there is no plan to push back we’d better make one.
Patricia I totally agree about DeJoy. It is one of my major disappointments with Biden, besides his appointment of Garland. Only the Board of Governors can fire the Postmaster General
And as i stands there is a 50/50 rep on the board (the PMG and assistant get one vote each)
Two positions became vacant in Dec 2021 and Biden filled them with a Republican and a Democrat thus preserving the balance.
Two more positions came vacant in Dec 2022 and Biden has left them empty, because if he fills them,he will fill them with a Democrat AND a Republican, and he doesn't want the outrage.
So why is he slanting government appointments towards conservatives?
Raises my blood pressure. DeJoy partnered with Trump to sabotage the Census. Committed mass sabotage of Public Property to sabotage the election. Talk about strange criminal immunity! I think partial back-off on fossil-fuel committment of the delivery fleet? A true traitor/America -hater on the fat-cat gravy train.
Yep, and raises the question why Biden hasn't done what is needed to replace him.
I actually don't blame Biden, after all he isn't god, but he does have advisors, He has to, job is too big for one person alone. Problem is that we are the monkeys and all we can see is the organ grinder.
there's no reason why he has to place republicans on the board ! I hadn't heard that h'es doing that ! No wonder DeJoy is still in control, destroying from the inside !
Google board of governors of the US Postal service and see a list of governors, how it is organized and when the positions expire.
Our county Democrats plan to send out postcards with information on mailing in a ballot, and where to get information on all the candidates. Using mail in ballots is the best protection from poll attacks. Checking your county/city website for updated info on your voter registration status is crucial.
As a poll worker and Army veteran, I am not scared of these people who want to intimidate others. I worked the last local republican primary here in march and there were a couple people who were a little over enthusiastic about voting for Trump but that was nothing compared to what's coming in November. I am wondering if I should bring a baseball bat for self defense when I report for work, seeing as how, as a poll worker, it is against the law to arm myself against these threats to democracy. I am too old to be getting into any physical entanglements with these people. I am not looking forward to this next election. It's going to be a long day.
There are collapsible batons, that you can hide in a jacket. https://www.asp-usa.com/collections/batons
Something to think about when we get close to election day
I don't need them in Washington State, All ballots are either by mail or in a drop box. I only use a drop box if I dally too long before dropping them in the mail
You are one of the fortunate ones then. The majority of us have to deal with the eejits who aren't smart enough to recognize fascism when it is in their face.
I know how fortunate I am Terrance. There are two Washington States, West of the cascades is rational, liberal, democratic. East of the cascadesis flat, arid, desert (until you got to the North East) and Alabama.
Washingbama I call it,like Pennsyltucky. (Pittsburgh in the west, Phillie in the east and Kentucky in between.
Rural America is under the sway of charlatan preachers. they less contact they have with people of color, including migrants, the more racist and intolerant they are.
Press and pulpit, they are the problem.
A lot of states are going through the same thing. I live near Richmond, VA and it is relatively blue here, sometimes purple but if you go out into any of the back country counties, they are blood red with confederate flags a flying. I also largely blame the media and these extremist Christian people for a lot of this isolation and tribalism. I just hope it doesn't come down to having make some hard choices someday.
There is mace too.
The common denominator is racism. Jung identified a collective racial subconscious. Fascists like Trump are demagogues. Common themes among fascist movements include: authoritarianism, nationalism (including racial nationalism and religious nationalism), hierarchy and elitism, and militarism. Other aspects of fascism such as perception of decadence, anti-egalitarianism and totalitarianism can be seen to originate from these ideas.
Ironically the only Fascist I can identify who was not overtly racist was Batista. Mostly Black, Batista was blackballed for membership in some of the country clubs in Havana due to his race. He cultivated Santeria leaders as a terror mechanism. In essence he brought in the Mafia. led by Meyer Lansky to run gambling.
Here in Baghdad By the Sea about 20% of our population support Batista's ideas. Government is seen as the piggybank. Kickbacks. Sinecures. Fascism is the means to Trump's dreams of wealth. As President, he and his family were "in business" for power and profit.
I've been arguing that they have previously perverted justice, exemplified by the election of GWB in 2000. But for Florida, Gore would have won. The concept of a unitary executive fit their agenda....and now fits Trump's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory#:~:text=The%20unitary%20executive%20theory%20is,the%20entire%20federal%20executive%20branch.
Daniel, Donald is just using fear and racism to get elected. Once he gets power, he will only keep the young and healthy of all races fed, so they can be worked to death or sent off to war or bred to have more babies.
Very nice, Daniel, but you GUYS are devaluing the essential co-factor of perceiving females as broodmares. (literally!) America is now confronted with the down-and-dirty choice to let the sluts die, if God wills. When are we going to confront the reality, that the leading murderer of the UNBORN is "god?"
What the hell are you talking about? The SCOTUS/Idaho case? What did I say about it?
With respect, you have emphasized my point. It's specifically what you did NOT say!
You went into a long list of aspects of fascism without mentioning the fascist "role" for females that Thom actually got into in the seminal post! (Somewhere here I thanked him for incorporating that.)
1.Merrick Garland once promised that he would vigorously protect election workers and the entire election process. Here again, Trump is announcing that he is organizing an illegal conspiracy to overturn an election. Do we have to wait until he does it?
2. In a related action, please pay attention to what the Supreme Court has done today. The six “conservative” justices seem to feel that the law allows hospitals in the states that have strong anti-abortion laws that do not take federal money to refuse to help a woman in health crisis due to a pregnancy if if would possibly endanger the fetus. In other words, it’s ok to let the mother and fetus die rather than test the state’s law. I guess it’s an over-reach of the federal government to find a way to save a woman life if it means going against one of the worst Supreme Court rulings since the 1857 Dred Scott decision.
3. Also, play attention to what they do tomorrow, when they finally hear Trump’s plea for immunity.
What we are already seeing is that fascism has taken over the Supreme Court. Former Justice Breyer has tried to fame it as they are using “textualism” to justify their decisions. The fact is that they are doing whatever they want and are really just partisans and fascists. We cannot trust them to oversee the cases that will come before them in the election. It seems obvious that the six of them have already chosen the person they want to win.
Biden, and if the saints preserve us, majorities in the House and Senate have to make their first order of business repairing a Supreme Court, turned deeply fascist & corrupt, by an illegitimate, corrupt, GOP president (see NY election interference trial, the Mueller Report and the Senate Intelligence Committee Report) and an equally corrupted GOP Senate, through bribery.
The second order of business is to turn voting into an unalienable right, granted to every US citizen of eligible age, with long prison sentences for interfering or suppressing votes or involvement in voter intimidation. The third order of business is getting the corrupting influences of corporate money and money from the obscenely wealthy, to hell out of our politics. Only justices that are fools, or deeply corrupt themselves support corporate personhood and such an obvious pathways to political prostitution. The "For the People Act" HR1 would have done much to rectify our slippage into fascism, but the corporate corruption that prevails in the Republican party spilled over to capture two corrupt Democrats, Sinema and Manchin, stalling the bill.
Fixing our country starts with blowing Trump and MAGA fascists out of the water at the polls and tuning out the GOP's Putin borrowed MSM rhetoric.
That is what needs to be tackled next.
Ever since his descent on the elevator announcing his candidacy, trump has given us all the signals. But liberal and progressive friends patted me on the head and said not to worry because trump is nothing more than a buffoon. I’ve taught this history from original documents. And I’m still screaming my head off into what feels like the void. (Hence, my screen name) Thom, your substack and the comments here give me a measure of peace. I’m 75 years old, have a long and good memory, have resisted locally and nationally, will be at the polls. I’m in Reno, NV, and know just how serious the neofascist movement is here. Hugh Jackman is right.
My father-in-law (1906-1986) grew up in Berlin and said that in the late '20s people made the same comments about Hitler. When he got into office they said he'd be gone in six months. As I've said on other threads, McConnell, those in the media who just want more viewers and the GOP's big financial backers seem never to have read "Frankenstein." Once you create a real monster it quickly gets out of your control.
Yes. one should study the Weimar Republic and Hitler's Rise to power.Germany had never been a democracy before the Weimer Republic 1918-1933 so called because that is where the first Democratic German Constitution was drafted. This came on the heels of a revolution where the sailors and then soldiers rebelled. It was called the German Revolution or the November Revolution. https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/189772/8b9e17bd8d64e64c8e3a95fc2305e132/november_revolution-data.pdf
There was too much rioting of various factions in Berlin for the constitution to be drafted there so it was drafted in Weimar instead, this the name of the Republic by historians. So, Germans had only had 15 years of Democratic rule, which was very unstable at that because of so many political parties getting representation. There was a lot of disorder and chaos, but you also had the Golden 20s. The Weimar Republic started off with Germany having a horrid economic post war situation where they had to both rebuild and pay a lot of reparations to the countries that won the war. Reparations is a bad idea for this reason. After the French occupied them in the mining area, the workers of the area refused to work, and so French scabs were brought in. I think many of the scabs and soldiers were from their African colonies. Then Germany without the production could not pay their reparations. So, they started printing tons of money to pay off their debts, and this led to hyperinflation. This was unsustainable and people had to barter. They were not better off than before the war. They could not get back to normal. Then they renegotiated the terms of the reparations, and also borrowed money from the US. Germany did not pay off their reparations until 2010. With this stretched out schedule and investment loans from the USA they were able to rebuild their economy. However, after a World War and the runaway inflation in the beginning of the Weimar Republic people did not really save, so they started putting the money they earned into the economy in things like restaurants and entertainment. The government remained unstable. The people did not know democracy in the way that we understand it, or Germans understand it now, it was new, and the problems that existed were attributed to the form of government by many. Then the stock market crashed in the USA in 1929 and the US called in the loans from Germany and German businesses had to sell everything and go out of business. So, people were destitute, even the middle class. In enters Hitler promising to make things better. He already belonged to a party that was racist and anti-Semetic. They wanted women in traditional roles and claimed to want to help the workers. Under Hitler Germany went back to being a feudal state with a supreme ruler. That was Hitler. Everyone else had to serve him. How does the USA today compare to Nazi Germany? So in the USA, after decades of Republican policies furthered by democrats, like decimating our manufacturing and our unions and sending jobs abroad, and also the development of the super stores, and online businesses, many businesses that formerly existed are gone. Were are the parallels? We do not newly have a democracy, but perhaps many do not understand what fascism is like, even some of those who immigrated from fascist regimes (Cuba, Former Soviet Union, Venezuela), do not seem to understand fully how to be democratic. We had high inflation due to covid and then Putin's war on Ukraine, but have managed under Biden to get the economy to be productive again and inflation down. The US also has warring parties presenting different visions of government. Thanks to Biden things are getting more stable for the little people, but people in Red States have such cutthroat governance for things like health care, right to work laws, undermining unions that they do not necessarily feel the benefits and therefore may believe the lies they are told by their Republican leaders. The Hitler clones like Abbott who is killing pregnant women and babies along with others in his border death trip abound in the party and the rhetoric is racist anti-Semitic populism. Let us hope we are not really like Weimar Germany. We understand democracy, most expect it not a king, and our country is not only doing well, but increasingly better under Biden.
Well as Thom has broadly discussed it seems that about a third of the population, even in the U.S., may like having a strong person who tells them what to do. Also they may want to hear that everything will be okay if they can only take over the nation and recreate a mythical past when things were “better”. Putin is doing something similar, using the national Orthodox Church and appealing to traditional Russian culture, which of course was always top down from a dictator. (In fact during the Yeltsin years some people saw where things were going and called the conditions "Weimar Russia".) Modi in India is doing something like this too, and in China Xi is just continuing these ancient practices of Chinese rule.
Fortunately despite selling a Bible and babbling about dangerous non-white people the U.S. is too pluralistic for Trump to get great traction by appealing to toxic religious or racial standards. And his appeal to the past doesn't have the resonance of how Hitler used crackpot anthropologists and Wagnerian music ro justify how the Nazis were making Germany “great again”. This doesn't make Trump less dangerous but it is harder for him to succeed when you have a country with democratic traditions and a people who are used to saying what they think--and some of us are in the habit of thinking critically too!
And then there’s this. Constitutional sheriffs in NV are answerable to absolutely no one: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/constitutional-sheriffs-las-vegas-conference-rcna147487
Actually, Cassandra, your head-patting friends have a large following. Easier to look the other way than face the reality. BTW, those were exactly the German words heard as Hitler took over their country.
Yes, indeed. And among our allies and among our countrymen and women.
Very good, Thom. I've been following you for some time now. You may remember me from your SDS days. Today, we are on the same page, and more. I have a theory piece on media, longish, but citing you at the end. Let me know if you want to see it.
Sure!
Here you go:
https://1drv.ms/w/s!Av0GmkCWnTrhixhFMTMJ9SPT7OWS?e=LDHLjG
You’re not being callous, Patricia. How far can we go to protect democratic voters in hostile environments without becoming violent thugs like the fascists? peacefulness does not mean passivity.
Trump has nearly killed one party, just not the one he had in mind. Many in their ranks, including him, are on their way out of this world anyway. It seems they are hellbent on dragging us back to the last century. Thanks Thom for the side-trip there today.
They will have to go alone. The younger generations have moved on. AND, they are not afraid to use the word fascist or some other choice words too. I can't wait till they take over. I wish that were the choice for the presidency this fall, but I am pretty confident that President Biden is listening to the younger members in his family and around him. He gets the past, the present, and wants a better future.
Trump, the fascist bastard, doesn't get any of it---he is a true psychopath. He and Mussolini fall into the malignant psychopathic megalomania category. Mussolini got 500,000 Italians killed in WWII. Trump did about the same during the pandemic. Karma's a bitch and sometimes we get to see it in action. Sometimes we can even help it along the way. I always vote and try to help others to vote too. I often thought that was a small thing---not anymore!
What a world! Seems to be some "surprise" polling that the "kids" aren't falling for, for one thing, for RKF Jr. Meanwhile, doddering Chuck Grassley, who was all in on putting the finishing touch on the Jan. 6 takeover, made a speech enthusiastic for aid to Ukraine! The weird subtext with Trump is the background that he is actually a "moron." How bizarre is it, that he made hay about Obama's birth cert., yet all Trump's school records are same place as George Bush's military records? What a world, where nobody is hounding certain select "morons" for validation?
It's amazing what money can make disappear. Then along came Stormy.......
In some ways it is back to the last century, but there was a lot of progress made for people in the last century, except of course under fascist regimes. I assume that is the part you are referring to.
But for here I am talking LGBTQ+ acceptance, environmental damage, religion, and fake social "norms". We screwed people with student debt, stale wages, and the crap they call the "gig economy". We really did make progress, Linda, and that's why they know we are not done and why they know they can fight too.
Of course we need improvements. We don't ever get any cities in the top 10 for quality of living. That is a goal.
https://urbandesignlab.in/top-10-most-liveable-cities-of-2023/
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/08/18/vienna-named-worlds-most-liveable-city-again-in-2023-other-european-cities-slipped-out-of-
Another goal to have cities make it to the top 10 for safety and security. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbKRgZBPYMI
You can see where the US lies on pages 8 and 9.
The old saying was government needs to be more like business. Business is run by a king or tyrant. When government is like business there is little need for democracy. Democracy is messy and hard to do which make it easy to suggest it cannot work. However, when you desire to change in a way that makes peoples lives better, kind of hard to do it when you have to come to the king with your hat in your hand.
The saying was only said by Republicans.
The fundamental distinction is, is the goal to "promote the general welfare," or to promote the welfare of imaginary business conglomerates designed to create blanket criminal immunity against any human responsibility?
Imagine fascism is AIDS:
Trump is, therefore, not unlike a man with full-blown AIDS.
A man (well, a male, not a real man's persona) who is utterly hell bent to have "Raw-Dog Sex" (read: Un-Protected Sex) with as many men and women as he possibly can. And thus, before he dies, seeding Mussolini's fascist-virus from coast to coast; birthing AIDS riddled Pod-People ("Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956)*).
And in one political party [GOP], he has found a bottomless pit filled to the brim with willing hosts, female and male. Many ingesting Trump's virus whilst on their knees. The remainder, on all fours, doggy.
Jesus!!!
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuL2QwsNeM8
If you have gotten divorced half a dozen times, owe a lot of back child support, and support fascism and love to kill with your gun, you are a man! But if you don't eat meat, don't like wars, like rational thought and reading, you are sub human. They are here!
In "Myth America", edited by Kruse and Zelizer, Ch. 20 on Voter Fraud talks about a 1964 GOP plan called Operation Eagle Eye which involved launching a 100,000 member "voter intimidation program". Sound familiar?
GOP fascism is not new; we just seem to be trying our best to ignore it.
Donald supporters are not intelligent enough to know what fascism is, and will be shocked when many of them are herded
into the concentration camps also, for being disabled mentally or physically, for being old or without a family to support them, for being a repeat criminal. If the fascists cannot make money off of you, you will be the enemy regardless of race. The fascist would much rather keep undocumented immigrant laborers who are healthy and young than imperfect American citizens. The imperfect of all races will be exterminated. It is too late for America to be all white.
Fascism will last longer without a lot of imperfect people costing the state money. So they will be exterminated. Prepare to live off the grid, it is possible today with solar, and prepare to defend your stuff. I have no faith in the attorney general Garland or any of our branches of government. The GOP caused this mess when Nixon normalized relations with China and they have been obstructing and borrowing and cutting taxes ever since to destroy America! Now they have their own BS news stations, with AI coming soon! Vote blue and try to get everyone else you know to vote for Biden. The gOP is no longer a political party, it is a terrorist organization ran by foreign and domestic, deep State globalists! billionaires!
Well said, Bob; share your comment with those fascism-deniers who need to hear it.
Point made Bob. The first victims of Der Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei [c] or NSDAP), were the Sturmabeitlung (Brown Shirts) which the SS decapitated in the night of the long knives.
Again, Thom, you outdo yourself. Brilliantly researched and reported take down of Mussolini and Our Mad King (wannabe) Donald, both of eventually took total power by surviving early defeats by continuing to run shadow governments parallel to democratically elected but weak central federal governments, as did their hero Adolph Hitler. Not a good time to have a weak appearing titular head of state like our dear Ole Joe. I always think of the Facies displayed everywhere in the Federal government, including under each resting hand on the Lincoln Memorial, and their import in the Roman Empire. By definition, the US is already a quasi-Fascist state, with an ever tighter bundle of billionaires and wannabes holding real power.
I believe the true nature of our massive nation-states is the built-in hierarchical nature of humans/primates when present in large numbers and competing for limited resources. Our far less numerous ecologically balanced and self-sustaining Hunter-Gatherer ancestors were egalitarian and matriarchal by most accounts. Grain farming exploded our numbers and has given rise to our gigantic status (money) hierarchies. We are now 3,000 times more numerous than were our H-G ancestors and have vastly over-reached the planet's capacity to sustain our numbers. What could go wrong? Everything? Thanks, again, Thom, for all your efforts and the comments by thinking followers!
There are thesis written and books published that the patriarchy first arose with the invention or rather adoption of agriculture and a sedentary way of life. Excess grain was produced, and thugs declared themselves leaders and power over grain distribution. Confiscating grain, taxes, and storing it, then doling it out to those he favored and whom obeyed him.
It was also the beginning of debt and banking, but was initially monopolized by the thug.
When people questioned his authority and gathered together and rose up against him, he invented a supernatural power, that granted him and him alone, the authority to rule. A power that could not be questioned, because it couldn't be seen or interrogated, with the invention of writing, which at first was simply an accounting technique to keep track of stores, distribution, debts and taxes. It wasn't long before an origin story was written down, necessary to maintain consistency, otherwise it changes over time and contradictions are note and lead to schisms and dilution of power.
Thank you and I agree. My favorite such book is by Denise Schmandt-Besserat, "BEFORE WRITING, Vol. 1".
While I agree with you regarding the nefarious actions of Trump and the Republicans, I completely disagree with the cause. The main cause was the financial crisis and Obama's bailing out of the banks while austerity was the rule for everyone else. Obama protected the banksters and as Democrats do devised programs to pretend he was doing something for the "little people," but those programs did virtually nothing and we are right back in the same place some 16 years later. Obama implemented a program to reimburse mortgage holders and get them back into housing and put Larry Summers in charge. When all the program's funds were drained it turned out that 9% were used for homeowners and the rest went to Summers and his cronies. His Dodd-Frank legislation to rein in the big banks was written by lobbyists and had so many loopholes that we are seeing the same type of recklesness that was occurring prior to the crisis in 2008. He lied about the Affordable Care Act regarding "you can see your own doctor" and regarding premiums, and that legislation has helped to put the health care system on the brink of disaster, so that people who voted for him ended up voting for Trump. Your strategy of protecting corrupt and lying Democrats by calling criticism "circling the wagons" has backfired miserably, as now liberals have to prop up a judgment-addled warmongering racist as some sort of hero while making Trump and Putin the boogeymen so that American empire can continue its march to self-destruction. You know that fascism does not rise out of thin air, although admittedly our nation was founded upon racism and dehumanization and Trump and Biden both prove that not much has changed when it comes to who wields the power.
Well said Barry.
Of course you are also a fan of Putin. That's why his diatribe was really all about.
You know something William when I see "Vote Blue" I see red!
Putin is not problem, in fact he is very similar to Biden in his quest for empire. Biden has been in favor of invading more sovereign nations than Putin ever has, and has been involved in the killing of hundreds of thousands (or millions) of poor black and brown people. Of course that doesn't bother you or most of Thom's followers because it's the white people you are concerned about. I'm certainly not "a fan" of Putin any more than I'm a fan of Biden, but I can easily see that Biden has had far more negative impact on our country than Putin ever has.
Darlin', it's gettin' kind of knee-jerk. What part don't you get about "lost all credibility?" (ref. Judge Merchan)
I hate it when I agree with you, but this time, and in this instance I do. Then again broken clocks and all of that. Or I did until you got to making Putin the bogeyman, but I keep forgetting that you are clever, a well practiced Putin troll, because you know how to pull the liberal string, suck them in then drop the hammer for Putin.
Poor phucking Putin huh, the nasty scapegoats for Democrats.
Gotcha.
Star light, read all of the way to the end. This was a pro Putin discourse, everything that Boris posts has the objective of defending and advocating for Putin. I should have caught it at first, but I do now and won't forget.
He is quite expert, as a Putin troll would be, at playing liberal sentiments to flip them to Putin's side.
Boris is a Putin apparatchik that posts as Barry O. Kaufman D.O. He may in fact be Barry O. Kaufman D.O. but his alter ego is a Putin troll and I call him Boris.
He kvetches about "genocide"Joe and the Democrats, but always defends the real genocider Vladimir Putin., in fact he defends Putin by attacking Biden and the Democrats.
Ummm... the bank bailout was about a trillion dollars as you point out, and was wholly due to the corruption within the banking system and those at the top making out like bandits. Americans saw them get immediate relief while they were left struggling, many losing much or all of their retirement and savings. You ignore my citing of the relief program that ended up with 9% of the funds going to homeowners and the rest embezzled by Larry Summers and his buddies. I certainly do get to pick and choose if you get to selectively cite the lies and corruption of Republicans while excusing that of the Democrats. Biden himself lies 40 to 50% of the time, which this Politifact sampling bears out. He's lied about everything from his support for the genocide in Yemen to opening up more oil pipelines to his handling of classified documents to his personal history (including three lies about his own life in one financial speech in August of 2023). You can insult me personally on the internet which is not only cowardly but shows you are cornered and have nothing to refute my claims. And of course liberals say how horrible Trump and Putin are while Biden kisses the rear of the most right-wing extremist imaginable Benjamin Netanyahu and cirvumvents Congress to send him munitions for his racist genocide. Biden is anti-abortion, backing the heinous and racist Hyde Amendment for decades until it was time for him to run for president in 2020. He can't even say the word abortion and did nothing at all in the wake of the Dobbs decision. It is said American Empire must create an illusion to keep its subjects delusional, and you and most of Thom's minions prove that beyond a doubt.
I had a surprise experience with a family connection to Orthodox Church here in CA. Wife of my table-neighbor was Russian-speaking and completely credulous of Putin media. At the same birthday celebration table was widow of an uncle who had always identified as Ukrainian, going back to turn of last century, and a couple who thought Ukrainians were Russian, and the Ukrainian Church are heretics! What can be done about selective "facts?"
Thank you Thom. What an excellent, well reasoned summary, right from the heart and the intellect.
“And if Trump fails, are there other wannabe Republican Mussolinis waiting in the wings?”
You have penned another excellent essay, Thom Hartmann, but it is the preceding line in particular that brought on the feeling of unease that I have been experiencing since I first read Joe Conason’s book IT CAN HAPPEN HERE several years ago, followed by Timothy Snyder’s ON TYRANNY, & most recently Christopher Browning’s THE SUFFOCATION OF DEMOCRACY. My voice is a small one, some like, few listen, but since I started writing on social platforms like Substack, I have grown increasingly bothered by the apparent resistance of the American public at large to seeing & appreciating what you have so clearly laid out in this piece. You have now added to my list of readings meant to educate about what fascism looks & feels like & how much today’s America resembles & shows evidence of previous fascist regimes like Italy’s Mussolini & Germany’s Hitler. The biggest question raised in my mind by your well-written piece is this: Why now? Are you thinking that we are not taking this fascist threat seriously? Because I am.
MSM rarely uses the word “fascism” or “fascist” in their reporting, preferring familiar & safe words like “authoritarianism” or all the other “-isms” that point to elements found in a fascist state. They describe in detail what you have described in this essay, but resist calling it what it is. Even our POTUS was scolded for using the phrase “fascist-like.” Very few anchors say “fascism” & then only infrequently. In fact, you can hear the word most often in TFG’s rally rants & on the extreme fascist right’s propaganda TV channels. Even there, it’s used to label us, the pro-democracy forces trying to fight it - a definite Goebbel’s tactic.
Thank you, Sir, for trying again. Perhaps more people will take seriously what you’re saying. As for your question about whether there are other “wannabe Republican Mussolinis” out there waiting to take over if TFG fails, I think the answer is a resounding “you betcha!” We see them in the news everyday, but we rarely call them out. In fact, many journalists (e.g., Dan Rather) spend their public time reassuring everyone that everything will be fine. Nothing to worry about, even as our precious institutions falter. Hope they’re right, but I tend to think you’ve got the more accurate view.
I doubt the movement will survive much beyond Trump. There are wannabes, such as J.D. Vance, Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, Kari Lake, and several others, but they don’t have Trump’s talent to make up lies on the spot, spew out hatred, demean and attack people personally, and also be charming and entertaining as he does his dancing bear act. He also seems to have some power to intimidate and crush anyone in the party who opposes him. No one else comes close. If he loses badly, in a year, no one will admit they supported him.
Wish I could believe what you’re saying, but as my comment says, I take all this much more seriously. Hope you are right, though.
It will indeed be interesting to witness some sorting-out of the dyed-in-the-wool human-haters and the pitiful opportunists.