Let's Call Trumpism what it is - American Fascism.

Your opinion piece is noticeably lacking in convincing evidence. Obama was certainly not a terrorist, he didn't spy on millions of Americans, and any investigations done under his watch were done by the book, which is more than can be said for the current regime.

There is nothing fascist about Progressives or their politics. Yours is a deeply partisan spin. And your wholesale condemnation of Democrats while giving a pass to the current regime as we draw nearer to authoritarian despotism under this regime, is breathtaking.

True conservatism is rare today. It has been replaced by authoritarian white supremacy who defend self-described Nazis and fascists. Your contention that Progressives are "openly calling for the murder of people who don't share their political beliefs" is pure fantasy founded in highly partisan hate.

 

Maybe if you keep repeating that enough times, someone will begin to actually believe it.

 

If Trump was autocratic, why did he wait for an invitation from states and cities to put down terrorist attacks ,,, except when those attacks were launched against Federal property and Federal workers?

If you want to find American Fascists, look left at the thought police. American Progressives taught European Fascists the ropes. Learn the history. Democrats even taught Hitler his special brand of Fascism. He modeled his concentration camps after Democrat Plantations and the Democrat lynching of freed slaves gave him the idea for gas chambers. Like Progressive Democrats, Hitler was an environmentalist and had discussions with Margaret Sanger about eugenics. Hitler wanted to clean up the gene pool by eliminating Jews, Sanger wanted to exterminate blacks. FDR was real special. He hated Jews, Blacks, and Asians. While his New Deal tried to exclude Blacks, the crumbs that fell to minorities were enough to attract them away from the party of Lincoln. Funny how the worm has turned. Well, with the exception of Pelosi and Schumer giving the thumbs up to African slave traders while mourning the death of George Floyd.

 

You have no evidence for that. But keep repeating Limbaugh's lies.

 

I apologize to you firstly, if my post left out other similar systems or examples, etc and we will address those as we go through the post.
One of the main reasons is that I felt the need to flesh out Fascism's actual existence, rather than point out every other centralized system(or in the case of Communism, apparent centralized system.)

(Also, to fit all my answers, I quoted just one part of your post, but all of your post is answered.)

The distinguishing factor between Communism and Fascism, is that the Communist does not view the State as essential, but rather as a vehicle for the proletarian. Although, that lie of Communism is what keeps would-be socialists dreaming. Indeed, it's the underlying reason behind the oft mentioned "we've never seen it before". They should think about why they didn't see it. In reality, the Communist revolutionaries, after taking power decide they are the ones who split the profits and almost always, it leads to a top-down organization, where the 'down' don't get much at all.

Or in the case of Venezuela, by so heavily focusing on "equality", it turns out that depresses economic vitality and what you have is equality in poverty. As everyone is now "equal". Equality as an ideal is noble, but equality as a practice is doomed to failure. Because people aren't inherently "equal", in the egalitarian sense. This is what the Fascist detests and despises about a system that tries to artificially create equality and in so doing, reducing the talents of those around them.

As an example, the modern day Communist Chinese party. The mass millions of the Chinese are under famished, until 2017 their one-child policy discriminated against the poor Chinese, while the wealthy were allowed to have more than one child. Here, too another distinction can be made, though I make it with a lot of caveats:

I do not have the same exact reasoning as the Fascist revolutionaries did for their time, I merely come to the same conclusion from an economic and political factor. So, okay, the Communist Chinese in particular look to aim to control their population due to a size overload issue.

This would not be a problem in the eyes of a Mussolini/Hitler. Rather, they would have viewed it in the sense of how many troops they could assemble in the future. In my case, I take the more egalitarian economic approach to think that the added manpower will result in massive economic expansion.

And the basis for that, lies in our own explosion in the baby boomer era. Isn't it strange to anyone that our greatest moment of productivity was the 50/60's, not the 90's .com bubble. This is because as they were hooking up and popping out babies, they obviously need to support those babies. And as the demand for jobs exploded, said jobs also exploded and as a result of that natural chain and reaction, our economy exploded.

You could argue that if we had taken the path of continuing this expansion, we would have been a healthier version of China. Without the constraints and other limiting factors, but massive growth. Instead, politically we shifted towards the banks, corporations, media and then it stopped. The .com bubble was trivial compared to the natural churning of the economic order.

In sum, the Communist system seeks to create an artificial view of equality, whilst the higher-ups enjoy their own benefit. The Fascist is not concerned with whether something looks equal, but whether the people are united under the banner of the State.

Because the State is organic, it is an expression of the people's wills. As long as the people are divided, the State is divided. And in a divided State, it is all the more easier to pay monies to the divided segments of society, or to 'lobby' on their behalf. This is the strength of the modern day Democratic Party. They need this division in order to literally exist. Have you ever heard of a unity campaign from Democrats? No, it's either us or them. And it has to be that way, because they literally cannot exist otherwise. A revolution without a revolutionary struggle?(as Marx would put it.)

Democracy and Communism are first hand cousins, and Plutocracy is the natural evolution of such. So you are correct to call it a Plutocracy and it is a testament to your political knowledge that you sniffed it out. I will further deconstruct democracy in the next segment since it flows perfectly into that.


This is a very deep segment of yours and I appreciate both the political thought and intellectual thought you put into it. To do respect to both you and what you've written, requires an equally articulate approach so I will to the best of my abilities give you the same type of thought, analysis and answers.

Sometimes, the most subtle changes can have the most rippling effects. So one can argue(as in fact another poster had done so), that we are a "Democratic Republic", and thus the more oft used expression of "democracy" does not change the institution. If I had to pinpoint a reason that the Fascist originators would have pointed towards, and what I myself see is this: Qualification. This qualification should not be reduced to who gets the most votes, because someone who's popular isn't necessarily the one best fit to be in charge.

Here, we now invoke Plato who described it correctly that because of the financial monetary bribing system that exists, someone who promises the moon, the sky and the sun can easily be elected. However, said person doesn't deliver the moon, sky or the sun and as a result that person gets canned and we face another revolutionary internal struggle.

That is yet another point that the Fascists made, the stability of the system with a Head of State representing the nation. With our Presidents, it changes every four years. I'll get to your argument a bit later on how the constantly occurring changes should limit corruption, because I do have a rebuttal but I want to just first outline it. Because of said changes, our philosophy isn't consistent. This doesn't just refer to our political philosophy as a nation, how about our social standards as people?

They change as the leadership changes, and the leadership changes, far too frequently. I won't go all the way as they would, to say that said changes will result in degenerate behavior(though, on occasion it does). But I will say that the best thing philosophically speaking is that for the philosopher to choose his path, not to veer from his path and to hold himself steady to his truth is an admirable concept.

Of course, yes it can be dogmatic but running the risk of being dogmatic vs the risk of being unprincipled and without convictions. A man without convictions, is precisely the kind of man that can be sold out to anything. You could even argue that such a man isn't really 'alive' in the most philosophical of senses.

However, the more and more temptation exists, the more man can veer from his path. I didn't leave Liberalism, Liberalism left me. I just had to fill in the hole where Liberalism once existed. I still believe I'm on the path to justice, I still believe I'm on the path to true egalitarianism for all.

Now, does the never ending change result in less corruption? It doesn't. Because every man wants a piece of the pie. For those who complained about the system, the deeper resentment is that if Trump never got in to begin with, then the institutions would never have faced such a challenge. It is corrupt precisely because every man is corruptible. We would prefer as few chaotic elements as possible, not many elements to "dilute" the corruption so to speak. While they might not find the whole of the body politick to be corrupt, they can certainly find more than one, and they can definitely find hundreds or even thousands of voters with an ulterior(not necessarily illegal) motive in their voting practice.

And a lot of it, isn't even so much corruptible as it is survivalist. The mother who's poor and despondent and thus needs the social welfare programs(I could go on about reforming to a proper social welfare program, but I don't want to detract from your point of discussion, which is to elaborate on my views to make them as coherent as possible.). The teacher who needs more funds in education. The officers who want state of the art equipment.

There's so much personal intrigue and motive in politics, that the very nature is a corrupt animal really regardless of what you choose. The benefit of Fascism, is that rather than delude ourselves that we can dilute the corruption, we can at least choose a political head of State and should the head of state fail(acknowledging that failure is a possibility if not a probability at some point), then he gets replaced.

Essentially, if I got to the nuts and bolts of it, I would replace elections with selections. You get a list of say five individuals who have proved themselves through their various political or social achievements, and from there, you have like an advisory board to make the selection. No grafts, no promises, no election. Just a flat out straight selection of the one person who could be qualified to lead our nation.

"Sooner will a needle pass through a haystack then getting a good leader from an election" is another quote from the German dictator, and he's right. But that would focus specifically on the flaw of the nature of elections and we didn't quite broach that topic yet. I will address why I've chosen these quotes, which to be clear are non-racial in nature(I could have easily chosen some Mussolini quotes but as much as I read his book, I don't really quite remember his quotes.)

And in fact, considering that said dictator was elected, and given his war crimes you could argue he's a testimony to being right on that account.

There's a second reason, that closely correlates to the first reason I mentioned here. While it's easy to find tens of hundreds of corrupt individuals, once you do find a person who cannot be brought out, this person is an immovable rock. Now, what makes this person immovable differs from person to person, but let's say that a person does want to be popular, and does want to be vastly approved of.

Would this person want to enhance the State, or would he want to weaken the State? Would such a person put people in camps or no?
If anything, it's the dehumanization in the Fascist revolutionaries that I've replaced and edited in for the 21st century. The King and Queen, who live in their home country and genuinely love their home country will not want to see it dissipate and fade away.

Indeed, while people talk about the renaissance people are loathe to give credit to the Alexander the Great's, the Napoleon's, the George Washington's or the Bismarck's that made it possible. Washington's biggest mistake was believing that any man could rise to the occasion. If that were so, the Trump detractors wouldn't have voted as they did or felt as anxious as they did.

Clearly, not any man can rise to the occasion of leadership.(I use man here in a non-gender sense. Obviously the same goes for women and there have been Empresses and head of States(Thatcher, anybody) who have led their countries and are popular due to their success/historical success. It's this reality: Not everyone can be an effective leader, not everyone can be a superstar athlete, not everyone can be a cop or a nurse that we struggle with. That we hate, because it ruins our dreams.

In essence, the person with the leadership qualities is a person of fortitude, of strength, of resolve. Because he/she has these things, they cannot be brought out. They may have their interests and they may have their way of seeing it to be ran but those things coincide with their beliefs, they don't run against them.




Ah, but here's where the rubber meets the road: They're dead and as much as I'd like to be able to reference some 21st century manual on my Fascist-Technocracy, with great quotes from scholars and others that people can resolutely believe in. That material doesn't yet exist, you could argue as the pioneer that I am creating said manual but as of right now I don't have anything that is neutral for you to trust in, other than the history and the origins of what was.

That said, this actually applies to Trump too: For as much as a person lies, that doesn't inherently make them a "liar", as we know the term. It's actually a very dangerous psychological phenomena, where because a person lies we say that the person lacks credibility. To an extent, this is true but just because a person lies does not mean we should presuppose that everything a person says is a lie.

Because to say that, if we expand it even more religiously and dogmatically, we've all lied at some point in our lives. Does that mean no one is trustworthy? Could we humans live in such a society? It was Reagan who said "Trust but verify", and that's a timeless quote by someone who understood this question in its depth. If we verify that a person is telling the truth, then we can trust them even if they've lied in the past.

As it regards the two quotes I used, one of them was philosophical(the quote on the election). To say that would be a lie of his, would mean to say that he didn't live as he did. And we have no evidence of that, so to question it would be an empty pit. The quote I gave of his during the war, we can bare the evidence that he and many of his men committed suicide. Clearly, they put more importance on Germany than themselves, or they would've preserved their lives even if it meant being captured by their enemies.

Now to address the second part of your question, not only are they dead, but a true actual system of Fascism(that is, of the State, for the State and by the State.) has yet to be erected(for obvious reasons.) Actually, let's discuss this a bit because it's kind of ironic.

Communist systems are responsible for MILLIONS of deaths, actually to the score of tens of millions of deaths. But calling oneself a Communist is respected, if not acknowledged. Yet for a Fascist, we must remain in the shadows(contrary to the OP), and should we openly declare the belief in the Nation-State, we are accused of being racists, supremacists, etc.

I could go even deeper into exploring what I saw when researching the Third Position but then this post would be even longer then it is. Namely, what did they do wrong? If you want to continue this discussion, feel free to give me a reply and I'll pick off on where I believe they went wrong and my corrections.

 

Heh heh heh. That is a childish RW invention. NOBODY on the left of idiocy has ever said it.

 

So I was correct. They belong to the republicans. Thx for the clarification.

 

The Republican Party, formerly a "GOP", is now a world-leading white supremacist party that pushes ruthlessly and undemocratically for authoritarian single-party government. But it is in the process of destruction due to lack of winning policies.

 

Trump is a true fascist, but he doesn't yet have the power of a fascist leader. Separation of powers and the US Constitution prevents the worst. Thanks to your founding fathers. I am sure that Trump is pondering in his sick brain how to abolish the constitution.

 

https://thepoliticalinsider.com/classified-documents-obama-spying-years/
Spied on Americans for Years
By Rusty Weiss
May 24, 2017 at 7:03am

Describing them as “serious constitutional abuses,” a Circa report has revealed that previously top secret documents show that President Barack Obama spied on Americans for years.


The National Security Agency (NSA), according to the report, “routinely violated American privacy protections” and “failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president.”


The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) claim these newly disclosed violations rank as some of the most serious to ever be documented.

And then ,,,

Like this Republican?



Or Woody, the Patron Saint of Progressivism, who segregated the Civil Service?



But, there has never been a White Supremacist like Stephen A. Douglas, honored with memorial in deep blue Chicago


Well, with the possible exception of Exalted Cleagle Robert Byrd, honored by Democrats with a statue in the Capitol Bldg, and by your presumptive P-E



Don't run from your legacy. Embrace it!

 

Okay first the big lie finds its origination in the Marxian. Dialectic, not Hitler though Hitler Was quite willing to borrow from almost any source to justify himself and his odious ideas. Hitler was not an original thinker rather he collect ideas from various sources shoveled them through the garbage disposal of his mind and regurgitated what ever came back out including a rather Orwelian take on the pure fantasy created by Wagner.

One should understand that Trump isn't the second coming of Hitler, Mussolini or even Franco, rather he is the response to an administrative state run amuck that is taking on some of those characteristics including some rather anti Democratic ones.

 

I love how your second sentence negates the premise of your first, and your topic.
Well done.

 

Obviously you think everyone who disagrees with you is either a fascist or an idiot. Trump is neither. If you don't arrest anyone or don't act on what you are saying as Obama frequently did you aren't doing anything Fascist just by complaining unless you think 90% of the world is fascist.

 

Is Hillary in Jail? No? Well there goes that idiotic argument.

 

Yes I realize leftist ignore any truth that doesn't suit there narrative and accept any lie that does.

 

Roughly a thousand questions can properly be attached to the intro, above.

Dictators/authoritarians do not recognize the need to go through a legislature to create/enact law.
Dictators/authoritarians do not recognize the authority of the court system with regard to laws he enacts and actions he takes.
Dictators/authoritarians do not recognize the authority of the electorate to chose whether or not he remains in office.

The only "authoritarian" actions taken by Trump are those pursuant to the powers given to him directly by the constitution, federal law, for federal jurisprudence - which, by definition, are not authoritarian in nature.

 

That would be.the Democrats.

 

Uh, What? Try an actual argument, next time.

 

You provided that argument for me. Thank you.
The conditions you claim do not exist, and thus, your premise is necessarily unsound.

 

Sorry, too cryptic for me. I'm not afraid of making an argument, if you in fact have one.

 

I agree with this overall premise, & you make a reasonable case. I just felt that a closer scrutiny of the "granular details," for the tail-end of the trip to our current state of affairs would be helpful in elucidating your argument for any of its readers. I still think-- in fact I had already been considering this myself-- that some anecdotal recounting of the Gingrich-led Republican Revolution in Congress would be both very instructive as well as buttressing to your case.

I also feel that beginnings, and turning points, bear extra scrutiny. So your timeline now syncs the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s w/ a Conservative (and Moderate) backlash in society (well-known), which you maintain initiated Evangelicals' migration from the sidelines, into right-wing politics (& I have no reason to doubt you, here, though had you noted a few political contests in which this new Republican muscle flexed itself, even locally, to bring into office politicians you could associate, perhaps, with this fascist breed, that would've really make the argument pop). On the political side, you link this subsequent fascist wave with the Nixon administration-- fair enough. But you make no effort to tie the two phenomena. Is this because you view the combination of these newly politically-active Evangelicals & the rise of Nixon to the Whitehouse as a coincidental crossing of forces, that by happenstance turned out to work well together (akin to the proverbial creation of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups)?

Further, to what do you attribute the seeming recession of the Evangelical power, not only in the election of President Carter, but in the Democrats' Congressional strength, including into the Reagan years, with House Speaker Tip O'Neil? You wouldn't be implying that the national shame of Nixon's cover-up led Evangelicals to forget that they were racist/fascist, would you?

You see, this is where more detail would prevent me from making mis-assumptions. You did say that Evangelical Christians had, formerly, been racist Democrats, didn't you-- or am I misremembering? My best guess now is that you are saying their involvement began in the 60s but took until 80s to really gather steam. However, the backlash of the 80s was not simply against civil rights, but against drug culture and sexually licentiousness, as well. So that complicates your effort to make a clean connection between racism, Christianity, & fascism-- do you understand my point? There are clearly multiple drivers of the shifts in public mores, attitudes, & sentiments.The economic recession, along w/ perhaps a feeling that he was too internationally-(outwardly-)focused, led to George H. W. Bush's defeat by Bill Clinton. Nevertheless, Clinton played a big part in pushing the entire Democratic Party, further to the right. To disentangle the various, intertwining motivators of political forces, putting this relatively recent history under a stricter inspection, would appear to be warranted.

I am also still a little unclear as to the way you see the racist/fascist dynamic. Is fascism the natural result of giving racists political power? Or do fascist politicians merely exploit citizen racism for their own ends?

In closing, I found it interesting that my comment about 9-11 was the one part you left out of your reply. This becomes a particularly salient omission when we consider, despite all the other problems our country was experiencing in the late 70s, how important a role the Iranian hostage crisis played in Carter's defeat, en route to our new morning, in Reagan's America (not to mention, coincidentally or not, the Middle East being the location of Bush #41's last big hurrah, before his political defeat).

Of course, this point does not in any way argue against your designation of American fascism. You've already included xenophobia, & nationalist inclinations, among the characteristics of fascism. I'd only appreciate a sharper delineation between nationalism, xenophobia, & even racism-- all of which have been fixtures in human psychology & national behaviors, worldwide--and full-blown fascism.

 

For someone so obsessed with race, that he can see nothing but race to call someone else ignorant is remarkable. It's an intellectual defect, not something to exalt. And as such, I'm going to do my part in not exalting it by limiting my responses to where it doesn't invoke race. Where it does invoke race, will be ignored.

His foreign policy is the furthest thing from incoherent. The North Koreans were renegade for example as far back as 2000(if you'd paid attention to the world, and not obsessed with your racial theory, you would know these things.). We know that the North Koreans not only have a nuclear weapons program, but used said program to intimidate their Asian neighbors as well as to cheat their way of international aid. That song and dance had been going on for the last 20-25 years.

But of recent, the NK's went from blustering, to targeting the US Pacific and Guam. Should our fellow citizens die, just to not confirm your belief in a racist government? No, the government had a responsibility and an obligation. And the Trump Administration responded on a dual basis, by first making in no uncertain terms clear that it was ready to respond militarily should the need arise, but also to diplomatically engage the North Koreans.

That the North Koreans failed to reciopricate does not mean the administration was undermined, nor does it mean the attempt wasn't valid. Especially if you're going to complain, as you did in your post that Trump "warmongered" towards the North Koreans. One can't call him a warmonger, and then to denigrate his attempts at diplomatic dialogue.

Actually, yes Liberals can and it's very remarkable. Your view of the world is the exact opposite of the actual world, as it's developing in real time today. And to be utterly blunt at how disappointed I am: I can't help that, or change that or improve that.

That's a you issue. If Liberals want to see the world through a racist prism and engage every act of policy through racism(like with the coronavirus). That's the exact opposite of Dr. King's wishes, it's the exact opposite of e pluribus ubum and at this point, it's just sad.

What the **** happened to my former party? Seriously, where did this transfusion in thought begin? It began honestly in 2010 onward, where there had to be 'some' reason that Obama went from 69% approval to 44%. And in Liberal minds, the solution(as you've taken great pains to point out) was racism. Racism behind every tree, racism behind every person's thought.

Racism behind every action. The Framers had slaves, that makes them bad people! It's ridiculous. And it's the state of your party today, whether you want to recognize it or not.

It wasn't that the Individual Mandate irked the American People the wrong way(if we're going to talk about government's controlling the will of the people.). It wasn't that the "jobless economy" of 2011 couldn't fulfill the people. It wasn't the terrorist attacks we were facing in 2016. No man, none of those issues matter. They're all just a bunch of racists.

"He who calls someone else ignorant, has laid no doubts.". Seriously, your basic gist is to either call someone ignorant or racist(or both). But we'll unpack this anyway. It goes back to the 2012 midterms and when the GOP Tea Party was advancing its bills through the House. Essentially, Democrats legislatively agreed with Republicans(such as Mitch McConnell) to continue spending and thus to defeat the Tea Party. Again, things you don't know because you never looked outside of "OMG, RACISTS".

EX: The resolution to the shutdown where McConnell got pork money for a bridge in Kentucky. As well as the 2017 budget where more pork was added into the bill.

Trump didn't destroy it(nor did he necessarily align with it either), they just became weaker and subdued due to lack of victories, thanks to establishment Republicans choosing pork over their interests, and because Democrats helped them carry the votes. Again, things you don't know because I'm actually going to venture to say that you don't pay too much attention to parliamentary politics. Sort of gets in the way of your whole, everyone racist creed.

**shakes my head**. I just...I can't. How can anyone waste that much thinking power on ONE topic? How do you live with yourself? It's really a travesty really. It's a human travesty that instead of applying(at the very least, a high quality in English literature, since our writing styles are similar) that to some critical thought, you stopped at racism. And racism alone. That's sad. It's like looking in a mirror and seeing what I would've been, if I stopped thinking.

So, okay. "White Supremacy", was a thing prior to the Civil War. If you listen to the actual reasoning of even racists at the time, you'll find that it had less to do with supremacy, and more of cultural shock/fear. Hence the whole "separate but equal" that was decided in Brown V Board of Education. If your theory were correct(which it isn't), then Whites wouldn't have marched alongside blacks.(Because 13% of the country, even banded together doesn't make up forget a majority, but even a plurality of the minority.).

The other issue is that the "civil rights", in of themselves did very little for African-Americans(which to be sure since we're now discussing the present, you're going to blame racists.). That's why they're arguing for reclamations(something to be fair you haven't posted, but also something we can know damn well you support) and let me throw cold water:

A: The reclamations will be paid by TAXES. Everyone being taxed including wait for it...African-Americans. So basically, reclamations is arguing that African-Americans should tax themselves, to pay for the slavery of their ancestors. It would be hilarious if Liberals weren't so brain-dead financially.

B: Said reclamations won't do anything with regard to long-term wealth, as it's a form of monetary payment, not necessarily capitalistic wealth or ownership of the means of production. It's a pittance, just like everything else about the CRA in the end, was a pittance.

You give them these pittances, call it a "right" and walla. But the reality on the ground doesn't match, and so they need to find something to blame. We could go into a lot of things, but we won't because it would just trigger you. Let's just say there's socio-economic factors(credit: Thomas Sowell) as well as personal behavior choices that contribute a lot to the world we live in today.

When the suppression and oppression of your fellow citizens is called a 'culture war' and 'views and opinions which are fundamentally disreputable and socially proscribed'. WHO gave this(or any party) the right to judge or create views that are reputable and proscribable?


Nobody, you just took that mantle on yourselves. And you did it by attacking conservative speakers, running them out of the building and in true fashion, you're the ones living in an echo chamber because all you listen to yourselves. That's why I stopped being a Liberal, that's why I left. You're not the intellectual party anymore, you're the new moral party. You've taken over for the GOP in that department.

Draining the swamp is naught impossible, when the swamp is seen as the "structure" and as the "institutions", they can(and have) lied to you, they HACKED the US Congress and zero penalties. They're untouchable. Whether it's Obama, Trump or Biden they can't be touched. There's a two tier justice system in America and that's sad but race only factors in YOUR head, not in others.

I'm not even being facetious, find someone to talk to and heal that hole in your heart because it's seriously eating you alive.

 

If you were to concede Trump's stated, nationalist & semi-isolationist philosophy & agenda (America First-- though, to be clear, I am in sympathy with the general practicality of that viewpoint's, minimal summation), I would say there's not a Big difference between your & Modus Ponens' perspective (of the OP). Your stipulation of President Trump's, "anti-democratic," characteristics-- unless you actually intended it as originally written, w/ a capital D (i.e., that his response is against the Democratic Party, which I assume you did not)-- this is not out of step w/ Modus's contention of Trump's authoritarian tendencies. I, likewise, agree that those holding that Trump has a belief in democracy, or a republican spirit, have a losing argument.

So there are just two main differences between your argument & that of this thread's OP: 1)Modus's allegations of racism, which you do not address, nor does American Nationalist, to whom I was responding in my quote, to which you replied. For that reason-- and since this is a more subjective & nuanced, and so debatable, designation-- I will, also, leave this out of my discussion here.

That makes the primary difference between your opinion, as stated above, & that of the OP, being only a matter of degree. Yet I took your reply, for some reason, to actually be in support of American Nationalist's view, which diametrically opposes Modus's OP. Did I misjudge your sympathies? Perhaps you would be so good as to clarify what seem to me as contradictory ideas.

 

Well, I won't deny that... I would need to go into my archives to really bring forward time-and-date details, but off the top of my head I could mention that Gingrich's practice of the politics of personal destruction - by casting aside the norms governing the way that backbenchers heretofore had risen in the House hierarchy, by exploiting television and his own talent for provocation to raise his national profile, Gingrich engineered his own rise (first on display with his crusade in bringing down Speaker Jim Wright). He pioneered the moral anathematization of the political opposition, encouraging his caucus fellows to routinely refer to the Democrats as "sick" and "depraved." This is the kind of talk that you get when a political party is warping into a party-before-country political Faction (what the Founders always feared).

Then of course was the extra-Constitutional gambit of the Government Shutdown, essentially intended to blackmail the Executive into giving a major policy-victory to the controlling party in Congress, which they could not get through regular legislative procedure. The Government Shutdown as a tactic is not illegal or Unconstitutional; what it is however, is a prime example of the kind of violation of fundamental norms which is what always happens when republics are beginning to devolve towards tyranny. There are procedural "innovations" that previously were things that were "just not done," but which are done now simply because political actors have the power to do it. We saw this again with the Republicans' Debt Ceiling-Gambit in 2013 and of course in McConnell's theft of Obama's SC seat in 2016 (though I would argue that what McConnell did was in fact Unconstitutional).

Another index of the Factionalization of the Republican party was the "Hastert Rule," which deliberately overrode any efforts at a putting together bipartisan legislative majorities.

Another very obvious norm-violation (and perhaps the most spectacular instance of the politics of personal destruction) was Gingrich's attempt to get Bill Clinton removed from office. In no possible world could lying about a personal affair under oath pass muster as an impeachable offense. Again, this is the kind of behavior that you only get with a Faction that is bent on increasing its political power at all costs. The Republicans plunged the country into a year-long orgy of political intrigue, something that we could only afford because in the immediate post-Cold War period the United States was at the pinnacle of its power, with a humming economy and unchallenged across the globe. It's the kind of smash-and-grab political maneuver, again, characteristic of countries that slipping the bonds of the rule of law.

True enough, though as I said I would have to dig into my archive materials for these details. For the present purposes, I think the outline of the argument suffices to make my point. At least, I've provided enough detail that if someone disagrees, they should take issue with what I've said, or try to build their own counternarrative. And in my experience, going into the details for more receipts, will leave the blinkered opposition unmoved.

I would say that the return of the Evangelicals to politics begins in the mid-60's with Goldwater. The paranoid style of many of Goldwater's own voters unnerved Goldwater, but by Nixon's '68 campaign, the Republican party had embraced the strategy of race-baiting Culture War, the downstream political message of "Law and Order," and the general political strategy of the "Southern Strategy." So no, I would not say it's coincidental. Nixon's personal inclinations towards Authoritarianism certainly dovetailed with this Strategy, since per my formulation of the matter, the constituency he was appealing to was American Authoritarians. All of them, not just those in the South.

But that was not a recession; Carter was Evangelical. White Southerners had voted Democrat for so long, that after Nixon was disgraced they were probably happy to vote for a "back to normal" Democrat like Carter. Carter of course as we all know turned out to be a major Squish, and Reagan Democrats ditched him in a huge way in 1980.

It's worth understanding that the Southern Strategy did not flip political alliances overnight. The first stirrings of the rightward movement of Southern Democrats can be seen with Strom Thurmond's "Dixiecrats," in 1948. By the 1980's you probably had a lot of Southerners voting Republican, but still voting for the good 'ol local Dem Congressmen who they had been sending to Washington for 30 years... rising ideological waters in Washington and in the country eventually overtook that institutional inertia, and the dam broke in 1994, leading to the Republicans' "sudden" conquest of Congress.

Right.

Let us all repeat after the wise political philosopher, Steve Bannon: "Politics is downstream from Culture." Republicans, dating to the Nixon era and continuing again after the break caused by the Watergate scandal, have leveraged grievances over the Culture (complaining about the licentiousness of the Democrats is standard fare here) into votes for the GOP. Coded complaints about civil rights, complaints about the drug culture, etc., were all of a piece.

To my mind that was a combination of fatigue with Republicans in the WH, combined with Clinton's rightward shift in economic policy and in his rhetoric about the Culture.

Clinton followed the DLC program of "modernizing" the Democratic party, because it was thought that failure to do so would make the Democrats into a permanent minority-party. Given the rising tide of Movement Conservatism at that historical moment, the DLC Democrats were likely right.

Again, my assertion is that Fascism is popular. Its basic driver is an ethnic populism: the view of the privileged ethnic group in society that political solidarity should reign amongst them (even if the members of that group are materially unequal), and that they can and should collectively lord it over the ethnic minorities in that society. In the European-legatee societies of the West, this ethnic populism can be more accurately (and pungently) spoken of as "White Supremacy." The whole conceit of an ethnic democratic majoritarianism rests on political Authoritarianism (since it discounts the value of individual civil liberties for any not belonging to the dominant group), and all this can be succinctly referred to as Fascist. Authoritarianism is a political force that creates its own gravity, even when it is not directly manifested by political officials. Since the Civil War Authoritarianism has operated sotto voce, through an implicit concord on White Supremacy, between the parties. With the Democrats' embrace of Civil Rights in the mid-20th century, this concord was broken; and subsequently, American Authoritarians began to consolidate under the banner of the GOP. It took a few generations for the Authoritarians to place one of their own in the Presidency, but it has happened and with that the Faction that was once the GOP has now fallen into the pocket of the Demagogue - we see he is holding onto it even though the mantle of official power has been removed.

Well, I neglected to explore it, just because to me it's obvious how that event promoted Fascist forces in the Culture. It supercharged the cultural profile of Evangelicals, and as I've claimed those people belong to the core of the Authoritarian constituency in America... it's worth asking, if such highly contingent historical events as 9/11 and the rise of Obama never happened, would American Fascism by now gotten so forward in its march? I have to think it wouldn't have (but it still would be developing, apace)

Well, y'know... books could be (have been) written on this topic. I think that for my purposes it suffices to observe that there is a great deal of conceptual overlap between nationalism, xenophobia, racism, and Fascism; enough of an overlap that what I have sketched so far of their relations, is not especially controversial.

 

Very interesting dialogue you're having there with Modus Ponens, far from the usual ping-pong game being played on this forum. I do not intend to intervene; I would only draw your attention to the role played by the press, not to stupidly criticize it, but as an important player that contributes to shape the public opinion, and in turn give astute politicians the opportunity to smell the flavor of the day, as mentioned in your sentence I highlighted in bold above.
Similarly, I believe that, in the last 20 years or so, the development of internet and the explosion of the social media have contributed, in no small extent, to citizen racism under cover of anonimity.