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

Race is at the center of our politics, and always has been. Simply denying that reality because it is inconvenient for your arguments, only attests to the weakness and inadequacy of your worldview.

Yes, Kim Jong Un was being especially belligerent at the outset of the Trump Admin., testing them to see what he could get away with - probably. But Trump's extremely undisciplined rhetoric in response could have led to a miscalculation, and to war; if that had happened it could have led to a nuclear strike on the U.S. That's what makes Trump a warmonger. This isn't an effing game, yet Trump's "Fire and Fury" treated it like one. Irresponsible beyond belief. Kim Jong Un probably would not have dared to test any other person who had been elected, in a similar way.


Anyway, Kim played Trump and got what he wanted: a high-profile summit, with the President of the United States going to Asia to meet him, giving the dictator for free the favor and dignity of recognition that any other President would only have offered at the cost of real and concrete concessions. In the end Trump just displayed himself as what he is - a C-list celebrity who has a fetish for basking in the company of a political Strongman. The United States was humiliated, and in return we got exactly ZERO strategic benefit. Maybe you're the one who should wake up and start reading the news.

Oh, SURE. I think I'm going to OD on the irony.

 

You just don't grasp the history of the country. Nor do you grasp the nature and scope of racism in that history.

 

Still didn't answer on what happened to the party. You might not like it, you might subscribe it to whatever reasons you want to, but Trump got 72 million votes. You weren't expecting that, as a party and definitely not as a person. Do you REALLY think there are 72 million racists? Even if you subscribe to the idea of Trump being a want-to-be-Authoritarian, then that means my political view is popular with about 71.9 million other people. That should be substantial enough for you to think "Hmm, there's something much deeper to this than some false racial resentment, in a country that's been removed 6 generations from slavery. And about 3-4 generations from Jim Crow."

 

Well, it just proves Trump is not an accomplished fascist, only a wannabe incompetent fascist.

 

Obviously you have no clue as to what is obvious.

You reasoning is as sophomoric as your facts are factual.

 

Or that he isn't one at all, however well the lie serves the Democrats narrative.

 

Oh I know exactly what is obvious, the gaping holes in the sophistry that passes for an argument among the Democrats.

 

I venture that if anyone went through our public schooling, we got quite the dossier on the history of slavery, Jim Crow and Reconstruction. I got an A+ in US History as well as US Civics. Rather, that interpretation of the history of the conflict is a glossy-eyed one, in the advent of creating the "utopia" where the old white guys die out and thus we will be more "diverse" as a result.(As you can tell from my language, as I said constantly. I used to be a Liberal, I know what the theory was and the talking points.)

Incidentally, I don't know why they aren't celebrating the coronavirus since said old white people are most certainly dying(mind you, it's a very crude way to reference to people's parents and grandparents but who said the party of love and tolerance, really was loving and tolerant?)

The reality is much different. It originated as Supremacy, but it's final whimper was that of fear and uncertainty. And then political-economic envy(that even you admitted to) that ended up creating Reconstruction and the abandoned South, causing the fracture pipeline where the industrialized North basically takes them for granted. It's the same thing that led to the abolitionists leading the charge in the civil war.

This is not healthy(though preferable for the Democratic Party). If the fault line continues to be exploited, there will be little to no reason for the South to remain. And the North can't afford that, because the reason they went to war, which is true today is that the South is where much of our agriculture lies.

And if we lost our agricultural base, if people think we're owed to the Chinese now, just wait until we become food dependent. We need the North to be less hollier-than-thou, to maintain the Union and to thrive.

 

I don't distributed the weight evenly - My claim is that 1) both sides do it 2) that this demonization of the Other is increasing in frequency.

Trump is an idiot in many respects - on this we agree - and as stated previously - he is way over the top - way on the extreme of the spectrum.

The point I am making though - is that in general - both sides have moved rather far to the extreme of the spectrum ... and this is really disconcerting.

Trump Symptom of a much bigger problem - an ugly ***** Pimple for sure - but, the disease goes much deeper than the one pimple.

 

This kind of cult fanatical populism and extremism comes in many forms - on this we agree - and there are similarities for sure. These movements often lead to radical legislation being enacted -and assaults in essential liberty - increases to Gov't and Police Power.

I do however maintain that most sub-groups within this Group have a religious component - not sure whether this makes one more or less dangerous than the other .. examples of both can be provided - but both are bad.

Now that you have clarified I understand what you are sensing - and I concur with that perspective. The mob in general is in a foul foul mood - ripe for these kind of movements - and get ready .. as Trump as just a symptom of a much bigger problem - a big ***** pimple for sure - but not the underlying disease.

 

Yes, the Tea Party caucus had become so ideologically rabid at that time, that they thought they could bend the entire government to their agenda on the budget. It got so bad that the Republicans had to abandon the Hastert Rule.

The Tea Party brought themselves to ineffectiveness, by their own overreach; Trump's election merely finished them off as a political force. Trump campaigned on populism, promised massive new spending, but his popularity amongst Republicans was so great that all the teeth went out of the Tea Party agenda. The real agenda of that caucus was actually just to politically thwart everything the first Black President did; so once Obama was gone they had no real rationale, anymore. Then again, with the Dems in the WH they probably will suddenly rediscover their concern with the budget and placing a check on the President. Hypocrites (obviously)

It seems to me like you're a lot more obsessed with race than I am. I am simply recognizing race as the historical force that it is; and you are just falling over yourself desperately trying to deny it. Exactly why, is your problem.

LOL, it seems to me that in your imagining, a White person only qualifies as a racist, if they're wearing a white hood. Racism is widely understood today to be a much more expansive and subtle phenomenon than that. Much of the racism that persists is subconscious and structural - but that makes its effects all the more pervasive and pernicious. But at all events, the rise of American Fascism to political power under Trump has rallied the blatantly invidious racism that was on display back during the Civil Rights era. That you are in denial about all this is really just a case of Thou Doth Protest.

Really this is a topic for its own thread.

It's "Reparations." (Is English your first language?) Again, this is a topic for its own thread.

Nobody did... it's simply an organic change of the culture itself. The whole fight is taking place in the public square, in spaces such as the one we're in here, as much as the Supreme Court or Congress.

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You have an insight, there. The GOP was so strong and influential in national politics, from 1980 - 2008, because they had the public perception of having the moral high ground. They have steadily lost it to liberal Democrats, though. And as culture goes so does politics. You may have abandoned Liberalism (I doubt that you were ever a sincere Liberal, things like Authoritarian beliefs tend to be rooted at the level of individual personality), but you are simply at war with the Future.

Here's where you self-delusion is most pronounced. "The Swamp" is quite real - it is the pay-to-play dynamic of money in politics, the role of Lobbyists in Washington as essentially a fourth branch of government. It's a serious problem, it undergirds oligarchic power in the government. But it was always naive beyond belief that TRUMP - who BOASTED of buying politicians(!!) was EVER going to do anything about THAT. Anyone who was ever serious about doing something about the Swamp, would have voted for BERNIE SANDERS, not for a Grifter Supreme like Trump. Trump, who not only did ZERO about the Swamp, but who brought his own people to town to make bank on it! This is a topic that is only tangentially related to race, yet even here you're complaining about Left Identity-politics. Makes me think that of the two of us, it's not me who's obsessed with race.

 

People who claim we just had a free and fair election under president Trump also claim that he is a fascist. Somehow these two mutually exclusive ideas live peacefully and comfortably in liberal heads. LOL

 

No evidence? Dude. There are 100s of hours of videos of BLM and Antifa Rioting. They took over a few blocks of a city. A literal violent overthrow of a section of a city, setting up their own security, boundaries, “laws”. Have you been asleep the past 7 months?

 

It depends on their country's constitution, how easy or hard it is to gain full dictatorship.

Trump's comrade Pootin encountered no resistance as he declared himself as president for his entire lifetime. It's not that easy for Trump in America.

Adolph Trump still needs many small steps to undermine American democracy. A second term would probably be enough for that. The American people did well not to give him a 2nd term!

 

The political divide is serious enough to spark talk of secession. The real divide though is not red state - blue state; the real divide is rural - urban. It's nonsense to suggest that rural America can "secede" from the cities.

As far as this goes, you have got to be kidding. "Lose our agricultural base"? That's like saying "lose our ocean borders," basically it's physically impossible.

 

What a load of Malarkey. Racism is the belief that some one is inferior or superior based upon skin color alone. Beyond that and your just hunting reason to get your panties in a bunch. Rational people long ago quit worrying about the color of the wrapping paper on the out side of the gift.

 

You think industrial cities could supplant the massive loss of farming if Southerners were to revisit secession wit large? (Also, nice by attacking my citizenship, real classy of you.) The cities are congested, even by the people who LIVE there! If we had to convert the Northern-Mid Atlantic states into one of agricultural strength, it would take a lot of upheaval.

It's this arrogance, and not realizing what the South brings that is another reason for the political cultural divide. Also, it's the same reason we need to reform the electoral college. If you're Kansas, what happens in the US is utterly irrelevant. Same thing for Missouri, and a bunch of other Northwestern States as well.

That's why even though they're solidly, solidly Republican they have no real political power in the large scheme of things, so long as California and New York exist. Again, that's not healthy and it will lead to a new class struggle, separate from the one you're on about.

Why should two coastal states determine the fate of the country? If anyone can argue suppression, it would be conservatives as Texas( 38 ) is a FAR cry from California. Liberals complained about the EC in 2016 due to losing a couple of Rust Belt states(though on the East coast, the so-called blue wall.)

In reality, conservatives hadn't won there(until 2016) since 1980. As Liberals bragged, they were on the "wrong side of history"(meaning suppression)There's only so long one is going to merely be content to be on that side.

The past civil war was on slavery, the next one will be on liberal/northern arrogance and disposition towards their lesser neighbors.

 

This whole idea of secession is utter nonsense and merely the result of your paranoic view of what the dems want for the country; nobody wants to be owned by China and it's not going to happen. Granted, the dems want the country to adopt a more liberal and more social (NOT SOCIALIST!) policy.
Making the average American a bit better off materially and a bit safer in terms of medical support through a slightly larger contribution of the very wealthy shouldn't appear to be such a scarecrow for rural America, should it?

 

THANK YOU. I think you address most of my questions about your argument in this one, clear & cohesive paragraph. I haven't read the entire thread, so forgive me if all these elements are scattered elsewhere, already. Still, this is the most compelling version of your argument that I've read, thus far. As you are, no doubt, aware, there are some who would disagree with your definition of Fascism. My purpose, however, was not directed towards the goal of semantic bickering but, rather, only to understanding precisely your meaning.

By your defining, government-implemented, racial favoritism is fascism; and there is no contesting that this has always been a part of our history. I would expect, nonetheless, that you might draw some dividing line on the spectrum between slavery, Apartheid, & Jim Crow laws (at the higher end), and the existence of any racial disparities whatsoever (at the low one), beneath which you would not employ the fascist label; because, using the absolute standard, one might be hard-pressed to name any nation that isn't fascist. Specifying this would also inoculate your argument against charges of partisan motivation, arbitrariness, or hypocrisy. Likewise, I wonder if you believe any qualifications could be applied to the measures used to administer, or enforce, these policies of inequality.

It will have to wait, for me to address any of the other parts of your reply (not quoted here) but, let it suffice, for now, for me to say that I thought the actions you cited were much more a criticism of either particular Republicans, or of that Party on the whole, than could be said to be a proof of, "fascism." Nevertheless, I appreciate all the effort you've put into answering my queries. I hope, when you chose this topic, you were anticipating all the typing, & thinking, you were getting yourself in for. Assuming you're up for the new gauntlet I threw down in this reply, I curiously await your reply. You may expect that I, too, will keep in touch.

 

The current demonization of the other side might become less strident in a few months though. It's mostly due to the despicable nature of Trump's personnality, as pointed out by Patricio Da Silva and boasted by Trump himself when he says he could kill someone in broad daylight on 5th Avenue and his fans would still support him (he could have added "enthousiastically")!
This greatly contributed to the motivation of his opponents to vote for Biden.

 

"Nobody wants to be owned by China, but large corporations have sold their shares over in China, have built businesses in China and oh by the way, we have a trade deficit with them." It doesn't matter what somebody says, it matters what they do. If they don't want to be accused of being sellouts to the Chinese, then they shouldn't sell America out to them.

They are not being criticized, contrary to the OP because of what they say, or what they look like. They are being criticized because they spent the last 50 years gradually, and then ramping up the selling out of the United States to the highest bidder. So badly that even Warren Buffett was screaming about it.

Here's the real truth: If you blame something on racism, it's easy to look the other way. It's a million times easier for Liberals to blame racism then it is to look inside of their party. They bemoan the existence of a Fascist/Nationalist/Imperial movement in the United States, but they don't care to see why.

Because to see why, is to underscore their failures on EVERYTHING. They failed "social rights", they failed the economy. They failed trade. They failed government, in of itself. Can we attribute so much as a single success to the Democratic Party? They still hang onto the "New Deal". That was....1952!

As a party, they are worthless. Complete garbage. Even worse than the GOP, because at least the GOP can argue "sameness". With the Democrats, you just get the same failed social programs and we bemoan it and replace, and rinse and repeat.

 

@garyd

Now that I have a better understanding of Modus Ponens' argument, I have to amend my reply to you. It turns out not to be mostly a difference in degree between your two assessments. I had said that on the condition that you would concede Trump's nationalist nature (which didn't seem a stretch) and that the racist issue (which hadn't been addressed in either of our posts) was not integral to the fascist charge. But it turns out that it Modus's was an equation of: authoritarian + racist = fascist. Therefore, yours & Modus's takes are clearly different perspectives. His, of course, is the more difficult to both prove, and define. Yours (as laid out in your reply)-- that Trump is not another Hitler...or even Franco, although he has manifested some anti-democratic behavior-- is certainly the easier to make, & I would, at present, have no real argument with it.

 

You are preaching to the choir ... all the best arguments against Trump come from me .. the above is not one of them - I give specific examples of massive Trump blunders - and can detail them out if you desire.

There is a bigger problem here - that Trump is a symptom of. You think America just woke up one morning and decided - "Gosh" Lets elect a reality TV Show Clown.

Do ya ?

 

- ?? The South is not even the breadbasket in the United States. That's the Midwest - Indiana to Kansas, and North from Nebraska and Iowa to the upper Great Lakes. But let's say all the red states seceded. Probably California alone could feed the blue states. I mean, do you have any idea how productive modern farming is? That aside, techniques of urban farming - particularly vertical farming is specially-built towers - could be a way for cities become self-sufficient in food. And moreover, given the size of the global food trade, the blue states could probably import all the food that they needed, if necessary. Meanwhile the rural areas of the country would have lost their first and most important buyer of their product.

- ?? You are misinformed. The electoral college systematically benefits conservatives - that is well established.

It's quite clear that the Culture War is significantly animated by the Deplorables' class Ressentiment. But I don't know what to say. You choose as your tribune a world-class imbecile like Trump, impose him on the rest of us, and he goes on to demonstrate for 4 years straight that he is as stupid as he is evil. The whole time, you daily attest the slavish devotion that he mocked you for, in his 5th Ave. comment. How can we possibly have any respect for you, after that?? Please, enlighten me.

 

Remember .. they think it won't apply to them. The disconnect is profound.