Yes, it is appropriate to use the F-word

It is safe to say that if we are going to look for a fitting description of Donald Trump, fascist is it. I've been saying as much for a while now, including my last post. Trump wants to rule like a dictator and he admires fascist dictators past and present. I am old enough to remember when openly advocating for fascism would be disqualifying for any public office or even invitations to neighbors' cookouts. Those days were not perfect, but they sure seem so much better than the current era. Yet here we are.  

A lot of my peers in the blogging world and beyond are stupefied by how close this Presidential election is. I'm not. If we are going to believe the polls (and I think a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted), about half of the voters are going to choose a fascist over a true American patriot who takes her allegiance to the Constitution seriously. If we want to know who these people are, research on authoritarianism can give us a good start. I forget where I read this, but the odds are that one in four people you encounter in any given day in any given location on our aching planet is measurably authoritarian. These are folks who tend to show high levels of conventionalism (basically they are traditionalists who hate social change), authoritarian submission (they are good at following orders from authority figures they perceive as legitimate), and authoritarian aggression (at minimum they'll support vigilante and state-supported violence against those they've been taught to hate, and may even be willing participants - see January 6th). They are not persuadable. Most of our lives, we have barely known of their existence. If the wrong set of circumstances comes about, they get active and organized, and we get what we are dealing with now. So that is the core of Trump's base. The rest are some combination of business leaders who want to be richer than they already are (so they're a lost cause), disaffected voters who have suffered under four decades of neoliberal economic policy kickstarted by the Reagan administration in the 1980s and are looking for someone to blame, and a smattering of other low-information voters who have been led to believe that cheap gasoline is somehow the be-all and end-all. Many of these folks find Trump's antics amusing, which makes sense because Trump was more of an entertainer than a businessman or policymaker. These folks who are more superficially for Trump are reachable, but it is going to take years if not decades to undo the damage that has already been done to them and their communities after four decades of policies that left them with nothing. Biden tried, and got to sign some bills into law that marked our first tentative steps away from neoliberalism, but it is still too early to truly feel the effects of those laws. In other words, any dreams of the fever breaking on the GOP side are distant at best. In the meantime, the fascist dictator wannabe offers simplistic answers that "feel good" to them. As I have said before, we are now in a situation that is not sustainable for the long term, and asking my conservative friends to vote Democratic may happen as a one-off, but they won't do so indefinitely and they shouldn't have to. But they also shouldn't feel pressured to vote for the fascist dictator wannabe. How do we hit reset so that we can have a functioning democracy? Like the rest of you, I am still trying to figure that one out. I do know that the next decade or so will be turbulent, and the fascist threat won't even start to subside unless Trump is defeated. By 2028, Trump will be far to old for another run. The heirs to his gold-plated throne may be ambitious but they don't have his charisma. Trump's defeat marks the moment Trumpism finally starts to recede, and with it the fascist threat we are actually facing. But first, we have to prevent Trump from getting the keys to the White House. If we thought getting him to leave the first time was difficult, imagine what a second term would be like. It would be a living nightmare best avoided in the first place.

All that said, I am a cautious optimist. I always have been. But we do have some real problems. Here are a couple videos covering Trump's fascism - one humorous and the other considerably more serious.

 

The upshot is that Trump is not running away from fascism in the midst of new revelations that have surfaced recently, but has only doubled down and attacked those who were once part of his inner circle. He had every opportunity to disavow Hitler, to disavow Nazism, to disavow fascism, and to disavow the very dictators of other nations who are hostile to any democratic society. That's all I need to know. Trump is not fit for office. He does not respect our Constitution and he does not respect those who care about our way of life. He deserves to be swept into the dustbin of history.