What Does Fascism Look Like?

Learn to Read Week? Our Post-Literate POTUS

“Fascism is not a new threat, but rather a permanent temptation.”

 – Jason Stanly, How Fascism Works

 “I have held off using the f word for three and a half years, but there is no longer any honest alternative. Trump is a fascist, and he is promoting fascism in America.”

- Robert Reich

 “Yet another election (Georgia) has been marred by dysfunction and disenfranchisement. We have to break our country's vicious cycle of voter suppression once and for all.”

- Elizabeth Warren

 Trump has proved himself to be on the wrong side of history, once again. You would think that a man this ignorant of history would at least pick the correct side once in a while, like tossing a coin. He comes up the loser with tails every single time. What else would you expect of a president who didn’t even win his own election to office?

 He only seems willing to serve his base. Base. One meaning of that word is “lacking or indicating the lack of higher qualities of mind or spirit.” That seems to be about right. In an earlier post I mentioned how it is impossible to underestimate Trump. Just look back on the week since I wrote that and see how many times he has erred on the side of complete stupidity. The most recent is his criticism over renaming U.S. military bases in the south which have the names of Confederate generals.

 “I believe he genuinely does not realize that Generals Bragg, Hood, and Benning all commanded forces that fought *against* troops of the United States Army. (You can argue about whether these should be re-named. But he seems to think they are part of the ‘History of Winning’.)”

- James Fallows

What is the alternative to dismantling these landmarks in honor of men who were hired to maintain the slavery status quo? Another 150 years of children growing up in the south being taught the lie that the Confederate Army’s cause was noble? I wish that I had a penny for every southerner who’s rhapsodized over the glorious Confederacy and how its army was the David in the Civil War, or how the war, “wad’nt bout slavery, the war was bout states’ rights,” or some other even less articulate version of this hateful lie

The glorification of these slave traders has contaminated the minds of generations of southerners. If this means going all the way to the founding fathers who were slave holders and dragging them down, then so be it. The foundation of a great nation needs to be built not on mythology, but on the truth.

Official response from CNN General Counsel to Team Trump‘s letter demanding CNN apologize for a poll that shows Joe Biden leading (or how to use a lot of polite words to say "Fuck off!"):

 

To my knowledge, this is the first time in its 40 year history that CNN had been threatened with legal action because an American politician or campaign did not like CNN’s polling results.

To the extent we have received legal threats from political leaders in the past, they have typically come from countries like Venezuela or other regimes where there is little or no respect for a free and independent media.

Your letter is factually and legally baseless. It is yet another bad faith attempt by the campaign to threaten litigation to muzzle speech it does not want voters to read or hear. Your allegations and demands are rejected in their entirety.