Sardines
Well-Known Member
Trump is an authoritarian fascist. It is not 1936. Hamas is not a fascist dictatorial regime.
We look to past examples of nations descending into fascism and Hitler's Germany is the best example. It doesn't mean that every characteristic of Hitler's regime MUST exist in order for a fascist movement to be happening. Only an idiot would think that.
We look to past examples of nations descending into fascism and Hitler's Germany is the best example. It doesn't mean that every characteristic of Hitler's regime MUST exist in order for a fascist movement to be happening. Only an idiot would think that.
fishonjazz
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But Sardines, trump doesn't even have a mustache!
Sardines
Well-Known Member
How could I have missed that! Trump is obviously a champion of democracy! Hitler wasn't even a fat golf obsessed slob. It's so obvious now that I think about it.
Red
Well-Known Member
What is particularly galling, about Republican identification of the No Kings protests as being led by Americans who “hate America”, is that it will actually be a gathering of citizens who LOVE America. Identifying good citizens as “hating America” is a woefully transparent effort to suggest American citizens should not be allowed to protest the actions of their government. It’s not going to be an American “hate fest”. It’s a gathering of American citizens deeply concerned by the actions of a chief executive who ignores the distribution of power among the 3 branches of our federal government, assuming power not granted to the executive branch by the Constitution.
The No Kings rally will be attended by Americans concerned by the unconstitutional actions of a president who claims Article 2 somehow grants him the power to do anything he wants. The No Kings rallies will be attended by Americans deeply concerned by the actions of an authoritarian hell bent on turning the executive branch into a Trump crime family enterprise. A crime enterprise that has earned some $3 billion, so far, for the Trump family alone, since Trump began his second term. And truly, if you’re not an oligarch, Trump might as well tell you to pound salt, the price of groceries is your problem.
“No Kings”is about LOVE for the American experiment. “No Kings” is a reflection of the willingness millions of us have, to show just how much we love our country. Just how much we are willing to stand as one and say NO to absolute power in the hands of one man. NO to absolute power in the hands of an amoral individual who would make a United States known worldwide for its cruelty. Those who love this nation will not stand by and say nothing to such a terrible effort to transform us from being seen as “a good and decent people” to a nation known for cruelty.
The Republicans are literally calling for a HATE FEST toward any, and all, Americans who do not believe Donald Trump is the answer to all our problems. If you do not agree that “Trump is always right, and can never be wrong”, then you are only worthy of receiving hatred from those Americans who have granted to Trump “perfect knowledge”.
Because we LOVE our nation, we must be identified as our nation’s most dangerous enemy. And yet, we are actually representative of the VERY BEST of America. Republicans are once again projecting their own hatred of a multicultural democracy onto those unafraid of a multicultural democracy. When dissent is labeled as “hatred of America”, you should not need to be a constitutional scholar to recognize we have gone off the rails.
We need to do more. Much more:
www.theatlantic.com
For the United States, the question of the decade is: Why hasn’t a resistance movement materialized here? The second Trump administration has flouted court decisions in a third of all rulings against it, according to The Washington Post. It operates as a national extortion racket, using federal power to control the inner workings of universities, law firms, and corporations. It has thoroughly politicized the Justice Department, launching a series of partisan investigations against its political foes. It has turned ICE into a massive paramilitary organization with apparently unconstrained powers. It has treated the Constitution with disdain, assaulted democratic norms and diminished democratic freedoms, and put military vehicles and soldiers on the streets of the capital. It embraces the optics of fascism, and flaunts its autocratic aspirations.
I am not one of those who believe that Donald Trump has already turned America into a dictatorship. Yet the crossing-over from freedom into authoritarianism may be marked not by a single dramatic event but by the slow corrosion of our ruling institutions—and that corrosion is well under way. For 250 years, the essence of America’s democratic system, drawing on thinkers going back to Cicero and Cato, has been that no one is above the law. Public officials’ first duty is to put the law before the satisfaction of their own selfish impulses. That concept is alien to Trump.
Although Trump’s actions across these various spheres may seem like separate policies, they are part of one project: creating a savage war of all against all and then using the presidency to profit and gain power from it. Trumpism can also be seen as a multipronged effort to amputate the higher elements of the human spirit—learning, compassion, science, the pursuit of justice—and supplant those virtues with greed, retribution, ego, appetite. Trumpism is an attempt to make the world a playground for the rich and ruthless, so it seeks to dissolve the sinews of moral and legal restraint that make civilization decent.
If you think Trumpism will simply end in three years, you are naive. Left unopposed, global populism of the sort Trumpism represents could dominate for a generation. This could be the rest of our lives, and our children’s, too.
So why are we doing so little? Are we just going to stand in passive witness to the degradation of our democracy?
By this past spring, Trump’s actions had become so egregious that I concluded that the time for a mass civic uprising had arrived. On April 17, I published a column in The New York Times arguing that all sectors of America needed to band together to create an interconnected resistance coalition.
THIS:
Trumpism, like populism, is more than a set of policies—it’s a culture. Trump offers people a sense of belonging, an identity, status, self-respect, and a comprehensive political ethic. Populists are not trying to pass this or that law; they are altering the climate of the age. And Democrats think they can fight that by offering some tax credits?
To beat a social movement, you must build a counter social movement. And to do that, you need a different narrative about where we are and where we should be heading, a different set of values dictating what is admirable and what is disgraceful. If we fail to build such a movement, authoritarian strongmen around the globe will dominate indefinitely.
Will enough Americans rise up to reverse the tide of populist authoritarianism? The Filipinos did it under Marcos. One morning the autocrats woke up and were no longer in control; the marchers were. That needs to happen here.
The No Kings rally will be attended by Americans concerned by the unconstitutional actions of a president who claims Article 2 somehow grants him the power to do anything he wants. The No Kings rallies will be attended by Americans deeply concerned by the actions of an authoritarian hell bent on turning the executive branch into a Trump crime family enterprise. A crime enterprise that has earned some $3 billion, so far, for the Trump family alone, since Trump began his second term. And truly, if you’re not an oligarch, Trump might as well tell you to pound salt, the price of groceries is your problem.
“No Kings”is about LOVE for the American experiment. “No Kings” is a reflection of the willingness millions of us have, to show just how much we love our country. Just how much we are willing to stand as one and say NO to absolute power in the hands of one man. NO to absolute power in the hands of an amoral individual who would make a United States known worldwide for its cruelty. Those who love this nation will not stand by and say nothing to such a terrible effort to transform us from being seen as “a good and decent people” to a nation known for cruelty.
The Republicans are literally calling for a HATE FEST toward any, and all, Americans who do not believe Donald Trump is the answer to all our problems. If you do not agree that “Trump is always right, and can never be wrong”, then you are only worthy of receiving hatred from those Americans who have granted to Trump “perfect knowledge”.
Because we LOVE our nation, we must be identified as our nation’s most dangerous enemy. And yet, we are actually representative of the VERY BEST of America. Republicans are once again projecting their own hatred of a multicultural democracy onto those unafraid of a multicultural democracy. When dissent is labeled as “hatred of America”, you should not need to be a constitutional scholar to recognize we have gone off the rails.
We need to do more. Much more:
America Needs a Mass Movement—Now
Without one, America may sink into autocracy for decades.
www.theatlantic.com
For the United States, the question of the decade is: Why hasn’t a resistance movement materialized here? The second Trump administration has flouted court decisions in a third of all rulings against it, according to The Washington Post. It operates as a national extortion racket, using federal power to control the inner workings of universities, law firms, and corporations. It has thoroughly politicized the Justice Department, launching a series of partisan investigations against its political foes. It has turned ICE into a massive paramilitary organization with apparently unconstrained powers. It has treated the Constitution with disdain, assaulted democratic norms and diminished democratic freedoms, and put military vehicles and soldiers on the streets of the capital. It embraces the optics of fascism, and flaunts its autocratic aspirations.
I am not one of those who believe that Donald Trump has already turned America into a dictatorship. Yet the crossing-over from freedom into authoritarianism may be marked not by a single dramatic event but by the slow corrosion of our ruling institutions—and that corrosion is well under way. For 250 years, the essence of America’s democratic system, drawing on thinkers going back to Cicero and Cato, has been that no one is above the law. Public officials’ first duty is to put the law before the satisfaction of their own selfish impulses. That concept is alien to Trump.
Although Trump’s actions across these various spheres may seem like separate policies, they are part of one project: creating a savage war of all against all and then using the presidency to profit and gain power from it. Trumpism can also be seen as a multipronged effort to amputate the higher elements of the human spirit—learning, compassion, science, the pursuit of justice—and supplant those virtues with greed, retribution, ego, appetite. Trumpism is an attempt to make the world a playground for the rich and ruthless, so it seeks to dissolve the sinews of moral and legal restraint that make civilization decent.
If you think Trumpism will simply end in three years, you are naive. Left unopposed, global populism of the sort Trumpism represents could dominate for a generation. This could be the rest of our lives, and our children’s, too.
So why are we doing so little? Are we just going to stand in passive witness to the degradation of our democracy?
By this past spring, Trump’s actions had become so egregious that I concluded that the time for a mass civic uprising had arrived. On April 17, I published a column in The New York Times arguing that all sectors of America needed to band together to create an interconnected resistance coalition.
THIS:
Trumpism, like populism, is more than a set of policies—it’s a culture. Trump offers people a sense of belonging, an identity, status, self-respect, and a comprehensive political ethic. Populists are not trying to pass this or that law; they are altering the climate of the age. And Democrats think they can fight that by offering some tax credits?
To beat a social movement, you must build a counter social movement. And to do that, you need a different narrative about where we are and where we should be heading, a different set of values dictating what is admirable and what is disgraceful. If we fail to build such a movement, authoritarian strongmen around the globe will dominate indefinitely.
Will enough Americans rise up to reverse the tide of populist authoritarianism? The Filipinos did it under Marcos. One morning the autocrats woke up and were no longer in control; the marchers were. That needs to happen here.
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