Americans supporting a fascist for president? This is who Trump is.
After the former president described American citizens as “the enemy within,” Glenn Youngkin reveals his own complicity.
www.theatlantic.com
Over the past week, Donald Trump has been on a fascist romp. At rallies in
Colorado and California, he amped up his usual rants, and added a rancid grace note by
suggesting that a woman heckler should “get the hell knocked out of her” by her mother after she gets back home. But on Sunday morning, he outdid himself in an interview on
Fox News, by saying that “the enemy within”—Americans he described as “radical left lunatics,” including Representative Adam Schiff of California, whom he mentioned by name—are more dangerous than Russia or China, and could be “very easily handled” by the National Guard or the U.S. military.
This wasn’t the first time Trump suggested using America’s armed forces against its own people: As president, he thought of the military
as his personal guard and regularly fantasized about commanding “his generals” to crush dissent, which is one reason former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley reportedly
told Bob Woodward that he sees Trump as “fascist to his core.”
The term
fascism has been so
overused as a denunciation that many people have understandably tuned it out. But every American should be shocked to hear a presidential nominee say that other Americans (including a sitting member of Congress) are more dangerous than two nations pointing hundreds of nuclear warheads at America’s cities. During the Cold War, conservative members of the GOP would likely have labeled anyone saying such things as a “comsymp,” a fellow traveler, or even a traitor. Indeed, one might expect that other Republicans would be horrified to hear such hatred directed at their fellow citizens and such comfort given to the nation’s enemies.
Pretty to think so. But today’s Republican leaders are cowards, and some are even worse: They are complicit, as Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin proved today in
an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper. At least cowards run away. The GOP elected officials who cross the street against the light just to get away from the reporters are at least showing a tiny, molecular awareness of shame. Youngkin, however, smiled and dissembled and excused Trump’s hideousness with a kind of folksy shamelessness that made cowardice seem noble by comparison.
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It’s not like fascist-loving Americans don’t exist. But enough to elect a fascist president?
anightatthegarden.com
This is all happening where, for generations, we’ve been told “it can’t happen here”. But, yes, it can. The question is, will it? Hope not, but these things can, and do happen, because people seldom realize what is happening WHILE it’s actually happening. And Trump is making it quite clear enough who and what he is. How can it not be highly troubling seeing millions of Americans blind to something as obvious as MAGA being a fascistic movement?
www.nbcnews.com
