02-07-2017, 01:28 PM
(02-07-2017, 12:57 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: And in this guy's case he has been ranting about incipient fascism at least as long as I have been here. It doesn't have anything to do with Trump.
It had nothing to do with Donald Trump. I got paranoid about Karl Rove exercising unconstitutional power through the flawed rule of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
This is a Crisis Era, and institutions always face severe danger in Crisis Eras as in no other times. As the Crisis of 1860 loomed, the slave-holding interests were on the brink of taking over the American political order completely. There was the Business Plot that failed, and of course Axis aggression intent on subjugating the USA in whole or part in the Crisis of 1940.
Opportunists like Donald Trump can exploit ethnic and religious resentments among people who feel themselves left behind during economic change. First I laughed at him. Then I thought that he could not win. Now I dread him. I can imagine an America best described as a "Christian and Corporate State" in which the mandated ethos for the common man is to suffer for the Master Class so that one can get Pie in the Sky When You Die. The earthly demands will intensify, the earthly punishments will get more severe, and the rewards for toil will be slighter. Such is a raw deal in the extreme.
If one dislikes this one must resist it just to preserve some chance of maintaining or regaining some dignity.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.