06-09-2016, 11:43 AM
(06-09-2016, 10:16 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:(06-08-2016, 06:29 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Donald Trump is a nasty person and a horrible right-wing politician, but that is not enough to make him a fascist. he has yet to show contempt for the elected legislature; he does not promise a grand new order. Will he offend liberal sensibilities if elected? Sure -- and I think as badly as Maine Governor Paul LePage.
He has yet to establish paramilitary militias whose blind obedience will allow them to do any act of violence.
He does seem to be in the process of recruiting them, or at least inviting or suggesting them to establish such a militia.
On the whole he does seem to promise a "flexible" approach to working with congress now. If he wins, though, he won't have to be too flexible. We can assume he'll have a congress that is right wing in that event; even perhaps a Republican Senate that will abolish the filibuster and go for the "nuclear option." Whatever the dear leader wants.
The polarization in American political life allows winners by even a bare majority to completely neglect the sensibilities of the Other Side. People get 90% of what they want or they get nothing.
So suppose that the GOP gets its trifecta of both Houses of Congress and a President who must then acquiesce to the will of the Republican Establishment because such still controls Congress and the President is with it 90% of the time. Shift tax burdens to the non-rich? Check! Eviscerate unions? Check! Give the rich breaks for hiring domestic servants? Check! Gut all laws involving the environment and workplace safety? Check! Abolish the minimum wage! Check! Privatize the Interstate Highway System? Check! Re-establish debtors' prisons? Check! Could an opposition stop it? Not once employers get the right to control the votes of their employees!
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.