The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(05-30-2020, 02:22 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(05-29-2020, 05:48 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(05-29-2020, 12:03 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(05-28-2020, 11:17 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(05-28-2020, 01:01 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: From CNN, Trump is set to announce an executive order against social media companies

Sounds like some social media companies are adding fact checks to Trump's lies, so this is an attempt at using the government to establish political censorship.  He ought to have lots of legal trouble with this one.

Except that large gatherings of any kind are as unsafe as if there were a secret police agency watching and recording everything, and people seem to disappear without a trace...  except that the danger is of a destructive, insidious, and highly-communicable virus... people would be protesting this. I would, even if we had a Stasi, KGB, or Mississippi Sovereignty Commission snooping around.

We need to take this President down in November, and before that we need to gut his authority in every way possible. I think of a slogan that fits this time well:

ABORT FASCISM NOW!

Yes, Donald Trump really is a fascist pig. He made the mistake of trying to purge the GOP before shutting down the Democrats, which is the one thing that he got completely wrong in his attempt to establish a dictatorship.

We already aborted fascism a long time ago. I hope you aren't dumb enough to go for it thinking it's socialism instead. I wouldn't put it passed you at this point.

KKK and Nazi fascists keep surfacing in America. Most of them are tiny cults with their own Fuehrers and Imperial Wizards...

I really hate describing the president as a fascist, but he fits too many fascist characteristics.

Are they out burning down and looting portions of American cities and destroying police precincts these days? I suggest that you pull your head out of your ass and wake up.

Completely irrelevant. Rioters are not exercising any rights. They deserve suppression by law enforcement. 

So what do I see as warning signs of fascism in Donald Trump? Using "/" as the best imitation of a fascist salute (right arm for Mussolini and Hitler; left arm for the Klan) with none for no fascist tendency and four for full-blown:

the 2016 article, whence i draw material for analysis Read it yourself! 

1. Hyper-nationalism //  
2. Militarism //
3. Glorification of violence / (but he has gotten worse since 2016, and I would now put it at ///)
4. Fetishization of youth (he doesn't, and that is the one fascist thing that he could never do)
5. Fetishization of masculinity ////
6. Leadership cult ////
7. Offering a return to a "golden age' since lost ////
8. Identification by opposition (of pariahs) ///
9. Mass mobilization //
10. Hierarchy and a tendency to purge / (he has gotten worse, so I would put it at //) 
11. Theatricality /// 

Aside from not even trying to appeal to youth, he is deep into fascistic tendencies. He is not Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Salazar, Pavelic, or Quisling... 

OK... so how does the late George Herbert Walker Bush fit in? 

1. Hyper-nationalism /  
2. Militarism /
3. Glorification of violence
4. Fetishization of youth (he doesn't)
5. Fetishization of masculinity
6. Leadership cult 
7. Offering a return to a "golden age' since lost /
8. Identification by opposition (of pariahs) /
9. Mass mobilization /
10. Hierarchy and a tendency to purge
11. Theatricality   

Donald Trump is not a conservative. The elder Bush was, cautious enough not to gloat as Commie regimes collapsed in central and Balkan Europe or as the Soviet Union disintegrated. True, Norieqa had to be taken down for threatening Americans and his involvement in drug trafficking...and of course Saddam Hussein the aggression by Saddam Hussein against Kuwait had to be rebuked. 

On militarism... America even at its gentlest has always kept a mailed fist available in the event of someone shaking the world order to the detriment of America and Americans. At that, the elder Bush and Barack Obama are much the same. Any Great Power will show some nationalism. I believe that the elder Bush believed that America was then the best that it had ever been but could improve  incrementally. If there is a Leadership Cult in America it has its basis in Washington and Lincoln... to the extent that FDR considered Lincoln the model of how to lead a country in apocalyptic war. I don;t have any problem with Washington and Lincoln... FDR chose well, don't you think? 

Mobilization has always been possible in America on an ad hoc basis, with Americans seeing fit to turn swords into plowshares as the danger of war abates. Such is part of the transition from 4T to 1T, with disciplined soldiers becoming disciplined  workers in every field from academia to manufacturing. The elder Bush seems rather mild at this. 

Did you see the elder Bush ridicule his political opponents?  Maybe fringe characters like Kluxers, neo-Nazis, and Marxist-Leninists whom everyone despises.  Such people are fair game due to their contempt for democratic norms and solidarity across lines of class, faith, and ethnicity. 

If conservatives are near-opposites of fascists, the diametric opposite of a fascist is a liberal. Now consider the man whom Trump most despises. Obama may have had more appeal to youth, but there is no "Obama Youth League" and never will be.