'Fascism' might be too strong. But this doesn't feel like a healthy democracy.

[marmar]

‘Fascism’ might be too strong. But this doesn’t feel like a healthy democracy.
By Jeffrey C. Billman


(Detroit Metro Times) Despite the recent proliferation of memes, the early 20th-century novelist Sinclair Lewis probably never said, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

But he would have endorsed the sentiment.

Watching Hitler's rise to power in Europe while the antisemitic Father Charles Coughlin and the swaggering, dictatorial populist Louisiana Senator Huey "The Kingfish" Long ascended in the U.S., Lewis cobbled together a dystopian near-future for his novel It Can't Happen Here, which envisioned a Kingfish-like politician winning the presidency on promises to lift up the Forgotten Men — the white working class — and installing a totalitarian regime wrapped in Americana, including a Gestapo-type force called the Minute Men.

.....(snip).....

Amid the constant chaos of the Trump administration — the Mueller probe, the Twitter bellicosity, the impeachment and Trump's recriminations — we became inured to these encroachments on the rule of law and numb to statements and deeds that would've generated weeks of outrage in any prior administration but barely register now. (The president has been relentlessly pushing a baseless conspiracy theory that a media critic is a murderer, and it's little more than background noise.)

Throughout history, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have written, authoritarians try to do three things: capture the referees, sideline key players, and change the rules. Trump has done all three: He's tried to capture the referees by purging his administration of the disloyal, most recently inspectors general who conducted investigations he didn't like. He's sought to sideline key players by intimidating the media, including by bullying the Post Office to charge Amazon more because he has a grudge against the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post. And he's tried to change the rules by claiming that efforts to expand voter access are rigged against him and having Attorney General William Barr game the justice system for his allies. ................(more)

https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/the-f-word-it-can-happen-here/Content?oid=24699144

[captain queeg]

1. He's certainly following the playbook nt

[Mike 03]

2. We should treat this administration as fully fascist and act accordingly because

by the time a society turns fascist it's too late. Ask the Germans who opposed Nazi-ism in the 1930s. Many of the things that Trump has accomplished over the last three years didn't seem possible in the US. He rendered an entire branch of government useless, turned the Supreme Court into a rubber stamp and replaced dozens of qualified employees in vital positions with unqualified loyalists.

[Chainfire]

3. Fascism may indeed be too strong...today

However, I think that we have morphed from a Representative Democracy to Corporatocracy since the Reagan years. The small step from Corporatocracy to Fascism is a matter of degree of the repressive actions of the government. It appears that Trump is doing his best to accelerate the move. The continuing militarization of the police forces is a big warning sign.

[beachbumbob]

4. not too strong a word, look at FED Reserve actions saving the investor class

look at sacking of rules, regulations and oversight.

Fascism is what it is and we shouldn;t sugar coat it.

[Newest Reality]

5. You bet.

There are so many signs and thresholds we are crossing that I think a debate about it would indicate it is time to call it what it is for the purpose of opposing it before it goes any farther.

Fascism!