BINGO

[Bluetus]

35. Yes, but this is about the playbook

Trump (more accurately Stephen Miller) is marching through this playbook very deliberately.

We often say things like "the cruelty is the point". And that is true, but the reason they are doing these exact 14 things is because they have worked that way for every single fascist regime.

These people are sociopaths so you don't have to beg them to choose the cruelest option at every step. Nonetheless, the playbook is the playbook and they would follow it even if they didn't enjoy the cruelty so much.

Fascism, authoritarianism, and autocracy may just be different degrees of the same thing. For example, Victor Orban does all 14, but not nearly to the degree that Trump is raging. So I might call Orban an autocrat whereas the Trump regime is 100% fascist from top to bottom.

Another way of saying this is if you take each one of the 14 characteristics and rate the Trump regime on a scale of 1-10, he probably would have scored around 90-100 by the end of his first term. As of today, I would have to rate them as at least 125 out of 140. For reference, I probably would have rated the WBush/Cheney administration about 60-75, maybe not even that high.