Nuremberg Comes To Phoenix

They come to these American- style Nuremberg rallies for Donald "Rump" Trump to see "what's gonna happen."  That usually involves an assault on an anti- Trump protester, like one that occurred Wednesday in Phoenix:

Jack Owen, 70, a retired auto dealer and Vietnam veteran, walked behind the podium to take a look at Trump’s plane. He had come, he said, “because I read two stories in the Arizona Republic telling people not to come out — ‘Don’t spread the hate.’ Then I said, ‘Well, now I’ve got to go for sure.’ ”

Asked about punching the protester, Owen said almost casually, “Yeah, I sucker-punched the guy; the guy had a ring in his nose.”

Asked what had pushed him that far, he shrugged.

“Just a reaction — we’ve got to go now,” he said, and then he took his wife’s hand and they joined others exiting the hangar, where Trump was still speaking, his voice rising.

"Just a reaction."  Spoken like a true reactionary!

The assaults were not limited to sucker punches from septuagenarian wanna- be jackboots.  There were plenty of verbal assaults, too. The now- familiar "Motherf*cking tacos!" epithet was heard at this rally, as it or a variation has been heard at other Trump rallies.

They're not there to hear what Trump has to say, but more to bathe in the raw anger, victimhood and bigotry.  As one Trump supporter said,

“I don’t expect to hear anything I haven’t heard before,” said Tammy Edwards, 56, a medical assistant. “But it feels good to be around people who think the same as you, who are fed up.”

Hmmm.  A she's a "medical assistant."  We wouldn't want to be "helped" by Tammy if we were Hispanic or otherwise non- pure Aryan.

Does this definition of "fascism" from emeritus professor Robert Paxton set off any alarm bells?

"[Fascism is] a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

As fellow blogger Grung_e_Gene once aptly put it, "When fascism comes to America it'll be wearing a day- glo orange toupee and be yuuuge and classy."