QOTD: "Performing Fascism"

"A power grab is always a performance of sorts. It begins with a claim to power, and if the claim is accepted—if the performance is believed—it takes hold. Much as he played a real-estate tycoon in the most crude and reductive way, Trump is now performing his idea of power as he imagines it. In his intuition, power is autocratic; it affirms the superiority of one nation and one race; it asserts total domination; and it mercilessly suppresses all opposition. Whether or not he is capable of grasping the concept, Trump is performing fascism." Writer Masha Gessen in The New Yorker, writing about the events of this week on the streets of Washington, DC and beyond.

Neo-fascist demagogue Donald "Mango Mussolini" Trump's threat to deploy active U.S. military forces to put down peaceful demonstrations (like the kind we saw Monday, prior to his disgraceful photo op at St. John's church in Washington) is the "claim to power" that Gessen notes. If we as a nation accept that claim, we're giving a mentally unfit demagogue the power of a fascist dictator.