"This Is America"

 

An extended quote from Paul Campos at LGM:

Here’s the lede of the ABC News story reporting on the fact that Donald Trump’s campaign posted Nazi rhetoric on his campaign web site yesterday:

"Former President Donald Trump on Monday posted a video on his social media platform that uses a language that appears to mirror that of Nazi Germany, suggesting there will be a “Unified Reich” if he wins the 2024 election."

No, it doesn’t APPEAR to mirror Nazi rhetoric, it SIMPLY DOES mirror Nazi rhetoric. Nobody else in American political history has gotten this consistently sanitizing treatment, where the candidate or elected official says something explicitly, right out in the open, and the media report it in the most equivocal way possible.

And they’ve been doing it now for nine years, including an entire presidency, and an attempted coup, and the shambolic nightmare of the Biden administration’s attempts to sort of maybe prosecute Trump for trying to overthrow the government, again right out in the open, as if that had to be “investigated” for a couple of years before we could figure out who exactly was behind the events of January 6, 2021.

Indeed, Merrick Garland’s slow-walking of the legal proceedings against Trump himself following the autogolpe is part and parcel of the same cultural phenomena that produce things like that ABC News headline.

The message in both cases is, “We’re not that kind of country.” Thus Donald Trump only appears to be a fascist, because he’s not really a fascist, because if he were really a fascist that would mean that one of the nation’s two major parties has gone fascist, which means America is on the verge of going fascist, which is impossible, because this is America, and we’re not that kind of country. And Trump only appeared to try to overthrow the government by staying in power after losing an election, because come on there’s not even a word in American for that, you have to use a Spanish word, because that’s what happens in banana republics, not in America.

“American exceptionalism” is simply denial...

Yes, we are that kind of country, it turns out.  Forty to 50 percent of the country (if you believe the polls at this moment) are ready to return the now openly fascistic Malignant Loser to office.  It doesn't much matter if those voters are in full support of that fascism (we believe a solid percentage are), or whether they're simply low- information amnesiacs (i.e., morons) who don't perform a basic task of citizenship in a democracy (i.e., being informed).  They'll march right into the voting booth and cast their ballot for the single most corrupt, incompetent, deranged, dangerous person ever to be elected President.

And, while this is happening, many of the "institutionalists" (i.e., the "non-alarmists") among us will continue to whistle past the graveyard of American freedom and democracy, because to do otherwise would be to admit that we are that kind of country.  Sic transit gloria, America.

(Photo:  Trump in Mobile, Alabama, Dec. 17, 2016 / Jim Watson, Getty Images)