The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

One year ago this week, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. He entered office with a net approval rating of +5 in the FiftyPlusOne.news approval rating aggregate. Despite a tumultuous first term — which ended with the president posting his worst-ever numbers after the January 6 insurrection — voters, it seemed, were willing to give him another shot.

They are no longer willing to give him that chance. Trump sits at an -16 net job approval on average today, down from +5 on his first day in office. His 21-point drop is the worst first-year performance, in the eyes of public opinion, of any president’s first term going back to at least 1948. If you compare the last year to other second-term presidencies, Trump’s is still the worst first-year performance of any president in the modern polling, with one exception: Richard Nixon (who was consumed by Watergate and other national crises at this point in his term).

Either way, Trump is in historically bad company.

As The New York Times reported this week, Trump’s support among key groups he persuaded to vote for him in 2024 — notably, young, Black, and Latino voters — has now sunk below levels measured in the run-up to the 2020 election (which Trump lost to Joe Biden by 4.5 points in the national popular vote)... [snip]

The president has lost the most ground among the groups that put him back in the White House.  (our emphasis)

As the weeks go by, it's become harder and harder to find something "good" to begin with.  Increasingly, we've been relying on polling showing how historically unpopular the Malignant Fascist and his malevolent policies and enablers are.  That the polls consistently show this erosion of support tells us that a growing majority is rejecting the MF's toxic, un-American politics.  A would-be dictator who loses "the consent of the governed" is, in time, destined to fail.

The bad:

"... The behavior of ICE and CBP agents reminds me of the Fascist blackshirts who arrived in trucks, armed with clubs, knives, guns, and castor oil, to subjugate towns in early 1920s Italy, before Benito Mussolini declared dictatorship.

"Like the original Fascists, ICE agents want their violence to be public. They want the world to understand that anyone who challenges their authority and occupation of public space can be 'taught a lesson,' humiliated (parading their victims around in their underwear was a Fascist specialty, too) or eliminated.

"The United States has its own history of using organized public violence in neighborhoods and cities. We need only think of the role of violence in sustaining the Jim Crow South (which was a regional form of authoritarianism) and the lynchings of Black people that could happen at any time, and then the shootings of civilian protesters during the Civil Rights movement.

"Yet those around the world who watch the behavior of DHS operatives may make comparisons to military juntas abroad and other foreign regimes. Shooting protesters is standard practice where war is waged on domestic populations and even peaceful public dissent is considered a form of terrorism. People were shot for protesting in Belarus in 2020; in Turkey, anti-regime protesters have had chemical agents sprayed directly at their faces or in their mouths.

"In Iran, women were shot in the face and the eyes during the 2022-2023 protests, leaving many of them blinded. As Firouzeh Nahavandi has written, such acts “are part of a political rhetoric that is echoed throughout Iran’s long history, in which aiming for the eyes symbolically signifies stripping someone of their personal, political capital.”

"In all of these cases, state security forces are given license to kill and torture to shut down the sights most threatening to them: people showing the world through nonviolent protests that they do not fear the regime and will not lose their civic courage no matter what happens. This is the message that Minnesotans are sending to the world right now." (our emphasis)

Our fascist regime's approach to public humiliation and "manufactured cruelty" appears to be altering mug shots to falsely show arrested protesters crying. 

We take heart that resistance is growing and that Minnesotans and their Democratic leaders are fighting back against our homegrown fascists.  (Bravo to the FBI supervisor in Minneapolis who resigned after DOJ HQ told her not to investigate the Renee Good murder. Contrast that with AG Bondi extorting Minnesota.)  We need to show them in our words and actions that they're not in this alone.

The ugly:

"Days into President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, a cryptocurrency billionaire posted a video on X to his hundreds of thousands of followers. 'Please Donald Trump, I need your help,' he said, wearing a flag pin askew and seated awkwardly in an armchair. 'I am an American. … Help me come home.'

"The speaker, 46-year-old Roger Ver, was in fact no longer a U.S. citizen. Nicknamed “Bitcoin Jesus” for his early evangelism for digital currency, Ver had renounced his citizenship more than a decade earlier. At the time of his video, Ver was under criminal indictment for millions in tax evasion and living on the Spanish island of Mallorca. His top-flight legal defense team had failed around half a dozen times to persuade the Justice Department to back down. The U.S., considering him a fugitive, was seeking his extradition from Spain, and he was likely looking at prison.

"Once, prosecutors hoped to make Ver a marquee example amid concerns about widespread cryptocurrency tax evasion. They had spent eight painstaking years working the case. Just nine months after his direct-to-camera appeal, however, Ver and Trump’s new Justice Department leadership cut a remarkable deal to end his prosecution. Ver wouldn’t have to plead guilty or spend a day in prison. Instead, the government accepted a payout of $49.9 million — roughly the size of the tax bill prosecutors said he dodged in the first place — and allowed him to walk away.

"Ver was able to pull off this coup by taking advantage of a new dynamic inside of Trump’s Department of Justice. A cottage industry of lawyers, lobbyists and consultants with close ties to Trump has sprung up to help people and companies seek leniency, often by arguing they had been victims of political persecution by the Biden administration. In his first year, Trump issued pardons or clemency to dozens of people who were convicted of various forms of white-collar crime, including major donors and political allies. Investigations have been halted. Cases have been dropped. 

"Within the Justice Department, a select club of Trump’s former personal attorneys have easy access to the top appointees, some of whom also previously represented Trump. It has become a dark joke among career prosecutors to refer to these lawyers as the “Friends of Trump.”... (our emphasis)

As the Malignant Fascist's DOJ threatens blue states to knuckle under to their demands, they collaborate with the white collar billionaire criminals to make the charges or convictions go away.   In addition to being the most fascistic regime in American history, it's also the most transparently and overwhelmingly corrupt.

Trump's Directive On Anti-Fascist "Terrorism"

 

In the daily fire hose of fascism being unleashed on America, many of us may have missed an important, dangerous action taken by the Malignant Fascist yesterday.  Here's an explainer:

On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum expounding on his calls to crackdown on “antifa” and other left-leaning groups.

The memo, titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” aims to address how the administration will identify and target so-called “domestic terrorism.”

The document fails to mention that the vast majority of political violence in the U.S. is performed by right-wing actors. Instead, it focuses on incidents that it baselessly claims were committed by the left, including the killing of right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk and a recent shooting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) jail in Texas. 

The document itself doesn’t explicitly mention targeting leftists or left-leaning groups. However, it makes frequent references to “anti-fascists” and includes zero mention of right-leaning ideologies.

Part one of the memo attempts to explain, though very ambiguously, what it means to be “anti-fascist.” In defining what constitutes supposedly “antifa” beliefs, the memos lists “anti-American,” “anti-capitalist,” and “anti-Christian” views. However, it doesn’t specify whether it will target groups based on actual incidents of violence or simply for professing a certain ideology. It also describes “anti-fascists” as being “extreme” on issues of “migration, race and gender,” but doesn’t provide a definition of “extreme.”

It further states that people who are generally hostile “towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality” may be considered “antifa.” Earlier this week, the president issued an executive order designating “antifa” as part of a broader domestic terrorist network, despite having no legal basis to do so.

The second part of the memo issues directives to the Department of Justice (DOJ), the FBI, and other federal agencies regarding how they should deal with groups or individuals supporting so-called “terrorists.”

Some disturbing aspects of the memorandum are not new — including Trump’s directive for “the National Joint Terrorism Task Force and its local offices…[to] coordinate and supervise a comprehensive national strategy to investigate, prosecute, and disrupt entities and individuals engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation,” a power the government has long held.

The memo also orders the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to “take action to ensure that no tax-exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism,” and to refer “such organizations, and the employees and officers of such organizations, to the Department of Justice for investigation and possible prosecution” — echoing orders that have been issued in the past.

But the memorandum also gives the president new powers to name groups as “domestic terrorist organizations,” upon the recommendation of the attorney general. And while U.S. code does provide a definition of what a “domestic terrorist” may be, the president does not explicitly have the authority to designate people or groups as fitting that label...  (our emphasis)

It's hard for us to believe that any administration that put together such a (we'll say it again) fascistic directive would subsequently bow to a court telling it that it's un-Constitutional in whole or in part.  No, for a President who's been given immunity for his actions while President and fully committed fascists controlling all the key levers of power in this country, this is the predicate document for a wholesale crackdown on anyone or any organization the Malignant Fascist wants to target or eliminate.  

Another commentary on the directive can be found at Jeff Sharlet's Substack, "Scenes From A Slow Civil War."

Meanwhile, if you ever wondered what you would have done in 1930s Germany, you're doing it now.

FCC Thug Carr Remaking Media In Trump's Image

 

 

As the Malignant Fascist's Epstein files coverup flounders and his poll numbers plummet, his fascist minions like FCC Chair Brendan Carr are on a fast-track mission to ruin our country:

President Donald Trump and the Federal Communications Commission have vowed to force American broadcast media outlets to make significant changes.

CBS may be just the beginning.

"President Trump is fundamentally reshaping the media landscape," FCC Chair Brendan Carr told CNBC Friday. "The media industry across this country needs a course correction."

On Thursday, the FCC voted 2-1 to approve the $8.4 billion merger between CBS parent Paramount Global and Skydance Media after Skydance agreed to ensure CBS news and entertainment programming is free of bias, hire an ombudsman for at least two years to review complaints and end diversity programs.

Trump has repeatedly attacked broadcast networks for what he perceives as unbiased news coverage and called on Carr to rescind their licenses.

"The new owners of CBS came in and said, 'It's time for a change. We're going to reorient it towards getting rid of bias," Carr said. "At the end of the day that's what made the difference for us."

Carr's comments suggest the FCC will ramp up efforts to rid mainstream media of what he and President Trump consider a deep and enduring liberal bias, creating an opening for more conservative views among the biggest media companies.

The FCC regulates broadcast media outlets, which use the public airways and are required to act in the public interest. Carr has cited the public interest standard in seeking the changes at CBS.

Democratic FCC Commission Anna Gomez accused Paramount of "cowardly capitulation" to the Trump administration. She also said the FCC was imposing "never-before-seen controls over newsroom decisions and editorial judgment, in direct violation of the First Amendment and the law."...

It's been observed that the model for this and many other moves made by the Malignant Fascist/ Project 2025 movement is the regime of Hungary's fascist Putin tool, Viktor Mihály Orbán.  Call it white nationalism, authoritarianism, fascism:  intimidation, bribes, followed by an imposed political agenda are all part of their playbook, and all are being employed by the Malignant Fascist to consolidate power before most are aware of what's going on and how to stop it.  Perhaps legal challenges can help slow the "course correction" that thug Carr boasts about. We're running out of other options.

For more on this bold attack on the First Amendment, check out LGM's "Smell the Fascism." For a story on how MAGAts are using frivolous lawsuits to shut down a liberal watchdog group, go here. 

(Photo:  Carr demonstrating how he's strangling the First Amendment / John McDonnell , Getty Images)

 

QOTD -- "Cartoonishly Evil"

 

This is a long excerpt from Andy Craig's substack, "The UnPopulist," on recognizing the underpinning of the drive to make the Malignant Fascist a "supreme leader" in the mold of Hitler:

... The embrace of authoritarian notions isn’t just a matter of base emotional impulses dressed up in formalistic language. There’s a deadly serious set of ideas behind it, revealing the disturbingly widespread influence of Carl Schmitt, a German jurist and political philosopher who became a prominent propagandist during the early years of the Nazi regime. You might think a literal Nazi would be thoroughly discredited, but the grim reality is he has been embraced as a respectable thinker and even a laudable role model long after the regime he served died in a bunker in Berlin.

Trump himself has surely never studied Schmitt. But those around him, influencing him, and shaping the movement which supports him, certainly have. Many say so openly, which puts them in the notorious company of Vladimir Putin’s pet "philosopher,'"Aleksandr Dugin.  [snip]

We should take heed of what it means when modern figures—no matter how polished their résumés—draw inspiration from a man whose legacy is inseparable from the Third Reich. They’re not flirting with some contrarian viewpoint on constitutional theory; they’re actively rejecting the American tradition that legitimate power comes from a constitution, created by "We the People,'" and constrained by the rule of law and individual rights.

Instead, they favor power qua power: that a single individual can stand above statute and structure, determining who has what rights, if any, no matter what the law says. The White House’s assertion that a president has not just “inherent” but boundless authority to expel entire groups without congressional approval, or that he might unilaterally redefine the bounds of citizenship, takes a play straight from Schmitt’s playbook.

This might all sound cartoonishly evil, but that’s because it is. The idea that law is subject to power, rather than the other way around, has always led to tragedy. America’s Founders understood that principle well, writing a Constitution precisely to prevent the concentration of too much power in the hands of one man. When we see these Schmittian arguments—praising the abuse of emergency powers or lauding the unfettered ability of a leader to decide who counts as American—we must recognize them for what they are: an assault on our most fundamental principles, and on civilization itself.

We don't have the luxury of time or powerful democratic institutions to rely on anymore.  It's the first time in our lifetime the vast majority of us have faced an evil as relentless and enduring as the Malignant Fascist and his fascistic MAGA movement.  We're increasingly being called upon to stand up and fight lest we lose the freedoms that we always assumed would be there for us and our posterity.  Because, as Craig rightly says, this is "an assault on our most fundamental principles, and on civilization itself."  Each of us, in our own way and according to our abilities, must meet the moment and beat back that assault.

QOTD -- "Fasc-ish" MAGA

 

Greg Sargent concludes an article in The New Republic on that "unified Reich" video that the Malignant Loser shared on his failing social media site, noting that the video sharing is far from the worst thing to come from the would- be dictator:

A helpful framework for understanding all this is Damon Linker’s conception of the “fasc-ish” political style. Under Trump, this has included overt support for political violence, totalitarian-style serial deception expressly understood as an assertion of the power to remake reality, depictions of a nation in total moral and spiritual collapse, and the blaming of this supposed calamity on mass betrayal by traitorous elites.

This “fasc-ish” politics also casts Trump as a martyred victim of those elites, and elevates his sacred bond with his supporters—“the people,” accurately understood—as the only hope for national redemption. It savagely dehumanizes political opponents, invents a supremely powerful leftist threat that justifies anything in response, shows limitless contempt for the very idea that rules should constrain and direct political engagement, and elevates deliberate agitprop as an idealized form of political expression. As those aforementioned Trump quotes and proposals show, he and his propagandists are trafficking in all these elements.

The video promoted by Trump’s feed contained the words “unifying Reich,” which were a tad too explicitly evocative of Nazism, requiring his disavowal. But the bigger story is unmistakable: Trump and his allies are testing how far they can push forward with a dizzying barrage of propaganda tropes and policy threats that are at least as perniciously “fasc-ish” as that video, and often far more so. And if Trump can get elected in spite of all that, they will likely claim a mandate for full-blown authoritarian rule.

The Malignant Loser and his MAGAt fellow travelers exhibit enough behavior and rhetoric to be classified as "fascist" in our book.  But there's no need to quibble over categories.  It's certain that a Malignant Loser victory in November would usher in a Dark Age in America that would forever transform us as a nation and as a democracy.

(Photo:  David Ramos, Getty Images)

The Seeds Of Fascism Are Sprouting

 

In Texas, Christofascism has already arrived:

In this sprawling state of just over 30 million people, supposedly First Amendment-protected protests for causes like Black civil rights or against the slaughter of civilians in Gaza can, and probably will, expose you to arrest or state violence, risk your schooling or your job, or — when all else fails — leave you in danger of deadly vigilante justice. [Gov. Greg] Abbott’s pardon was the last bootheel on Texans’ right to dissent. [snip]

Everything that’s happening in Abbott’s Texas — the relentless war against liberalism and education itself, the influence of a corporate oligarchy, the surge of Christian nationalism, the war on feminism that features its strict abortion ban, and its own state military and militarized cops now deployed against its own people — is textbook fascism. The crackdown on dissent is the flame that keeps this downward spiral going. Knowing that attending a protest can expose you to legalized vigilante murder is just pouring more Texas crude on the fire...

They're still working on installing it in Ohio:

What a joke. In a pique of partisan petulance, the gerrymandered-for-life Republican supermajorities in the Ohio Statehouse have visited yet another national embarrassment on the state. “I think we’ve officially sunk lower than Alabama at this point,” Ohio House Minority Leader Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington, dryly observed about the state’s descent into autocratic hell. The latest humiliation from Columbus making headlines was entirely self-inflicted by MAGA-pandering pols. 

Our lovely legislative overlords torpedoed what should have been an easy bipartisan fix to a ballot scheduling snafu that still threatens to keep President Joe Biden off the general election ballot in Ohio. Ballot adjustment in a presidential election year is a non-issue. But Republican lawmakers decided to make it one by picking a fight and stomping their feet when things didn’t go their way. Like toddlers who need a nap. 

The straightforward legislation the GOP-controlled Ohio Senate and Ohio House blew up (for no good reason) would have remedied a problem with candidate filing deadlines in state election law that has come up before in presidential election years with Democrats and Republicans. It has typically been resolved as a bipartisan matter without incident. Until now. (Hence the Russo observation)...

In Louisiana, it's Christofascism with the emphasis on Christo:

The Louisiana legislature just passed a bill mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in all public school classrooms. And this one is very close to becoming law. Texas attempted such a thing last year, but the bill passed by the Texas Senate died in the Texas House. Similar bills were introduced in South Carolina and Utah but have not yet become laws. At the moment, however, it appears the Louisiana bill will go all the way to being signed by the governor.

Note that none of these bills differs significantly from one passed in Kentucky in 1978 and declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1980. The current Supreme Court, however, seems to think a little establishment of religion never hurt anybody. James Madison, the chief author of the Bill of Rights, would no doubt disagree. The current conservative justices like to call themselves “originalists,” meaning they claim to interpret the Constitution to mean what the authors intended it to mean. But the justices can be remarkably creative in deciding what the authors meant.

The Louisiana bill mandates the text of the Ten Commandments to be used, which appears to be an abridged version of Exodus 20:1-17 from the King James Bible, with all the “thees” and “thous” intact. Just so we’re all clear, the classroom display must begin with the words “I AM the LORD thy God.” The Commandments must be printed on a poster or framed print no smaller than eleven by fourteen inches in a large, easily readable font. And it must be prominently displayed in every classroom and every building in every school in Louisiana that receives public funding, including universities...

Meanwhile, your Bootsies, Noems, Youngkins, et. al., continue their democracy demo apace, paving the way for the Second Coming of the Golden Calf/ Malignant Loser.

Trump's Dehumanizing Rallies With His Aggrieved Cultists

 

As familiar as this is, and as often as it has been and will be repeated, this aberrant and abhorrent cult and its cult leader/ monster must be seen over and over again for who and what they are.

John Bowden of The Independent attended the Malignant Loser's Nuremberg rally therapy session in Ohio yesterday afternoon, and took note of what happens when the deranged, aggrieved would- be dictator goes off script in front of diminished crowds:

... It was on this issue [his 2020 election loss] that Mr Trump departed almost completely from his prepared remarks as he labelled his political opponents inhuman: “In some cases, they’re not people.” He’d provoke that same dehumanising imagery as he delivered his latest rant against illegal immigration, this time eyeing a new enemy in the arrival of residents of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Repeating “they’re coming in from Africa”, the former president sarcastically declared: “The Congo’s a very nice place, I imagine.”  [Ed.: your enthusiastic ass-kisser Sen. Tim Scott would be happy to help with any damage control on this one, we're assuming.]

It was a typical Trump speech in many ways, and only atypical in the sense that the former president’s growing inability to couch his more shocking impulses in politically-acceptable language was on greater display than usual.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of the event was how small it was. The event was not held directly in a major population centre, instead taking place roughly an hour from Columbus. Overall, Mr Trump’s crowd size on Saturday appeared to be much smaller than his typical rally size; with an eyeball estimate, the event appeared to have roughly doubled the size of ex-rival Nikki Haley’s final rally in her home state of South Carolina before that state’s primary election; perhaps a thousand people, maybe less. The total was definitively smaller — to the scale of thousands — than the crowd that gathered for Mr Trump’s last rally in support of a Senate candidate in the state, his appearance boosting JD Vance at an arena in Youngstown two years ago...

It was also at that rally therapy session that the Malignant Loser said this:

..."If I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that's going to be the least of it. It's going to be a bloodbath for the country," he warned, while talking about the impact of offshoring on the country's auto industry and his plans to increase tariffs on foreign-made cars.

Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer accused Trump of doubling "down on his threats of political violence."...

Opening the prisons and releasing the violent January 6 insurrectionists to finish the job is high on the Malignant Loser's agenda.  The Malignant Loser is always prepared for others to shed their blood as long as he ends up in the clear.

Renee Graham of The Boston Globe has something to say about the Malignant Loser and his cultists based on a recent rally in Georgia:

... Unable to attack Biden’s solid State of the Union performance, Trump instead mocked President Biden’s lifelong stutter. It’s certainly not the first time Trump has resorted to his typical schoolyard bullying tactics. It’s not even the first time this year he’s tried to ridicule the president with such childish nonsense. But what stood out again is that Trump’s audience laughed and applauded in malicious glee.  [snip]

Now when he derides Biden’s stutter by saying things that Biden never said — like pretending Biden stumbled over the word “democracy” in a January speech when he said it more than two dozen times without any problems — Trump gets the nasty laughs he seeks at someone else’s expense, especially when he sneers at a person’s physical limitations.

People who behaved that way were once scorned. Now they become the Republican nominee for president.

There are few among us who don’t know how it feels to be the butt of a joke. At some point in our lives, we’ve probably been the person being laughed at instead of being someone in on the joke and chuckling with the crowd. That includes Trump’s supporters. But with their always aggrieved state of mind, they have anointed Trump as a strongman who allows them to belittle those they see as their lessers. To paraphrase the great Toni Morrison, they can only feel tall when someone else has been knocked to their knees. For them, Trump’s enemies are their enemies and those people deserve nothing but public derision.  [snip]

Trump never offends only those he targets. There’s always collateral damage when someone with a national bully pulpit demeans a person with a stutter or physical disability. And every laugh, every whoop from his minions, not only convinces Trump that he’s right but that his aberrant behavior is what his followers have come to expect.

Yes, the hippocampus keeps score. But don’t just criticize the unfunny man who uses human frailty as a punch line. Remember the ones who in their devotion to a would-be tyrant will always laugh the loudest.

This is raw American fascism pure and simple, and these are the stormtroopers willing to carry out the monster's will, win or lose.  Once again, forewarned is forearmed.

BONUS:  One example, out of millions, of Cultist Trumpicanis.

BONUS II:  Fact checking the Malignant Loser's lies in that Georgia rally takes up a full page in the Washington Post.

BONUS III:  The Biden campaign punches back --

 

Biden-Harris campaign statement on Trump tonight promising a “bloodbath” if he loses pic.twitter.com/8mBYh4QKnf

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) March 17, 2024

(Image:  Getty Images via Business Insider)

Quote Of The Day -- American Fascism 2024

 

Rick Perlstein concludes an essay revolving around a conversation with John Ganz, author of the forthcoming book "When The Clock Broke," on the subject of American Fascism:

... The most important thing for journalists to cover in this presidential election is not how many votes Donald Trump gets, either in the popular total or the Electoral College. To those subsumed inside his cult of personality, the conclusion is already foregone: If you took a true poll of the American people, swept aside the garbage and the corruption of the kingmakers in the media and the deep state (not to mention all those Democratic officials desperate to do anything to cover up their pedophilic cult)—obviously Donald Trump represents the views of most Americans, and is the only legitimate representative of “the people.” The question is how many will be willing to take up arms for this belief, should the people whose job it is to count the votes come up with the “wrong” answer.

Will that be fascism? I’ll quote Jeff Sharlet from our previous interview. “One of the mistakes people make is they say, ‘Well, this doesn’t look like European fascism in 1936.’ Well, because it’s American fascism in 2024.” 

If we're sounding like a broken record, it is what it is.  This is what you should be seeing if your eyes and minds are open. The hardcore death cult MAGAts -- our American fascists -- are being primed for violence, whether the Malignant Loser wins ("retribution") or loses ("civil war"). Once again, forewarned is forearmed.

QOTD -- They're Already Here

 

"... [A]uthoritarian Fascists celebrate and inspire cruelty. And yet they are profoundly sensitive to criticism, terrified of it, in fact. Ah, cruelty. I think of the sweeping cruelty of Muslim bans and separating children from their parents at the border. The cruelty of right-wing heroes like Alex Jones, the late Rush Limbaugh, or the defenders of automatic combat weapons at the expense of countless dead children. The dismissive cruelty Republican Governors adopted towards the needless thousands and thosuands of Covid dead. The cruelty of strict abortion laws or the scapegoating of trans kids. Good God, we can be a cruel people.  [snip]

"The fascists aren’t coming. The fascists aren’t coming. They’re here.

"Trump has tapped a cruel, racist, anti-Semitic cancer deep in the American soul, in our neighbors and fellow citizens, that we must confront. Together, in the coming year, we must excise this contagion from our midst once and for all. Or lose the world’s last beacon of liberty, diversity and true democracy that cost our forebears, our patriots, our veterans so much blood." -- David Fitzsimmons, former cartoonist for The Arizona Republic, in his Substack "Arizona's Progressive Voice," concluding an essay reviewing the Malignant Loser's fascist rhetoric and a brief overview of the history of American fascism (with a h/t to Rachel Maddow's new bestseller "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism."  Good read.

(Meme:  by David Fitzsimmons)

Fascist TPUSA Conference Features Anti-Semites

 

Rolling Stone reports that today in Phoenix, Charlie Kirk's radical right-wing group Turning Point USA (TPUSA) will convene a large number of white supremacist and anti-Semite characters to stew in their bigotry at their national conference. Many are expected to espouse anti-Semitic, anti-democratic and pro-Malignant Loser views at their "AmericaFest" gathering, as evidenced by some of the scheduled speakers, led by the despicable Roseanne Barr:

"AmericaFest will be kicked off Saturday night by Roseanne Barr — the far-right comedian, who this past summer not only voiced Holocaust denial, but made a call for violence against the Jewish people. 'Nobody died in the Holocaust,' Barr said on a June podcast with Theo Von. 'That’s the truth.' Barr followed that lie with an even more shocking statement: “It should happen. Six million Jews should die right now, ‘cause they cause all the problems in the world.'”  (our emphasis)

It's sick that Barr, born to a Jewish family (Borisofsky) and whose great grandparents were killed in the Holocaust, would utter such hate just to curry favor with the fascistic right. She's not alone:

"Barr is an extreme example, but she is far from alone among TPUSA speakers in making troubling comments about Jews. Jason Whitlock, a host for Blaze Media, this June denounced 'Jewish pride' as an 'affront to God,' while insisting that Jews are in league with LGBTQ minorities and Black Americans in the pursuit of power and 'a one-world government.'  [snip]

Other top TPUSA speakers also have an offensive track record of voicing anti-Jewish rhetoric and conspiracy theories. They include Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who infamously blamed western wildfires on satellite weapons controlled by the Rothschilds, a.k.a. 'Jewish space lasers.' (Addressing that controversy in a new book MTG insists, “I have no antisemitic sentiments whatsoever.”) 

AmericaFest star speaker Tucker Carlson has routinely attacked the Jewish president of Ukraine, with claims about Zelensky’s 'rat-like' appearance and 'shifty' behavior, with commentators criticizing Carlson for trafficking in 'antisemitic tropes.'” [snip]

Kirk, TPUSA’s founder, has been called out in recent weeks for promoting anti-Jewish ideas himself. Kirk hosts a popular podcast, on which he parroted the same antisemitic trope that landed Elon Musk in such hot water: 'It is true,' he alleged, 'that some of the largest financiers of left-wing, anti-white causes have been Jewish Americans.'”  (our emphasis)

There are more examples in Rolling Stone's article of the Nazi-like rhetoric that has been uttered by many of the featured speakers, and will likely be well-received by the MAGA cult audience. Members of the Malignant Loser's inner circle, including Trump Junior, Roger Stone, and Steve Bannon will also add their toxic voices to the mix. No word on whether representatives from Iran or Hamas will speak.

 

Journalism Fail: The 2024 Election Campaign

 

We're quoting this column by the Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch at length because it goes to the heart of the failure of American journalism (once again) to explain what's really going on in our politics today. There's a bit more at the link, but this is the heart:

They stood on an arena stage in Milwaukee under a massive sign that read “Democracy” — the metaphorical 800-pound gorilla that loomed over this strange political event but was never really discussed. When the dust finally settled after two hours of the first televised debate of the 2024 GOP primaries, nothing — from the rude kids-table outbursts from the impertinent Vivek Ramaswamy to the doomed efforts by Nikki Haley or Mike Pence to be the grown-ups in the room — actually mattered inside the airy Fiserv Forum except for one thing.

All those not-so-wonderful people out there in the dark. A mob that raged, and which ultimately ruled.

This audience seemed to only care about The Man Who Wasn’t There — Donald Trump, who was too busy refueling his private jet for his next arrest to bother attending. The restive crowd reached its peak when its bête noire, the anti-Trump turncoat Chris Christie, dared try to challenge Ramaswamy’s outburst that POTUS 45 “was the best president of the 21st century.” It filled the basketball arena with boos.

The pro-Trump ruckus was such that Fox News coanchors Brett Baier and Martha McCallum dramatically turned around to face the audience. “So listen,” Baier said, “the more time we spend doing this, the less time they can talk about issues you want to talk about.”

LOL. As the night dragged on, the only “issues” the crowd seemed jazzed about were brash challenges to scientific truths that it considers elite liberal pieties — like Ramaswamy’s false claim that climate change solutions have killed more people than climate change — or authoritarian vows of violence, like Ron DeSantis’s promise to render any drug dealers at the border “stone cold dead.” None of the eight people on that stage “won” — only Trump, his angry mob, and a 21st-century brand of American fascism that is the enemy of democracy, the writing on the wall.

If you watched the hours of TV news coverage during an especially momentous week in August, there was little sense of that reality, and for long stretches of pundit blather, none at all — as talking heads gave earnest high school debating marks to candidates who are all but ignored by the GOP voter base. The disconnect deepened the next night as Trump turned what would surely be his comeuppance — his surrender at Atlanta’s bug-infested county jail for fingerprinting and a mugshot ― into an outlaw display of authoritarian force.

It was a remarkable night of imagery over substance, yet there was little discussion of why this accused felon was getting a phalanx of dozens of motorcycle cops, comprising police who are drawn to Trump’s authoritarian bluster like moths to the light. Trump’s glowering mugshot instantly became the most-talked-about picture in American history — yet not one pundit was able to explain why tens of millions of everyday voters are so eager to return to the White House this man who attempted a coup on Jan. 6, 2021, or why his poll numbers rise with each indictment. I guess the 20th-century author and socialist Upton Sinclair really nailed it when he wrote, ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

He then goes on to call out specific "journalists" whose salaries depend on not understanding what's going on (the pundits' names doubtless will be familiar to you).  

What should journalists be about?  It seems obvious, but for the zillionth time:

These are the stakes: dueling visions for America — not Democratic or Republican, with parades and red, white, and blue balloons, but brutal fascism or flawed democracy. The news media needs to stop with the horse-race coverage of this modern-day March on Rome, stop digging incessantly for proof that both sides are guilty of the same sins, and stop thinking that a war for the imperiled survival of the American Experiment is some kind of inexplicable “tribalism.”

We need to hear from more experts on authoritarian movements, and fewer pollsters and political strategists. We need journalists who’ll talk a lot less about who’s up or down and a lot more about the stakes — including Trump’s plans to dismantle the democratic norms that he calls “the administrative state,” to weaponize the criminal justice system, and to surrender the war against climate change — if the 45th president becomes the 47th. We need the media to see 2024 not as a traditional election but as an effort to mobilize a mass movement that would undo democracy and splatter America with more blood like what was shed Saturday in Jacksonville. We need to understand that if the next 15 months remain the worst covered election in U.S. history, that it might also be the last.

We're not at all sanguine about the media -- whose salaries and corporate profits depend on not understanding -- doing that.  For a reliable predictor, just look at recent history.  In fact, looking for the media to "save" us from full- on fascism simply by reporting what is in full view for everyone to see is almost counterproductive.  We need to be in charge of our own democratic destiny.  We can't leave it to others, especially to dishonest brokers in the media.  

As Bunch notes, there was nothing about "democracy" at the Republican "debate" except for the backdrop.  What was on display in Milwaukee, from the candidates, the audience, and from "The Man Who Wasn't There" is "brutal fascism." That's the understanding that forms the reality of our politics today.

(Photo:  "Blood and soil" too obvious?  Irony lives on in Milwaukee / Joshua Lott, Washington Post)

Trump's Plans For Second Term Spell Fascism

Last March, the Malignant Loser promised his cult followers at the Conservative Political Action Conference that he would exact vengeance on his and their "enemies" in the fictional "deep state," stating darkly that "I am your retribution." For someone without impulse control, conscience, or respect for the rule of law, that vision should alone disqualify him for any office, notwithstanding his criminal indictments, current and to come. An article in today's New York Times discloses that the Malignant Loser would expand his Presidential powers over independent agencies (read: the Justice Department) if America were ever reckless enough to elect him in 2024:

"Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him." (our emphasis)

If this isn't a blueprint for fascism, we don't know what is. Here are some of the details of what the Malignant Loser has in store to confirm that assessment:

"He wants to revive the practice of 'impounding' funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as 'the sick political class that hates our country.'” (our emphasis)

It's a vital task that the cult of the Malignant Loser be defeated in order to preserve the Constitution and the democratic republic it established. We saw on January 6 what his cult would do in his name, and we need to be prepared and active in opposing him. Regardless of how strongly our support of President Biden may be, it's not about him; it's an existential fight about our freedom under the rule of law.

 

"MAGA Movement": Racist, Sexist, Nativist -- Surprise!

 

Rachel Blum (University of Oklahoma) and Christopher Sebastian Parker (University of Washington) conducted a "Panel Study of the MAGA Movement", a survey gauging opinions of supporters of Donald "Mango Mussolini" Trump both before and after the January 6 insurrection.  The results should be absolutely no surprise to anyone, except those who may still be clinging to an "economic anxiety" explanation for this ugly phenomenon.  Here are five key charts from the study (click on images to enlarge):

There's much more at the link on MAGA morons' views of the insurrection, MAGA demographics, views on the pandemic, etc.  It confirms that there is a significant  anti- democratic/ authoritarian/ fascistic underbelly in this country whose paladin is Trump and who won't disappear with his defeat and disgrace. We don't think any more Cletus safaris or data is needed at this point to tell us who the enemies of American democracy are. (h/t LGM)