Is the US officially a fascist country yet?

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Fellow Unbelievers,

Man, we might have two Impeachments going on shortly!

GA Congreswoman Says She Plans to File Articles of Impeachment Against Biden

Ga. congresswoman says she plans to file articles of impeachment against Biden

With both Executive and Legislative branches tied up with two separate Impeachments, maybe neither of them will do much damage and we will heed The Law of Holes and stop digging our nation deeper into debt and tyranny!  These next 4 years might not be so bad! 😎

[jakelafortParticipant]

Robert you raise an interesting issue. Do we write off Trump’s supporters as hopelessly stupid?

Do any of us doubt that as a group they are dim-witted? I assume they are but that is just a supposition. It is hard to avoid that conclusion particularly if you have watched vids of his supporters at rallies. Seems they are on average more religious which may predispose them to vulnerabilities in cults, and more subject to authoritarian and irrational beliefs. Would you be comfortable having a physician, attorney or other professional who is also a Trump cultist represent you in an urgent matter? Hell no!

We often assert that religious people can be brilliant in other matters and that they dichotomize of compartmentalize in having religious beliefs. (Neuroscience is in its infancy and may some day be able to navigate the neural chemistry to know when the compartmentalization is occurring.) Probably true of Trump cultists too. But goddamn i hope it is only a tiny minority. It is scary to contemplate how easily we homos are to manipulation. The plasticity that must have given us a survival advantage is leading us to our extinction.

[UnseenParticipant]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

GA Congreswoman Says She Plans to File Articles of Impeachment Against Biden

The House is held by the Dems. That will grab headlines but not much more. I suspect a few Republicans will help vote it down.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by  Unseen.

[UnseenParticipant]

Many people, once they fall into a conspiracy theory, are intellectually trapped. They believe it because they want to believe it, and so it becomes very difficult to dissuade them with facts. For example, if you appear to disprove that the election was rigged, their response won’t be to change their mind, but rather to start asking how the coverup of the rigging was accomplished.

It’s the same for the thesis that the Jews, the Illuminati, or the Jesuits are behind everything on the one hand and the thesis that sinister Democrats rigged the election. The only reason they can’t prove their theses to the rest of us has to do with how efficiently they control the media and the wheels of justice.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

jakelafort wrote:

Do any of us doubt that as a group they are dim-witted?

I have a friend in the US who is a committed Trump supporter.  She’s one of the typical Trump followers – white working class.  She’s also very intelligent.

I think Trump is like the Devil – he charms people by offering them whatever they want, in exchange for looking the other way at his obvious flaws.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

Many people, once they fall into a conspiracy theory, are intellectually trapped. They believe it because they want to believe it, and so it becomes very difficult to dissuade them with facts.

I think it’s also very much the case that people identify with the bullshit.  They feel, this is my identity, and if I deny it, I deny my own identity.  That’s a very powerful force.

[UnseenParticipant]

You know, we aren’t talking enough about the causes of the Trumpist movement. He didn’t create it, he awakened it and gave it permission to reveal itself.

Many of the Trumpists are late middle-aged “boomers” or even older. The younger ones got their values from their parents. Others come from military service and value discipline and order.

It’s a nostalgia movement. If I had to pin a time they yearn for, it would be the post-WW2 years around 1946-1954. That’s an approximation. We were full of ourselves for (as we saw it) “saving the world from the Axis Powers.” Business was booming. People could support a family on a relatively small income (yeah, like a 15-cent loaf of bread).

Dad made the money while mom made the beds and baked cookies. Jack Benny, Jackie Gleason, and Ed Sullivan were on TV. America was a calm place.

Equally important: The first civil rights march wouldn’t happen until 1963 with the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom which, despite its name, was a march demanding help for black Americans.

You might want to count that event as the earliest beginning of Trumpism.

A lot of Trumpism has to do with a visceral response to the civil rights movement.

It’s not the classic “N****rs are inferior” racism, it’s the breaking of the calm, which has been fairly constant ever since that first civil rights march.

Jump forward sixty some years to Portland, Oregon, which has seen very destructive riots almost daily ever since the George Floyd killing by a police officer. They have a legitimate complaint, of course, but one has to wonder when it will dawn on them that this tactic isn’t working and is turning otherwise sympathetic citizens into radicalized opponents.

Their slogan is “defund the police” which is interpreted by some of the more clueless and starry-eyed into eliminating police. Others have a more reasonable plan: divert some of the police budget to better crime prevention, to forming units to respond to people in mental health crisis, units to help the homeless in better ways than simply moving or arresting them. The defunding movement can be stupid or useful depending on how it’s implemented.

Portland isn’t alone. It’s emblematic of goings on in Seattle and other cities. Cities I bet you’ll find are attractive to homeless people. No good deed goes unpunished(?).

Even I, a fairly progressive leftist, have reached the “enough is enough” point with the daily mob actions. At the same time, I’m at a loss as to how to stop it.

Portland, a couple years ago, was one of the most beautiful cities in the country. Now, the downtown area is about 80-90% boarded up, even when businesses are open. They can’t afford to constantly be replacing huge panes of glass. Neither the windows nor the labor involved are cheap.

There’s no end in sight.

Americans are pissed off and the role the radical left has played is seldom discussed outside the right wing echo chamber.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by  Unseen.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Another thing about conspiracy thinking and probably prophecy as well is the idea that the proponents of conspiracy/prophecy are in on something the rest of us are missing. We are the naive ones having been duped by our government. We BELIEVE everything THEY tell us. Conspiracy thinkers on the other hand have been skeptical and their skepticism has led them to the truth.

I like what ya had to say, Unseen, but i think the MAGA/nostalgia period for many is not just pre civil rights but antebellum America where uppity blacks got what they had coming to them. If Trump promised to repudiate the emancipation proclamation and reinstate slavery we would see some real hootenanny celebration from the hard core cultists.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Encogitationer,

Your silence on the issue of nationalizing health care here in the USA is interpreted by me as an indication you don’t have an argument on the merits.

[_Robert_Participant]

Unseen, when I read your post the old Archie Bunker tune came to mind..

Those were the Days

Boy, the way Glenn Miller played
songs that made the hit parade
Guys like me we had it made
Those were the days
Didn’t need no welfare state
ev’rybody pulled his weight
gee our old LaSalle ran great
Those were the days
And you knew who you were then
girls were girls and men were men
Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again
People seemed to be content
fifty dollars paid the rent
freaks were in a circus tent
……..
I don’t know just what went wrong
those were the days

[UnseenParticipant]

jakelafort wrote:

I like what ya had to say, Unseen, but i think the MAGA/nostalgia period for many is not just pre civil rights but antebellum America where uppity blacks got what they had coming to them. If Trump promised to repudiate the emancipation proclamation and reinstate slavery we would see some real hootenanny celebration from the hard core cultists.

Do you know this segment of society very well, Jake? Sure, there are white nationalists or people who just hate blacks, but many of the kind of whites who stormed the Capitol Building work with blacks, served oversees in combat areas with blacks, and go to their black friends’ backyard barbecues, weddings, and funerals. A lot of them don’t hate blacks at all, but they do hate a lot of the disturbances of the peace related to black rights.

I think you, like many of us, find racism a handy excuse to stop thinking.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Unseen, I have observed a great deal of racism from racists who i assume have gone on to be Trumpers. I have also had friends & gfs who are black and tell me about their experiences. And i have experienced racism as a half jewish guy who is perceived as Jewish. Racism is alive and well in the USA. I despise racism. It is my number one ism prism of hatred. Does it surprise you to know i also disagree with the way BLM has proceeded?

I did not deny that some of the nostalgia is for the era you mention. That does not change that some of it is in the confederate flag and that peculiar institution.
https://time.com/4236640/donald-trump-racist-supporters/

I don’t follow your racism is an excuse not to think comment. What have i written that leads you to that conclusion?

[UnseenParticipant]

Jake, if you think I was saying there’s no racists among the Trumpists, reread me. I’m sayin that they are racists is an oversimplification.

I forgot to mention that there’s a lot of extreme federalist small government people in the bunch as well.

[UnseenParticipant]

_Robert_ So long as you know I wasn’t siding with  the Bunker types, I was saying we tend to go right to racism, which is a gross oversimplification. And when I say “we,” I mean the “we we, which often includes me” not the “we means you we” which is more often what  is used.

[jakelafortParticipant]

I think it is fair to perceive a spectrum that begins with the pre-civil rights status quo, no overt acknowledgment of bigotry trumpists all of the way to the virulent racists who would literally reinstate slavery and make Trump their Jesus/emperor. They have in common a desire to maintain or elevate their social status and that requires the subordination, suppression or at least a check of the untermensch.

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