How do you explain the neo-fascist fervor in support of Donald Trump?
We have slowly created this fascist fervor ourselves beginning with the end of World War II. It began with anti-communist fanaticism. Anti-communism and anti-Russia became our national collective identity. We identified with it and mirrored it to our children. Neo-fascism is a direct legacy of our prolonged cold war with the USSR.
Some people explain away the love of neo-fascism and Trump on stupidity, but the love of neo-fascism and Trump goes beyond stupidity. Trump supporters didn't make a conscious decision to support him. We were subjected as children to a long-term atmosphere of right-wing indoctrination directed against the USSR and communism, and our collective identities depended on an opposition to communism and Russia. We had no other national identity. We identified ourselves with freedom, but freedom from what? Our whole national identity was based on freedom from communism and the USSR.
When the USSR collapsed, the US identity collapsed with it, and now we needed a new identity. We turned against ourselves in search of a new identity. We split into two factions: extreme right wing and liberal/moderate/ conservative left wing. if you weren't extreme enough, you were the new enemy. Extremism and neo-fascism was the new identity, and its head was Donald Trump. Liberals, moderates and conservatives became the new "communists," and neo-fascists became the new patriots.
@coluber2001,
My only quibble with this reasoning is that the drift to fascism is a global trend, so maybe no American exceptionalism required.
@hingehead,
Ohhh, and don't forget the conviction was for crimes revolving around play time with a whore and trying to become a politician. Two of the main preaching and healing themes of Jesus time on earth!
Question extracted from the website Quora:
"Is it only me that I see a big Biden win?"
He has to because anything else is a repudiation of everything that America has ideally stood for. And if Biden doesn't win in a landslide, that is an awful foreboding of what's to come. and that means there's something basically wrong with the fabric of the people of America. It would be a basic failure of the idea of democracy, that within the system of democracy, the majority of people must want democracy or else it won't work. A vote for Trump is a vote against the very ideal that the founding fathers envisioned.
@coluber2001,
coluber2001 wrote:
,..............
It would be a basic failure of the idea of democracy, that within the system of democracy, the majority of people must want democracy or else it won't work. A vote for Trump is a vote against the very ideal that the founding fathers envisioned.
So true......this country will change for sure!
@coluber2001,
coluber2001 wrote:
Question extracted from the website Quora:
"Is it only me that I see a big Biden win?"
He has to because anything else is a repudiation of everything that America has ideally stood for. And if Biden doesn't win in a landslide, that is an awful foreboding of what's to come. and that means there's something basically wrong with the fabric of the people of America. It would be a basic failure of the idea of democracy, that within the system of democracy, the majority of people must want democracy or else it won't work. A vote for Trump is a vote against the very ideal that the founding fathers envisioned.
BINGO!
If Joe Biden does not win this next election in a landslide, there truly is something seriously wrong with Americans...and this Republic of ours is not long for this world.
I think we're beginning to realize how fragile the US experiment in democracy actually is. We always assumed that our noble institutions would preserve us from demagogues – and while we weren't looking, ultra-wealthy reactionaries succeeded in a carefully planned, thirty year scheme to capture the guardian of these institutions, the f-ing Supreme Court. So much for the "rule of law". There truly is something wrong with this country – but it didn't happen overnight. McCarthy, Huey Long, the Know Nothing Party – the seeds were there all the time.
Trump challenged Biden to a cognitive test, and then said," Doc Ronnie Johnson. does everybody." That could be a mere slip of the tongue as the doctor's name was Ronnie Jackson."
--Beau of the Fifth Column
@hightor,
I do (realise how fragile it is).
I've been thinking lately about what your forefathers were trying to do. Basically put systems in place that would prevent demagoguery and have checks and balances all over the place, but they lived in a simpler world where all they were really concerned about was the absolute power of monarchs (and leaders creating dynasties). They hadn't realised (enough) that wealth and power gravitate to anti-democratic perversions to preserve their wealth and power. On the whole they did a pretty good job (2.5 centuries aint bad, in spite of how much the wealthy and powerful have tromped over ethics and the common good). I certainly can't see a way to do better - although universal sufferage and preferential voting might have delayed the two party drainhole you're circling.
Being an early exemplar has helped younger democracies but they aren't immune either.
