President Trump attacks various
"non-white/non-Christian" groups, the free press, and the very
concept of actual facts.
He seeks to stack the judiciary with unqualified right wingers who
have little, if any, appreciation for constitutional government. And he
supports a candidate for the Senate who has twice been removed from the Alabama
Supreme Court for flouting the rule of law.
He happily embraces policies that disenfranchise the poor and
minorities and perpetuate gerrymandering.
He gleefully brings back the concept of private prisons, to be
filled, often, with people who should not be imprisoned.
He appoints people to his Cabinet who are acting to push LGBT
people back into the shadows, if not the closet.
He enthusiastically embraces almost every authoritarian
ruler he can find.
He repeatedly lies about his tax policies, asserting that they are
for the working and middle classes when, in fact, they will only provide
meaningful benefits for the super-rich.
All of this smacks of incipient Fascism.
In the middle the 1940s,
the scourge of Fascism was turned back because the United States had the
economic and military strength to destroy it. Had we failed then, the world
would be in a new Dark Age. But we succeeded, and progress continued (as bumpy
as that progress has been.)
Today, there are three
remaining big powers in the world: The United States, Russia, and China. The
latter two are essentially Fascist states. If the United States becomes a
Fascist state, as well, then all the world's social progress since the
Enlightenment will be in dire jeopardy. Which means that those of us in
America who recognize the threat have an enormous responsibility to resist this
creeping (and perhaps galloping) Fascism and protect Democracy.
To quote Victor Lazlo
in Casablanca, "If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will
die." The years 2018 and 2020
may be as significant as the fictional Lazlo’s 1941.
