Incipient Fascism: "If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die."

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.