SO much for 'the most transparent administration in history', not that I bought into that claim in the first place. Seems like a violation of multiple public record-keeping laws.
> It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
> It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.
> It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.
> It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.
> For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.
The idea that trump cares about "fascism", or is even capable of holding such high-minded political beliefs is some hysterical leftist nonsense. Trump is the type of politician that would support any topic "X" as long as you campaigned on the basis of "X is cool and trump is also cool". In our timeline X was cryptocurrency, antivax, Qanon, charlottesville protesters, etc. but it could have just as easily been environmentalists, gay rights activists, BLM, etc.
When most people talk about facism, they are referring to a regime like those under hitler or mussolini. I am pretty sure hitler and mussolini had actual political goals they cared about. There will never be a "night of the long knives" because there is nothing that trump even wants that's worth backstabbing his allies over. To use the word fascist is ridiculous, because he is just acting as a ouija board for his dopey supporters.
I mostly agree with your characterization of him, but those tendencies of sleazy egoism naturally lead to authoritarian policies. When your ego must be stroked and your word must be last, you naturally fight against important democratic safeguards that would restrain you, like apolotical bureaucracies and separation of powers, both of which we're seeing play out literally right now. Trump is defying Congress's sole authority of appropriating government funds, and has strongly signaled intent to defy court orders (and only hasn't technically defied them yet because decisions are still pending). DOGE is a thin excuse to purge federal agencies and fill them with partisan yes-men (or simply destroy them altogether and give Trump full control).
Despite Trump's personal politics, it's obvious that those in his orbit (including several cabinet appointees and his VP) do have intentionally fascist ideals and goals. Whether Trump personally cares or not is a distinction without a difference. He may not care about pursuing a "night of long knives", but many who have influence in his administration do, and Trump probably won't care to stop them, especially if it makes him seem like a strong, no-nonsense leader.
Fascism is coming to America and Donald Trump is the one commanding the cult of personality that is making it happen. That alone is worthy of criticism. It should be concerning to anyone who opposes fascism, regardless of who exactly is to blame or how exactly it is being done. Arguments like yours are mostly a distraction.
Non-hysterical people aren't concerned that there's a night of the long knives imminent, but are concerned that there now could be. It's the breakdown of the rule of law - if he won't punish legitimate law breaking, provides pardons to people that support him, uses the government and justice department to go after people who don't agree with him...what will stop him if he decides to, short of popular uprising? And let's be clear, that's civil war/domestic terrorism territory.
What? It clearly has a cult of personality, MAGA people are absolutely in a cult.
GOP politicians can't go against Trump at any point, even in the most ridiculous of cases, in fear of losing their seat since Trump can activate his cult of personality against any GOP figure.
The absolute definition of Fascism is only reached at the end of the process, fascist tendencies are pretty clear right now: attacking the free press, persecution of minorities, rejection of modernism, anti-intellectualism, appeal to a frustrated middle class, machismo, selective populism, I'd invite you to just read the 14 points of Ur-Fascism and come back to me saying that the Trump admin is not matching most points: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism
Perhaps you need a primer on how it is to be inside the spiral into Fascism:
> Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
> Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”
> And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
> But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
> But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
> And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jewish swine,” collapses it all at once, and you see that everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
> Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early morning meetings of your department when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.
Otherwise, it's just political theater that's going to further discredit the idea of impeachment and give Trump and future Presidents more confidence that they can do anything they want and never be held to account.
Will it? If done correctly by the Democrats (and this is a big if), it can educate people on the current situation. A big problem right now is that a lot of people aren't fully aware how fucked up and how dangerous Trump and his cronies are.
It is such a horror that this government is operating off the books, that this administration will again leave behind only empty pages in the history book where normally the government would have ownership of what transpired.
Unfortunately we also live in the time with the largest mass media consumption (social media), all but guaranteeing their followers keep rationalizing their actions with a litany of talking points rather than understanding straightforward criticism said by someone on the "other" team.
To me, the one-sided right wing media bubble seems to be the root of how we got here in the first place. It allows politicians to avoid any and all accountability for their actions. Popular rule cannot function in this environment, and if it continues, nothing will stand in the way of this administration destroying what’s left of the country.
" In 1970, political consultant Roger Ailes and other Nixon aides came up with a plan to create a new TV network that would circumvent existing media and provide "pro-administration" coverage to millions. "People are lazy," the aides explained in a memo. "With television you just sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for you." Nixon embraced the idea, saying he and his supporters needed "our own news" from a network that would lead "a brutal, vicious attack on the opposition." "
For example, I feel that in the early 2000's, it would have been possible to get across the point that Breonna Taylor (Kenneth Walker) was really a 2nd amendment issue [0]. You may or may not care about 2A issues. I do care, although it's not a huge focus of mine. But they purport to care greatly, so it should be possible to engage on that, right? But now the reflexive emotional revulsion to the topic created by continual tribal priming (all day every day) is just too great.
[0] if a probable response to defending yourself in your home at night is government agents unleashing a state-sanctioned hail of bullets into your family, how has defending your home not been effectively prohibited?