Donald Trump and the Nightmare in America

I think I've mentioned this before. I once had a lot of trouble calling Donald Trump a fascist.

I didn't want to diminish the word. Or the suffering of its many victims.

I also knew that he was planning to use Richard Nixon's 1968 law and order speech to the Republican convention as a template for his own.

But the deranged rant he delivered last night, wasn't even warmed up Nixon, it was far worse.



It was pure fascism.

Donald John Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday night with an unusually vehement appeal to Americans who feel that their country is spiraling out of control and yearn for a leader who will take aggressive, even extreme, actions to protect them.

With dark imagery and an almost angry tone, Mr. Trump portrayed the United States as a diminished and even humiliated nation, and offered himself as an all-powerful savior who could resurrect the country’s standing in the eyes of both enemies and law-abiding Americans.

For even Nixon leavened his speech by offering up the possibility of hope. But there was no hope in Trump's deranged rant. Just a ghastly attempt to appeal to the worst instincts of Americans.

And try to scare people into voting for that dangerous demagogue 

As Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for Obama, wrote on Twitter, this was Trump’s "Nightmare in America" speech. The address had one goal, and one goal only: to persuade Americans that their country is a dangerous, besieged hellscape, and only Donald Trump can fix it.



The bloated Trumpenstein, who although the situation in America is not as apocalyptic as he would have its people believe, is now posing as the Great Liberator who has come to deliver them from fear.  

"Liberate." The America Trump speaks of requires an occupying force sent by a strongman to free and stabilize cities that have fallen into anarchy. But our cities have not fallen into anarchy. Our borders are not swarming with illegal immigrants. Murder rates remain far below what the America of the '70s, '80s, and '90s experienced. Terrorism is a horror, but successful terrorist attacks are a rarity, and one that would be most straightforwardly addressed through gun control. No liberation is necessary.

While deliberately stoking it, as every would be fascist has always done...



So it can be deployed as a weapon, used to panic the population, bluster or bludgeon their  way to power.

And turn countries into police states...



But at least now there can be no doubt who the real Donald Trump is, or what he might become.

For these are the words of a would be dictator.

"I have a message for all of you: The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end," he said. "Beginning on January 20, 2017, safety will be restored."

Or a madman...



So there is no longer any excuse for progressives in that country not to unite to make sure he is stopped.

For he must be stopped.

And hope must trump fear.

Before that dangerous demagogue takes us all down with him...



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