Trump’s mental state continues to deteriorate, taking with it the former president’s inhibitions. After going on a rant about the people he blamed for troubles with his microphone at a sparsely attended rally in Warren, Michigan, the Republican nominee for president of the United States of America simulated oral sex on stage.
A fascist is a certain type of leader: authoritarian, top of the hierarchy of strict obedience to orders, surrounded by those who take an oath of personal loyalty to him, ruthlessly repressing dissent, threatening and controlling all professions and the mass media, spouting divisive lies, using the force of the state to terrify and punish enemies, and its treasury to reward wealthy friends and patrons.
All of these things Donald Trump has done, or tried to do, during his first term in office. Even now, we don’t know the full extent of his crimes regarding a trove of illegally retained classified military secrets and his ongoing post-presidential negotiations with his handler/blackmailer, renowned war criminal and buddy of Elon Musk, Vladimir Putin.
In attacking his opponent Kamala Harris, in addition to the usual dog whistles to the Klan and Nazi contingent of his base, and millions of ordinary misogynists, Trump routinely calls her a radical left, Marxist, communist, fascist. In the country Trump’s family comes from Marxists and Fascists were fighting deadly battles in the streets less than twenty years before Trumpie was born.
No fascist can be a Marxist and vice versa. Only someone intent on name-calling, inspiring maximum loathing and ignorant of, or careless about, the meaning of the words he uses, would call a communist a fascist. They can both be totalitarians, authoritarians, but calling Harris a communist fascist is like saying she’s a cat dog (both delicious, by the way, people are saying, the weave, am I right? I’m right, aren’t I?).
Personally, I blame advertising for the distraction and credulity of Americans. Our attention spans are shattered at an early age by the constant bombardment of commercial messages, attention grabbing non sequiturs which we often tune out even as they interrupt whatever we were thinking about a second before. Watch any video on YouTube and, precisely as the video tees up the pay-off, the money quote, the volume jumps and some shill is excitedly shouting over loud music. They are shouting about something completely unrelated to what you were interested in, focused on a second earlier, but not a problem. In America these interruptions are simply an inescapable feature of the marketplace of ideas, just as valid as anything else in a society whose only real value is monetary profit. Everyone understands the profit motive, no?
So you get to vote for a presidential candidate/huckster who lies compulsively, is ignorant about history, incurious about the present and almost everything else, a businessman who started with a small $400,000,000 nest egg from his father and failed in every business venture he started, declaring bankruptcy six times, while touting himself as the greatest business genius of all time, as seen on TV. He knows how the game is played, so he can mock his opponent, call her any name he likes, literally throw shit at her.
Here’s the unfunny punchline: when she is asked whether she agrees with two of his former generals and his former secretary of defense that he is indeed a fascist (it’s virtually impossible to make an informed argument that he’s not) and she says she does, Trump screams bloody murder that she’s name-calling. Every fascist in history has done that, as have many communist dictators, although dogs and cats (equally tasty when prepared well, many people are saying, see that skillful weave I’m doing?) rarely do.
“How dare that nasty, low IQ, brown son of a bitch who doesn’t know if she’s Black or Indian, or Malaysian, or Samoan, or even a human being, call me a name I already call her?”
In his rage the other night he fantasized to replacement theory promoter Tucker Carlson about disloyal war monger Liz Cheney not being so brave if she had a rifle and was looking down the barrels of nine rifles pointed at her head. The New York Times did mention this threat in today’s edition, but carefully, with plenty of respectful nuance (they don’t want to face down the barrel of nine automatic weapons). The Washington Post (spineless puto-owned) presumably also gave a balanced portrait of the candidate’s understandable bad mood as he uttered his arguably well-veiled, deniable threat to Tucker Carlson, a craven lying toady who cackles like a startled school girl. As Tuckems said the other day at the beautiful Madison Square Garden love fest that had not a hint of the 1939 Nazi rally held there (I got the proof for you right here):
A far cry from Tucker’s January 6th tweets about Trump being a demonic force and talking about how much he hates the sore loser Orange Fraud. Tucker has always shown an almost Jeff Bezos-like level of personal integrity (see, for example, his recent infomercial for Vlad Putin in a Russian supermarket).
Ah, fuck those lying, name-calling, thin-skinned, transactionally pearl clutching, fainting couch humping, fascist fucking crybaby putos. Better to see exactly how fucked Mr. Musk will be if Trumpie loses the election and can’t get his goons to overturn the results.
Democracy dies in a greedy rich man’s tightly clenched asshole.
Or, as Dan Rather put it the other day, in describing the uber-billionaire’s cowardly, antidemocratic twitch decision not to publish the Washington Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, already written and ready to go (and Bezos’s sickening written attempt to sanitize and justify his weasel dicked self-interest):
| He is scared of Donald Trump. I am not saying he shouldn’t be. Trump has threatened to go after his perceived enemies, and that includes members of the media. But as the owner of one of the most important newspapers in the country, you have to have skin like a rhinoceros. Bezos says there was no quid pro quo involved, but that claim raises suspicion, at the very least. And to many it rings downright hollow. His companies have billions of dollars in federal government contracts and are bidding for billions more. Those contracts generated more than half of his companies’ profits in the last quarter. Trump’s fondness for retribution is legendary, so the possibility of payback, in the form of a canceled contract, is real. Trump and Bezos have never been chummy. Trump has been critical of the Amazon founder, but there seems to have been a thawing of late, with recent overtures by Bezos and his executives. In July, Bezos called Trump after the assassination attempt to tell him how much he liked the fist pump photo. According to the Post, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy called Trump in August to further the relationship. “Trump told Jassy that he was going to win the election and that Amazon should help him because it would be in the company’s best interests.” And the head of Blue Origin, Bezos’s space exploration company, spoke with Trump last Friday — coincidently, the same day the Post announced it would not endorse anyone. “While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs — not without a fight. It’s too important. The stakes are too high,” Bezos wrote. Careful getting off that high horse of yours, Jeff. . . . . . What might be the most upsetting aspect of this cowardice is that it proves Trump’s strong-arm tactics work. Timothy Snyder, a Yale historian and scholar of authoritarianism, has published a list of ways to avoid succumbing to autocracy. Three of five apply here: “Do not obey in advance,” “Defend institutions,” and “Remember professional ethics.” Jeff Bezos has so much money that if he never makes another dime, he would still remain one of the richest men in the world for the rest of his life. So the courageous thing to do would be to stand up to the bully, rather than yield to his threats in advance. That would do more to restore America’s faith in the media than the gutless act of not endorsing Kamala Harris. source |
Dan is a class act. I am not. Fuck fucking Jeff Bezos, one of the most irredeemably greedy men on the planet, and the syphilitic whores he rode in on.
Best Halloween costume ever!
Talk about an American Hitler, his boss has nothing on this moral contortionist Ivy league educated lawyer, billionaire staked venture capitalist, 18 month senator motherfucker. Five minutes of his lie-fueled bullying should do it for you.
Heather’s nightly letters are always intelligent, informed, informative, loaded with historical context, but once in a while she writes a masterpiece. The other night she sent this one, with many chilling touches from the last time the world faced an existential moment with a wildly popular Hitler character:
Ninety years ago, as American reporter Dorothy Thompson ate breakfast at her hotel in Berlin on August 25, 1934, a young man from Hitler’s secret police, the Gestapo, “politely handed me a letter and requested a signed receipt.” She thought nothing of it, she said, “But what a surprise was in store for me!” The letter informed her that, “in light of your numerous anti-German publications,” she was being expelled from Germany. . .
. . . In 1931, Thompson interviewed Hitler and declared that, rather than “the future dictator of Germany” she had expected to meet, he was a man of “startling insignificance.” She asked him if he would “abolish the constitution of the German Republic.” He answered: “I will get into power legally” and, once in power, abolish the parliament and the constitution and “found an authority-state, from the lowest cell to the highest instance; everywhere there will be responsibility and authority above, discipline and obedience below.” She did not believe he could succeed: “Imagine a would-be dictator setting out to persuade a sovereign people to vote away their rights,” she wrote in apparent astonishment.
Thompson was back in Berlin in summer 1934 as a representative of the Saturday Evening Post when she received the news that she had 24 hours to leave the country. The other foreign correspondents in Berlin saw her off at the railway station with “great sheaves of American Beauty roses.”
Retired General and former Trump chief-of-staff John Kelly’s recent on the record revelations about Trump’s frequent expressions of admiration for Hitler, Trump’s desire for not only another Roy Cohn to defend him (Bill Barr did an impressive imitation) but for loyal generals like Hitler had, Trump’s disdain for military service and sacrifice and his ignorance of history, will make little difference in an election that is all about feeling. On a wave of strong feeling either Trumpie or Harris will surf to victory, and God help us all if that wave breaks the wrong way.
To someone like me, who lost virtually his entire, once large, family to a killing machine unleashed by Mr. Hitler [1], news that a presidential candidate a statistical coin flip away from achieving his dreams of revenge admires, and frequently cited the successes of, Mr. Hitler is sickening.
But as Mr. Trumpie pointed out in his own defense, Hitler did a lot of great things too, and he was loved and unquestionably obeyed by his generals, even the ones who tried to assassinate him a couple of times, which many people don’t know, by the way. Hitler’s generals all revered him, even the ones who, with tears in their eyes, admitted under torture “sir, I tried to kill you”.
Chrump, of course, is a famously “transactional”, incurious, strongman-venerating moron who only knows that Hitler, whose word was literally law, dreamed big about making the Fatherland Great Again and, for a while (presumably before being betrayed by his own sick, disloyal people) was a huge winner. Nobody got ratings, or dominated, like Mr. Hitler at the time, nobody besides Mr. Trump, of course, if he’d been there, on German reality TV.
On the other hand, to someone who thinks Jews have too much unchecked power, that they control the weather (actually, I do that sometimes) and are hellbent on importing tens of millions of raping brown people to pervert democracy and impose their anti-Christian values by Jew trickery, using brainwashed, savage Blacks, Browns and Yellows, who will replace all White Christians, as Q foretells, well, Hitler, whatever his possible faults, had basically the right idea.
Lock the Soroses up, take their ill-gotten wealth (only white Christian billionaires deserve their honestly acquired wealth) and eventually, just quietly get rid of the eternal enemy of Jesus Christ. Where’s the hole in that plan? It’s perfect for someone who believes a violent mob assault on the Capitol police was totally justified “legitimate political discourse” or that the virtuous South was forced to become the Confederacy after the “union” viciously attacked them. Only a Jew could argue against propositions so straightforward.
The two sides do not have equally strong arguments, of course, but that’s not the point. Scholar of fascism Robert Paxton pointed out that fascism is not an ideology based on reasoned arguments but appeals to blood, soil, national grievance and violent action. Here’s Paxton:
“It seems doubtful,” Paxton wrote in The New York Review of Books in 1994, “that some common intellectual position can be the defining character of movements that valued action above thought, the instincts of the blood above reason, duty to the community above intellectual freedom, and national particularism above any kind of universal value. Is fascism an ‘ism’ at all?” Fascism, he argued, was propelled more by feelings than ideas.
In this way fascism closely resembles the worldview of any narcissist and the little social circle they control. The infallible leader’s appeal is always to feelings, their own and the supreme values of loyalty, faith and love of those in their orbit. These appeals bypass observable cause and effect, context, ideals, facts, reason, logic, discussion, deliberation or anything else that “enlightened” souls try to guide their behavior by. If I feel it, says the leader, it’s fucking true. If you have a defiant feeling against mine, you’re fucking dead, asshole!
And so it always is, from Mr. Hitler to Mr. Koch to Mr. Nixon to Mr. Stone to Mr. Trump. The only people bothered by this natural hierarchy of strength are handwringing losers who sit worrying, and tapping, while virile men of action martyr themselves for a glorious cause that makes them feel righteous. In an advertising-based world where ads are ubiquitous and only strong feeling matters, how can you fault them for doing what heroes always do, being ready to die, and righteously kill, for their faith?
[1] I love this New York Times style tic. In a long ago article about Eric Clapton and Bo Diddley, the two guitar players were referred to throughout as Mr. Clapton and Mr. Diddley. That tickled me greatly.
The New York Times editorial board features a hard-hitting interactive timeline, apparently published in July 2024, of everything the Orange Menace accomplished in just his first year as wannabe dictator from day one. The report goes through all four action packed years of fighting and lying like hell. A hard-hitting recitation of facts from the newspaper whose spokespeople over and over claim the Grey Lady refuses to get involved in “politics”… The first year by itself is very impressive. Click the image below for the show.
“Fun” fact: More Americans died in Trump’s beautiful lovefest/January 6th Capitol riot, at the hands of their fellow Americans, than died in Benghazi, at the hands of enraged Libyans, an event weaponized against then Secretary of State H. Clinton to the eternal fury of the American right.
Here’s an angry patriot, in Bayside, New York, standing under his Trump’s God, America, Freedom flag, with a t-shirt reminding Americans of those killed in Benghazi.
Timothy Snyder, scholar of fascism and World War Two, gives an excellent succinct description of the recipe of fascism: whip up fear of a fake problem, harness the terror to gain power, once in power proclaim you have solved the fake problem. Fascist rule, as Snyder sums it up, is based on Emotion over Reason, Will over Reason, Fear over Fact, Doom over Fact.
I haven’t been able to embed the excellent five minute video here, but there is a link below.
The new hysterical American Nazi claim pushed by Team Trump is that an all-powerful Black woman, Harris, is letting millions of perverted illegals into the country, personally performing free sex change operations on them and letting them take your job. Once in power, Trump, (or rather, Vance — I give Trump a week, tops, before he’s whacked, by a transexual illegal gunned down after the assassination, to let the less floridly psychotic Vance take the reins of newly liberated America) instantly, magically solves, once and forever, the hellish problem of Kamala and her indefatigable sex change/job stealing machine.
In Nazi Germany, Hitler took the kernel of a real thing, several big retail stores were owned by wealthy Jews, and ran with it. Wealthy Jews control everything, and hate Christians, and want to rape Christian women and pollute the pure blood of Aryans to destroy Germany forever. Hmmmm, sounds about right to terrified Germans freaked out by runaway inflation, wheeling wheelbarrows of cash to the bakery to buy a loaf of bread. It has to be the damned Jews, right? Hitler alone can fix it, and he did his damnedest. It took him a decade, but, by God, he built the Final Solution, didn’t he?
Timothy Snyder, with an excellent short explanation of how these fuckers operate.
In a country where a deadly riot conducted by followers of an enraged candidate who lost an election that wasn’t close, lied about losing and sent a mob of patriotic martyrs to overturn the will of the voters, an estimated 50% of likely voters appear to believe that this riot was not a riot at all but “legitimate political discourse.” That was the phrase Ronna Romney McDaniel, head of the MAGA Republican National Committee parroted to describe the direct, frontal assault on democracy, with very fine people on both sides. the finest people.
“We had no guns,” claimed their madly riffing candidate the other day, lying, as is his reflex, “only they had guns”. The “they” in question was law enforcement. Ha ha ha! Isn’t that hitlerious? “Arnold Palmer, gigantic cock, I shouldn’t say this, but mine is only slightly bigger. I know, I know!”
Belief is all that matters in the United States of advertising, and if you truly believe it, you have every right to act righteously on that belief. The triumph of American Exceptionalism right there, boys and girls.
You claim my God is imaginary? Blasphemy! That gives me the right to put you to death. God sez so!!!
Shawn McCreesh summed up this “vicious and absurd” election beautifully in the New York Times today. He sets the scene the Troll-in-Chief whipped up outside his quick McDonald’s photo op in swing state Pennsylvania:
The parking lot throbbed with hatred, fear and neighbor’s suspicion of neighbor. It became a microcosm of this year’s election, vicious and absurd. There was shouting about Project 2025 and the Jan. 6 riot. Transgender youth and vaccines. Tariffs and abortion. Fascism and communism. Mr. Trump’s supporters wore T-shirts that said “I’m voting for the convicted felon.” The other side yelled, “Lock him up.” One person wore an orange prison jumpsuit and a mask of Mr. Trump’s face.
This is what the mood is like in a swing state, 16 days before an election. Sixteen days before this election. Nearly a decade into the Trump-era of politics, the language is apocalyptic. Social media has supercharged the crude negativity.
Maybe this social media blasted country really is mad and stupid enough to allow Trump, Bannon, Musk, Giuliani, Kerik, Flynn, Ginni Thomas, Peter Thiel, Miriam Adelson, JD Vance and random Hitler fans to establish massive righteous concentration camps in the name of Jesus Christ and intoxicatingly unfettered predatory capitalism. I hate to say it, and I’ll probably be saying it through broken jaws on the train to camp, but this country will deserve it if violent xenophobia, racism, misogyny, homophobia, lust for tax breaks and other forms of bullying stupidity tilt this unaccountably close election to triumphant American Nazis, based purely on advertising stoked rage.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press uncritically retailed three Trump whoppers in a one minute and nineteen second account of Orange Manhood’s Mickey D trolling exercise in Feasterville, Pennsylvania the other day. The compulsive liar, wearing an apron like a real minimum wage worker, spat out three juicy ones in seconds in this beautiful, free Trump campaign ad. “She never worked at McDonald’s,” (she did) “McDonald’s just confirmed that again, by the way” (the corporate giant, taking a principled moral stance, declined to comment. again) “in other words, she’s Lying Kamala.” (don’t you mean Lyin’ Ted, you demented fascist?)
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