HE TELLS US WHO HE IS EVERY DAY

Trump basks in the applause in New Hampshire last Friday

Yeah, I know, this time of year I am supposed to look back on the good things that outweighed the bad things and show how next year can be better.

And then I read or watch the news.

What is completely incredible to me is that since just before Thanksgiving, when the news media finally allowed the word “fasicst” to sneak into an article and followed up with more articles with that word, when the Atlantic published 24 smart people calling out Trump and the GOP for the fascists they are and the dictatorship they want to create next year, the result has been that Trump as doubled and now tripled down on this dictator-curious streak, repeatedly flirting with public promises to govern as a dictator, and the result is he is ahead of President Biden in too damn many polls to dismiss them all as outliers.

How can he say this shit and be taken seriously and advance in the polls as a result of saying it? He can say this shit and be taken seriously and advance in the polls for saying it, because as Steve Bannon, the Shitmaster Supreme, likes to point out repeatedly, Trump is the all-time global master of “flooding the zone with shit.”

And this past weekend, he quadrupled down on all this. His attacks on immigrants set new records for scumminess, his attacks on the rule of law defy gravity. If you doubt he is indeed a fascist, go subscribe to Chris Cillizza’s Substack and read the 50 quotes he posted of the completely worst, most insane, most ignorant shit Trump said in New Hampshire and Reno on Friday and Saturday nights.

By the way, is there anyone reading this who can contort their lips to look like their anus, the way Trump always does, and then make intelligible sounds?

Trump went so far that the Biden White House called him out for what he did: “Echoing the grotesque rhetoric of fascists and violent white supremacists and threatening to oppress those who disagree with the government are dangerous attacks on the dignity and rights of all Americans, on our democracy, and on public safety...”

When was the last time you hear anyone in the White House denounce fascism within America?

The winner among those who brought themselves to listen for Most Scurrilous Trump Attack Against Immigrants is this one said during New Hampshire rally Saturday: “They’re poisoning the blood of our country. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in south America. But all over the world they’re coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia.”

Sunday night, Heather Cox Richardson said this about it all: “Christian nationalists believe that the secular values of democracy are destroying Christianity and traditional values. They want to get rid of LGBTQ+ rights, feminism, immigration, and the public schools they believe teach such values. And if that means handing power to a dictator who promises to restore their vision of a traditional society, they’re in.”

In the same New Hampshire speech - and then repeated the next night at Reno - Trump shifted his words from calling the jailed January 6 insurrectionists “political prisoners” to terming them “hostages.” Language is losing all meaning other than what he says it is from speech to speech. As Hannah Arendt first observed, as Ruth Ben Ghiat has repeatedly pointed out, creating chaos in all areas of life is a hallmark of fascism. And there cannot be an area more important than language.

In Alice in Wonderland - a place that seems more real every day now - the Mad Hatter tells Alice: “The words mean what I want them to mean when I say them.” When Alice replies “The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things,” the Mad Hatter cuts to the real truth: “The question is, which is to be master—that’s all.”

After repeating the line that the January 6 insurrectionists are “hostages” in his Reno speech, Trump then said that his six GOP fake electors who now face criminal charges in Nevada, are “victims of political persecution.”

The problem here is, that for the MAGA audiences in New Hampshire and Reno, these are applause lines. And they applauded. And cheered. And because they did, he will repeat those lines again and again, and because he’s mainlining this stuff into their arteries, he will say it more strongly and directly next time, and then moreso the next time, and the time after that and the time after that, till he’s quoting Hitler’s speech in “Triumph of the Will.”

This isn’t new, to anyone who has read any history of the rise of fascist movements. But all of it is novel here and now. These words give people who have a low sense of political engagement, and feelins of low self-worth, a of excuses for why their lives are so miserable. You’re not rich, powerful, or attractive, as you should be? It’s THEIR fault. There’s always a target, always an explanation for the phony victim narrative the Right thrives on, always justification for violence and oppression, for “burning it all down.”

Saturday night, Trump told the crowd: “We’re going to win four more years in the White House, then after that we’ll negotiate. Based on the way I was treated; we’re probably entitled to another four after that.”

That’s the leading GOP candidate saying he intends to stay in office longer than the Constitution allows. That he intends to “burn it down.”

And those tasked with protecting the system of laws and governance, of explaining them truthfully, demonstrate every day how completely unprepared they are to deal with the now-open illiberal, authoritarian threat of Donald Trump in 2024.

Never mind that he attempted a coup and incited an insurrection, an attack on the government of which he was the leader; never mind that he faces four felony indictments on 91 charges, never mind that he now expressly and publicly promises he would be a dictator and has plans to exact retribution on his enemies using the power of the government he would lead. The only thing the New York Times can do is present “both sides” one that warns about the danger and the other where they publish an op-ed written by a reactionary Catholic fascist prevaricating about what Trump does and misdirecting what he will do, as he and the rest do their best to not only hide but destroy the truth.

As Trump conjures up a dark vision of an America plagued by crime - when the truth is the crime rate is lower than it has been since 1969 - overrun by violent and mentally ill immigrants brought here by Democrats to “replace” the “Real Americans” listening to him in the crowd, in a country that was “formerly great” when he was president before - his campaign puts up “Safer With Trump,” on huge screens surrounding him.

“The words mean what I want them to mean when I say them.”

I had the privilege of knowing Billy Wilder 35 years ago. He once told me how he came to see the Nazis as the danger they were, when he came upon three stormtroopers kicking an old man in the gutter while the “good people” walked past and had no response, back in 1928. When he told friends what he had seen, when he bought up other events in the succeeding years, he was told “The Nazis are clowns, they can’t do anything.” By 1932, his friends considered him “a crank” on the topic. The night in January 1933 when it was announced President Hindenburg had appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany, Wild packed everything he had in a steamer trunk and took a taxi to the Berlin rail station, where he bought a one-way ticket on the Paris Express. I’ll never forget his final words: “When I returned, twelve years later, I found all my friends were dead. Killed by the clowns.”

It CAN happen here.

Trump tells us who he is and what he wants to do, every day. He says things that are increasingly outrageous in complete confidence, buoyed by polls that show him the bullshit works, and those of us who say “Look! See this!” find the public square filled with the real clowns, the conspirators who say “Don’t worry, he’s just a clown, he can’t do any of that.”

Rick Wilson put it well today: “Trump is an autocrat unconstrained by the law, the Constitution, or American political tradition. I think those people are lost to reason and argument, but pushing some knowledge about the precedents Trump so warmly cites as inspo for a 2025 dictatorship is necessary and useful.”

I’ll let the estimable Joyce Vance give you as much optimism as there is, regarding Trump’s move to out and out fascism: “ Far too many of our fellow citizens have normalized the threat Trump presents, believe he won’t be able to affect their lives because of personal circumstances, or have tuned him out all together because they just can’t take it anymore. But the only way to make sure the country doesn’t have to take it any more is to put forth a massive effort to defeat him in the next election.”

Thank you for reading That’s Another Fine Mess. You can keep the lights on here in the crucial year of 2024 by becoming a paid subscriber for only $7/month or $70/year. It really helps.

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