Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Saturday, October 14, 2017

The Creeping Militarization Of Our Government

Political scientists have argued about what fascism truly is for 70 years.  We continue that argument by asking whether Trump is a fascist.  I've always come down on, "No, Donald Trump is an authoritarian, not a fascist."

I'm beginning to change my mind.

Part of it is that Trump is relying on the fetishization of the military to wide himself from criticism.  This is part of the whole "take a knee" controversy, that somehow morphed into a discussion about "respecting the troops."

This little nugget is another example.  Zinke is former military, so I guess I see where the impulse came from.  But he's not in the military.  He's the Secretary of the Interior. The idea that anyone gives a fuck if he's "on deck" is absurd. 

This is all part of the slow abandonment of democratic norms.  A small amount of this is occurring on the PC Left, but it is the currently defining nature of the GOP in the Age of Trump.

Yeah, I'm worried.

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