There have been two stories about the creeping fascism within the GOP orbit. The first is "impartial umpire and strict constructionist" Samuel Alito flew an upside down American flag during the coup-period. He's blaming it on his wife, in some of the same way that Clarence Thomas says that his wife was the one working for Trump and he's just completely unaffected by that. It's really cool that two pro-insurrectionists have lifetime tenure and are currently deciding whether Trump will stand trial for his manifest crimes against America. This has elicited the usual "He should resign" nonsense. Of course he should, but he's not going to so I'm not sure what "should" has to do with anything.
The second is that some staffer on Trump's social media team used Nazi-ish language in one of his online ads. Did Trump "know" about this? Almost certainly not. Does he care? Almost certainly not.
The intersection of these stories - a Supreme Court justice and a low level social media intern - are about the complete freakification of the GOP. From 2017-2021, Trump was largely constrained by some normie types like Jon Kelly, HR McMaster, Steve Muenchin and others.
What Trump is explicitly saying this time around is that he will hand over the reins of government to the sort of freakish assholes who think it's edgy to post literal Nazi shit on his social media. Part of the 2025 Project is to eviscerate government functionaries and replace them with sycophants - and the larger part of those sycophants are either actual Nazis or Nazi-adjacent.
Because Trump is so outsized in the American political imagination, it's tough to see the forces lurking in his shadows. They are really, really scary and unlikely to disappear even after he finally shuffles off to either prison, electoral defeat, death or all three.
We can - I think - defeat Trump this fall, especially if he's convicted in NYC. Defeating Trumpism is going to take years.
UJPDATE: Paul Campos on how media, in particular, is in denial about the fact that one of our parties has slipped into facism.
UPDATE 2: Oooops. Alito did another fascism.
No comments:
Post a Comment