¡Calmate, hombre!

 

A Facebook post and its responses.

https://www.salon.com/2021/05/26/historian-of-fascism-wonders-is-joe-biden-a-speed-bump-on-the-fascists-march-to-power/

Me:  A most interesting in-depth analysis of our current situation. It is good to hear that people are finally recognizing the danger that the Republican Party presents to democracy in America because by recognizing the danger we can deal with it. It’s like getting a very frightening diagnosis from your doctor. It is disturbing, but it’s better to know and take action to treat the condition that it is to remain in ignorance and be destroyed by something you didn’t even know existed.

I agree with most of what the article has to say and have excerpted one paragraph and added a comment to the last sentence of that paragraph:

> As I see it, Trump's coup attempt was a great success for the far right. Too many professional smart people and hope peddlers want to claim that it was a failure because many of Trump's followers were arrested. Anyone who argues such a thing does not understand storytelling and the political imagination. The Trumpists and other neofascists won the presidency and were in power for four years. They left an indelible stain on American society. They now have the imagery of overrunning the Capitol to draw strength from. It was an impossible dream come true, and it happened in a very short amount of time.<

My criticism of this quote is its last sentence. It happened in a short amount of time? No. I was calling the Republican Party the American Hezbollah, the American Party of God, when Ronald Reagan was sitting in the oval office.  My friends, although generally respecting my opinions, deeply felt I was overreacting. Now it is 40 years later. And it turns out that I was correct all along.

I know I keep saying that but I spent 40 years of being told I was overreacting. Please indulge me a little bit of, “Told you so! Told you so!”

M:  I agree with you, Jim.  The brain-washing techniques have been visible for quite a long time and continue to this day.  Trump has total control and there is no Republican party any more.  The more we try to control him, he cries "victim" and his minions rush to his defense.  I have to wonder how this is all going to end.

Me:  It’s a battle and struggle and there’s no way to tell who’s going to win. Oh, eventually the Republican Party will lose. I stand by a statement I’ve been making over those decades that the insanity of the new conservative movement as founded by William F. Buckley will inevitably lose because it’s a minority movement and that demographics are against it. I said, and I will still say, it’s just a question of how much damage they can do before they lose. Where I was completely and utterly wrong was in not realizing how much damage they could accomplish. We may yet go through a period of religious fascist dictatorship before the end of the nightmare.

I simply could not see that it could ever have gotten this bad. And it may get even worse!

M:   Yes, I used to say, "how much damage can one man do in four years", thinking that the next election would turn things around.  Well, I never expected a "Trump" and for people, that I thought were thinkers, would fall for him.