Fascism revisited, again

Has enough evidence accumulated to reasonably consider DJT, the GOP, Project 2025, Christian nationalism and all the rest of the American MAGA package close enough to old-fashioned fascism to call it fascism or some form of it, e.g., American fascism or soft fascism? DJT and the GOP have certainly gone authoritarian. Project 2025 looks awfully authoritarian and shockingly Dark Ages in some policy areas, e.g., climate science. Some supreme court rulings since the six Republican radicals took control and are now running free and butt naked wild are undeniably anti-democracy and authoritarian.  

Or, is it the case, that given modern circumstances that old-fashioned fascism or something close to that is simply impossible to happen. Lots of people believe that, probably most, maybe ~75%.

Q: What are similarities and differences of the MAGA and Christian nationalist movements and classical fascism?

A: The relationship between MAGA/Christian nationalist movements and classical fascism is complex, with some notable similarities but also key differences:

Similarities

1. Both MAGA/Christian nationalism and fascism emphasize a strong nationalist ideology that references an idealized mythic past. For MAGA, this involves nostalgia for a perceived "great" America of the past, while Christian nationalism connects America's founding and future success to its Christian heritage.

2. There are parallels in hostile attitudes toward intellectualism, education, and science (anti-intellectualism). Christian nationalism is associated with opposition to scientific consensus on issues like evolution and climate change. Classical fascism also promoted anti-intellectual and anti-science views.

3. There are similarities in the emphasis on "law and order" and support for strongman leadership figures. Both movements can display authoritarian leanings.

Differences

1. MAGA politicians generally argue that America's liberal democratic tradition needs to be saved, rather than abolished. Classical fascism explicitly rejected liberal democracy.

2. Classical fascism involved totalitarian one-party rule, secret police, and comprehensive control of society. The MAGA movement operates within the existing democratic system, despite concerns about democratic backsliding.

3. The MAGA and Christian nationalist movements arose in a very different historical context than classical fascism of the early 20th century. They lack the same mass movement character and paramilitary organizations.

Scholarly debate
There is ongoing debate among scholars about how to categorize these movements. Some see clear parallels to fascism, while others argue the differences are significant enough to warrant distinct classifications. Terms like "semi-fascism" or "neo-Bonapartist patrimonialism" have been proposed as alternatives. .... The debate over proper classification remains active in academic and political discourse.

Differences #1 and 2 arguably are more mirage than real. I don't believe either is more true than false. Available evidence strongly indicates that MAGA explicitly rejects liberal democracy. DJT and the GOP are both openly anti-voting rights and anti-free and fair elections.[1] After DJT's 1/6 auto-coup attempt, here is no way anyone can rationally argue that the MAGA movement operates within America's existing democratic system. That is pure blithering nonsense. MAGA has accepted, rationalized and justified the insurrection, elevating that to mandatory core belief in the GOP. 

However, difference #3 is real -- these are different times and circumstances. And, there still isn't a real fascist American paramilitary presence here yet.

Not surprisingly, DJT and the MAGA movement do not refer to themselves as fascist. They are superb propagandists. They shamelessly and cynically claim to be pro-democracy while being at least authoritarian, if not close to fascist.

Other commentary include this from 2022:

“To call a person who endorses violence against the duly elected government a ‘Republican’ is itself Orwellian. More accurate words exist for such a person. One of them is ‘fascist.’” .... Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank dropped the f-word after the Republican National Committee (RNC) on February 4 declared the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol “legitimate political discourse.”

Others—former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum and Democratic journalist Ed Kilgore among them—agree that the Trump-appeasing GOP is akin to the European fascists who rose to power between the two world wars. The concern predates the RNC’s endorsement of violence. Frum noted the insurrection itself, while Kilgore detected such parallels to interwar fascism as a “foundational” lie (Nazi claims about German sellouts after World War I, Trump supporters’ claims about election theft) and alliances with “reactionary religious interests and radical elements among the police and military veterans.”[2]

A Wikipedia article comments on Trumpism:

Trumpism is a political movement in the United States that comprises the political ideologies associated with Donald Trump and his political base. It incorporates ideologies such as right-wing populism, national conservatism, and neo-nationalism, and has been described as authoritarian and neo-fascist. Trumpist rhetoric heavily features anti-immigrant, xenophobic, nativist, and racist attacks against minority groups. Identified aspects include conspiracist, isolationist, Christian nationalist, evangelical Christian, protectionist, anti-feminist, and anti-LGBT beliefs. 

Trumpism has significant authoritarian leanings, and is strongly associated with the belief that the President is above the rule of law. It has been referred to as an American political variant of the far-right and the national-populist and neo-nationalist sentiment seen in multiple nations worldwide from the late 2010s to the early 2020s. 

Some commentators have rejected the populist designation for Trumpism and view it instead as part of a trend towards a new form of fascism or neo-fascism, with some referring to it as explicitly fascist and others as authoritarian and illiberal. Others have more mildly identified it as a specific light version of fascism in the United States. Some historians, including many of those using a new fascism classification, write of the hazards of direct comparisons with European fascist regimes of the 1930s, stating that while there are parallels, there are also important dissimilarities (links and citations removed to reduce distractions)

Q: Is authoritarianism a better, i.e., more persuasive, label for DJT, the GOP and MAGA than fascism, American fascism, semi-fascism, soft-fascism, defanged fascism (no paramilitary thugs on the streets) or neo-Bonapartist patrimonialism? 

PS: Consider this highly charged interaction: 

Irate neighbor: Hey, you neo-Bonapartist patrimonialist, get off my lawn!

Neighbor kid picking up ball that rolled onto the lawn: Huh?

Footnotes:

1. Also, the state of Georgia has just implemented new rules or laws that allow easy disruption of election results that Republicans refuse to accept. Georgia state government has gone full-blown authoritarian. And, DJT has publicly made clear his seething hate of political opposition, the Democratic Party and a free press. That is definitely authoritarian. 

2. That article included these comments:

Boston University Today: Could the Republican Party be described as either fascist or fascist-leaning?

Historian Jonathan Zatlin: From the historian’s perspective, fascism was a response to problems after 1918—the collapse of multiethnic empires, economic crises—that we don’t have today. If we’re experiencing crises, they’re crises that only superficially resemble what was going on in the interwar period: high inflation, the pandemic [of] the Spanish flu. What we’ve been experiencing the last couple of years are just very different situations. And we don’t have a four-year-long war that killed millions and traumatized a whole generation of young people who found it hard to be integrated back into society and work 9-to-5 jobs, then later experienced mass employment and a Depression lasting years. That, plus weak democratic traditions, led many Europeans to conclude that democracy brought crisis and poverty, and that only authoritarian regimes could ensure prosperity and stability.

One can rationally argue that DJT, his MAGA movement and Project 2025 are all doing their absolute best to weaken, discredit and subvert American democratic traditions and institutions, especially the rule of law and elections.

Beau gets it right!

(who is Beau?)

Brain Imprinting...

Q1: Do you believe everything we’ve ever experienced is imprinted on our brains?  If yes…

Q2: Once imprinted, barring injury (think “needle scratching a vinyl record”), can it ever be deleted/erased?  Or, is it there for good?

Make your case(s).

(by PrimalSoup)

Bits and Pieces of amusing news...........

 Unless, of course, you don't find any of the following amusing.

Foo Fighters will donate to Kamala Harris after Trump used their song 'My Hero'

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2024/08/25/foo-fighters-donald-trump-rally-my-hero/74943995007/?tbref=hp

Republicans Quietly Stop Impeaching Biden After Realizing it Would Make Harris President Sooner

https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/republicans-quietly-stop-impeaching

RFK Jr.’s Daughter Said He Once Beheaded a Whale with a Chainsaw

https://people.com/rfk-jr-beheaded-whale-chainsaw-kick-kennedy-interview-8701261

A bit dated but how did we not know about the following movie that reveals all about Hunter Biden's laptop and his corrupt father - Joe Biden?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15481952/

https://mysonhunter.com/

FINALLY...................

There’s an apostrophe battle brewing among grammar nerds. Is it Harris’ or Harris’s?

The Harris campaign, meanwhile, has yet to take a clear position. A press release issued Monday by her New Hampshire team touted “Harris’s positive vision,” a day after her national press office wrote about “Harris’ seventh trip to Nevada.”

https://apnews.com/article/harris-walz-apostrophe-possessive-grammar-967c0bbefc09be6c804588daabed7ec9

Following the money; An awakening?; The shrinking middle class

The WaPo reports about the top 50 political donors so far, collectively about $1.5 billion so far.

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Another prominent commentator, Bill Maher joked about the major change in the Republican Party that I have been howling about for some time now. His angle was that the DJT party has completely broken with its own past. The Hill writes:

Bill Maher said the lack of Republican National Convention speeches from former presidents or vice presidents indicates the GOP has made a “clean cut” with its past.

“It’s a little odd, isn’t it? That the Republicans had no former president, vice president. There was no Mitt Romney there, no Bush, no Dick Cheney,” Maher said Friday on “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

“It’s a little like Tom Cruise with his daughter,” Maher said, to laughter from the studio audience. “You know, ‘I don’t know you anymore.’”

“I feel like I’ve never seen a convention where the party just disowned its complete past like that,” Maher added. 

The discussion took place on a panel with CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, Democratic strategist James Carville and Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw (Texas).

Crenshaw started to push back, noting it “doesn’t really matter” if Republicans “put on the best show,” adding, “I know we have better policy.”

Maher shot back, “It’s an indication that you have made a clean cut with what Republicanism was up until Trump.”

This is another bit of evidence indicating that more people are slowly coming to recognize that the GOP is fundamentally different now from what it was before the rise of DJT. What is that difference? The GOP was conservative and mostly pro-democracy, but now it isn’t. So exactly what is it? Liberal or socialist? Centrist? Anarchist? No, it is shockingly kleptocratic, shamelessly demagogic, ruthlessly authoritarian and solidly anti-democracy (see Project 2025 for evidence). That is the new, morally rotted GOP.

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The WaPo writes about what used to be middle class jobs: 

‘Barely surviving’: Some flight attendants 

are facing homelessness and hunger

Working “on reserve” with hours of unpaid labor makes it difficult for new flight attendants to turn the job into a career.

Kay had already worked a full day when Frontier Airlines called her to pick up a shift. The recently hired flight attendant had been awake since 4 a.m. driving Lyft, one of the few side gigs she could manage with her unpredictable schedule.

Her new career was off to a rough start. There were three-and-a-half weeks of unpaid training. Her first few paychecks were lower than she’d anticipated. She gave up her apartment in Atlanta, where median rent is about $1,500, and had been renting a room from a friend.

The only way to make ends meet, she said, was to juggle all the gig work she could find: Instacart shopping, pet sitting, Lyft driving. The ride-share company was offering a $500 bonus for completing 120 rides in four days. With her projected pay of $23,000 a year before taxes and insurance, chasing the extra money felt necessary.

So after working for Frontier from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m., Kay turned back to Lyft. By the time she reached the bonus, she’d gone nearly 24 hours without sleep. 

Kay is not alone. Most new flight attendants work “on reserve,” spending days waiting to be assigned flights. It’s common for them to take side jobs — bartenders, semi-truck drivers, makeup artists, church musicians. Some say they are struggling to feed their families and are living out of their cars.

Is the middle class really shrinking, e.g., as employers keep squeezing workers harder and harder to get more profit as fast as possible? It seems to be according to some evidence.

Q: Is the American middle class shrinking?

A: The American middle class is indeed shrinking, according to recent data and analyses. Here are the key points:

Declining Middle Class Population

The share of American adults living in middle-class households has steadily decreased over the past five decades:

• In 1971, 61% of Americans were in the middle class
• By 2021, this had fallen to 50% of the population
• The latest data from 2023 shows 51% in the middle class

The middle class is being squeezed from both sides:

• Some middle-class households have moved into the upper-income tier
• Others have fallen into the lower-income tier

Specifically:

• The share of adults in the upper-income tier increased from 14% in 1971 to 21% in 2021
• The share in the lower-income tier grew from 25% to 29% over the same period

Income and Wealth Distribution

As the middle class has contracted, its share of aggregate income has declined significantly:

• In 1970, middle-class households accounted for 62% of aggregate U.S. income
• By 2020, this had fallen to just 42%

Meanwhile, upper-income households have seen their share of aggregate income rise from 29% to 50% between 1970 and 2020.

Some demographic groups have fared better than others:

• Older Americans and Black adults made the greatest progress up the income ladder from 1971 to 2021
• However, Black and Latino Americans are still more likely to be in the lower-income tier compared to white Americans

While the shrinking middle class partly reflects upward mobility for some, it also signals growing income inequality and polarization in American society. The trend has significant economic and social implications, potentially affecting economic stability, consumer spending, and social cohesion.

 

Regarding persecution of American Christians

Who is persecuting whom?

Many American Christians support DJT because they believe he will save them from ongoing persecution and/or an impending massive crackdown after the next election. A fascinating opinion (not paywalled) by NYT columnist and evangelical Christian David French describes his experience with both sides of that issue:

The Christian Persecution Narrative Rings Hollow

This June, I was invited on a friend’s podcast to answer a question I’ve been asked over and over again in the Trump era. Are Christians really persecuted in the United States of America? Millions of my fellow evangelicals believe we are, or they believe we’re one election away from a crackdown. This sense of dread and despair helps tie conservative Christians, people who center their lives on the church and the institutions of the church, to Donald Trump — the man they believe will fight to keep faith alive.

As I told my friend, the short answer is no, not by any meaningful historical definition of persecution. American Christians enjoy an immense amount of liberty and power.

But that’s not the only answer. American history tells the story of two competing factions that possess very different visions of the role of faith in American public life. Both of them torment each other, and both of them have made constitutional mistakes that have triggered deep cultural conflict.

One of the most valuable and humbling experiences in life is to experience an American community as part of the in-group and as part of the out-group. I spent most of my life living in the cultural and political center of American evangelical Christianity, but in the past nine years I’ve been relentlessly pushed to the periphery. The process has been painful. Even so, I’m grateful for my new perspective.

When you’re inside evangelicalism, Christian media is full of stories of Christians under threat — of universities discriminating against Christian student groups, of a Catholic foster care agency denied city contracts because of its stance on marriage or of churches that faced discriminatory treatment during Covid, when secular gatherings were often privileged over religious worship.

Combine those stories with the personal tales of Christians who faced death threats, intimidation and online harassment for their views, and it’s easy to tell a story of American backsliding — a nation that once respected or even revered Christianity now persecutes Christians. If the left is angry at conservatives for seeking the protection of a man like Trump, then it has only itself to blame.

After living inside and outside conservative evangelicalism, I have a different view. While injustice is real, the Christian persecution narrative is fundamentally false. America isn’t persecuting Christians; it’s living with the fallout of two consequential constitutional mistakes that distort our politics and damage our culture.

First, for most of American history, courts underenforced the establishment clause of the First Amendment. It wasn’t even held clearly applicable to the states until 1947. Americans lived under what my colleague Ross Douthat calls the “soft hegemony of American Protestantism.” It was “soft” in part because America never possessed a national church on par with European establishments, but it was certainly hard enough to mandate Bible readings and prayer in schools and to pass a host of explicitly anti-Catholic Blaine Amendments that were intended to blunt Catholic influence in the United States.

This soft hegemony wasn’t constitutionally or culturally sustainable. Mandating Protestant Scripture readings is ultimately incompatible with a First Amendment that doesn’t permit the state to privilege any particular sect or denomination. Culturally, the process of diversification and secularization makes any specific religious hegemony impossible. There simply aren’t a sufficient number of Americans of any single faith tradition to dominate American life.

In the 1960s the Warren court began dismantling the soft Protestant establishment by blocking school prayer and Scripture reading. A series of cases limited the power of the state to express a religious point of view. But then state and local governments overcorrected. They overenforced the establishment clause and violated the free speech and free exercise clauses by taking aim at private religious expression.

The desire to disentangle church and state led to a search-and-destroy approach to religious expression in public institutions. Public schools and public colleges denied religious organizations equal access to public facilities. States and public colleges denied religious institutions equal access to public funds.

Conservative and liberal justices have created a different, sustainable equilibrium, but the religious liberty culture war rages on anyway — in part because millions of Americans don’t want to strike a balance. They actually prefer domination to accommodation. Many conservative evangelicals miss the old Protestant establishment, and they want it back. This is part of the impulse behind the recent Ten Commandments law in Louisiana, for example, or the recent effort in Oklahoma to establish a religious charter school, a public school run by the Catholic Church.

Combine these efforts at religious establishment with red-state legislation aimed at progressive and L.G.B.T.Q. Americans, and one could fairly assert that Christians are persecuting their opponents.

But there’s more to it than that. There are secular Americans who do take aim at Christian expression and at Christian institutions. They don’t want separation of church and state so much as they seek regulation of the church by the state, to push the church into conformance with a secular political ideology.

French overstates the threat to Christianity

French argues that (i) injustice against Christians is real, (ii) states and public colleges deny religious institutions equal access to public funds, (iii) religious gatherings were more strictly controlled than places like grocery stores and restaurants, and (iv) people who want to keep the church separate from the state want to have government regulate the church. One can easily disagree with all of that. For (i), based on how he describes anti-Christian injustice, it is minor. How bad is it for a university to block a Christian speaker, a rare to nearly non-existent event, or how often is a Christian group denied a city contract, something that is also rare (and illegal)?

For (ii), one can argue that reasonable enforcement of the establishment clause demands that tax dollars be kept separate from religion. As it is now, religion already is greatly favored over most everything else in the tax code. Those tax breaks are worth tens of billions per year. 

For (iii), as far as being more strict with religious gatherings than secular ones during COVID, evidence of that is weak. Lots of complaining went on, but without much substance behind it.

For (iv), French falsely claims his cited court case is about the state regulating the church. That is false. That lawsuit is about keeping the church from openly discriminating against groups of people that religious elites hate in taxpayer-funded religious educational institutions.[1] As usual, the churches want to be free to discriminate against and oppress LGBQT students. Our tax dollars are being used to support cruel religious bigotry. 

Why should tax dollars be used by religious institutions to treat some people like crap? That is not a matter of state regulating church. It is a matter of the church being an asshole to people. In the lawsuit that French cites, the state protected the church's tax money and its freedom to discriminate against out-groups on religious freedom grounds. There is no way that can be construed as the state regulating the church. The opposite is closer to the mark.

French is right to assert that (1) the Christian persecution narrative rings hollow, and (2) the establishment clause has been underenforced. But his arguments about threats to Christianity are hyperbolic and not convincing. It is false to say that government wants to regulate the church and force it to conform to secular political ideology. 

If religious educational institutions want to discriminate against and abuse target individuals and groups, there should ne no taxpayer dollars supporting that kind of bad behavior. Not one tax penny should go to support cruelty and bigotry in the name of any God's infinite love and grace.

Q: Should tax dollars be used to support discrimination by any educational institution (religious or not) against any specific group of people on religious grounds? 

Footnote:

1. A summary of the lawsuit is this, and the LGBQT group's appeal is probably still pending:

Thirty-three students filed a class action complaint against the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon on March 29, 2021. The students challenged the Department’s alleged complicity in abuses perpetrated against LGBTQ+ students at taxpayer-funded religious colleges and universities. The students sought to represent a class of “more than 100,000 LGBTQ+ students who attend taxpayer-funded religious colleges and universities that openly discriminate against them in both policy and practice.” At the religious institutions, plaintiffs alleged being subjected to conversion therapy, expulsion, denial of housing and healthcare, sexual and physical abuse and harassment, and other stigmatic harms. [That's Gods infinite love in plain sight] The students alleged that the Department of Education was wrongly using the religious exemption under Title IX to breach its obligation to protect students from abuse based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. The students brought a constitutional claim against the DOE under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violating the Establishment Clause, Equal Protection and substantive due process. .... The case was assigned to District Judge Ann L. Aiken on March 30, 2021. (emphasis added)

Part of the lawsuit

here, the state defended the church,

not the other way around 

The LGBQT plaintiffs got shafted

Is that persecution of Christianity?

Some would probably argue it is

Strange politics: Childless cat ladies; A terrible human being; Germaine's darts

Distractify writes about Ann Coulter at Faux News:

Ann, a childless, cruel cat lady

and a fibber

Few pundits have a more prominent platform in America than Ann Coulter, who has existed in the conservative ecosystem for decades. Part of being an edgy pundit, especially on the right, means that you've got to be willing to stir up some controversy. But Coulter really stepped in it after criticizing Minnesota Governor Tim Walz's son Gus following Walz's speech at the Democratic National Convention.

Walz's son Gus has a learning disorder, and he went viral for tearing up during his father's speech. Gus's emotional response suggests just how much he loves his father and how proud he is of him. Coulter, meanwhile, wrote "Talk about weird" in response to Gus's teary viral moment. Following that tweet, which was eventually deleted, many wanted to know whether Coulter has kids of her own.

Coulter has been engaged several times, but she has never been married and she does not have any kids. .... Ultimately, though, she does not have any children, which many who saw her comment about Gus Walz thought might explain why she didn't understand the kind of bond the governor has with his children.

"Ann Coulter obviously doesn’t have children. I’d bet she has never felt loved in her entire life as well," one fairly harsh person wrote on Threads.

"The people attacking or making fun of 17-year-old Gus Walz just don’t understand what JOY and LOVE are all about. They wish they had someone who cared as much about them as Gus does his dad," another person wrote on Twitter.

In fact, Coulter's tweet was the rare comment that was so appalling that it united basically everyone, even in this fraught political climate. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a son getting emotional because of his love for his father, and that's true whether that son is neurodivergent or not. Whether you agree with Tim Walz's politics or not, his son loves him, and that isn't a partisan issue. 

After facing backlash over her tweet about Gus, Coulter offered an explanation for why she had decided to pull down her original tweet. “I took it down as soon as someone told me he’s autistic, but it's Democrats who go around calling everyone weird thinking it's hilariously funny," she wrote.

That is pretty strange. Dems allegedly call everyone weird. Coulter is not just cruel, she is also a liar.

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In other strangeness, RFK Jr. endorsed DJT as he dropped out of the campaign. Good grief, how hypocritical, shameless and morally rotted can a person get? Pretty darned hypocritical, shameless and immoral. First, he tries to get a position of power from Harris, but she turned him down. So, he flies into a snit and endorses DJT to exact his revenge and soothe his hurt ego and fee-fees. 

How hypocritical and shameless? This much:

A mobile billboard sponsored by MoveOn.org displayed RFK Jr.'s insults of DJT before he endorsed him. The truck drove around Phoenix during Trump and RFK Jr.'s mutual lovefest at a rally Friday in nearby Glendale. Last month, RFK Jr. slammed Donald Trump as "probably a sociopath," a "terrible human being," and the "worst president ever and barely human" during the Republican National Convention in text messages obtained by The New Yorker. He has also called Trump "unhinged."

Also showing a fine example of morally rotted shameless blither, Trump previously criticized Kennedy as a "radical left lunatic" and a "plant" from the left to help then-candidate Joe Biden get reelected. At the Arizona rally, Trump welcomed RFK Jr. to the stage, heaped praise on him, and said his late dad and uncle JFK were "looking down" on him with pride. But all that went away as RFK Jr. and DJT made nice to each other in Arizona.

Bad birds of a feather flock together. Very bad birds. And very strange.

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Finally, the strangest thing of all, assuming it is real, which it may not be, probably isn't . . . . . 

In the last week or so there has been a slow, tiny trickle of journalists and opinion columnists who are starting to act like they have read and understood the darts that Germaine has sent to them (but they have not responded to). What darts? Pointy ones that criticize the MSM, journalists, columnists and editors for calling MAGA, DJT and radical right authoritarians and their radical right authoritarianism things like "conservatives", "right wing", "conservatism" and the like. 

So far, very few professionals have made the apparently huge mental leap from seeing DJT and MAGA as merely conservative to seeing them for what they clearly are, i.e. radical right authoritarians. 

As an example, I recently sent this dart about standard MSM labeling of DJT and MAGA elites generally:

A comment comes to mind. Most of the GOP elites and MAGA generally are not merely conservative or on the right. In view of all the evidence in the public record, including their support for Trump and his deeply corrupt and openly radical right authoritarian politics, why refer to those people and/or their politics as merely "conservative" or "right wing"? That normalizes something that is very abnormal.

It is both neutral and more accurate to refer to the MAGA movement as authoritarian and its elites as radical right anti-democracy authoritarians. America's radical right is clearly pursuing some form of kleptocratic radical right authoritarian government for America. MAGA clearly wants to build government and society based on some undefined but unholy trinity of kleptocratic dictatorship, kleptocratic plutocracy and kleptocratic Christian theocracy. Project 2025 is solid evidence of radical authoritarianism, and so is how Trump acted when he was in office and still acts today. Other than being older and less mentally stable, his politics and tactics have not changed much. Nearly all the old-fashioned conservatives in the GOP have been RINO hunted out of power and/or the party. The real conservatives are at places like The Bulwark.

Please stop favoring Trump, MAGA and American authoritarianism by calling it something nicer than what it factually is. Calling authoritarianism "conservative", "right wing" or the like is the epitome of false balancing. It also insults conservatives and all Americans who are still pro-democracy, pro-civil liberties, pro-rule of law and accepting of facts and truths even when they are inconvenient.

Anyway, a few bits from the MSM are indicating that at least a few in the MSM business might be starting to think roughly the same way. For example, at ~1:20 - 1:50 minutes of this 8-minute video (MSNBC interview with Katy Tur), NYT columnist David French argues that the Republican party institutionally is not recognizably conservative. French is one of the MSM people who got darted by Germaine.

French is one of the MSMsters who recently seem to be inching toward calling DJT, the GOP elites and MAGA something closer to what they really are. Later in the interview (~2:30 - 2:55), Tur herself seems to recognize that something fundamental has changed in the Republican Party, making it into something different from what many or most rank and file Republicans believe it is.

Q1: Is Germaine off his rocker for thinking that his darts are even read by the unlucky MSM recipients?

Q2: Assuming that most rank and file Republicans are unaware of the fundamental shift in the GOP from basically pro-democracy to pro-authoritarian and anti-democracy (and that is probably true), what responsibility do they bear, if any, for enabling DJT and his MAGA threat, e.g., are they deceived but complicit authoritarians?