Thread of What Is Fascism And Is Donald Trump A Fascist

It honestly has nothing to do with what he actually does or what Congress tries to do around him. It has everything to do with the fact that he is a known liar and promise breaker who does not understand or believe in any of our institutions and cannot be relied upon by other states to heed promises that our country has made, like paying bills on time, or sending aid when allies are threatened.

Also him getting elected would be a terrifying endorsement/validation/legitimation of a number of loathsome and terrifying views, which will likely have very serious material consequences even if he were unable to get any legislation passed or enact anything from the Oval Office.

it seems like his presidency would immediately consist of a bunch of legal battles about his insane executive orders, followed by his terrifying threats to somehow work around the judicial system

The real question is, does our system of government have enough checks and balances in place in order to prevent him from doing anything really catastrophic? Hell they've been able to prevent Obama from accomplishing a whole lot and his ideas were downright reasonable.

(of course, a Trump presidency is terrible in a million other ways, and Tomboto's claim that the debt rating would drop is almost certainly true, which would be a disaster)

If anything could stir bipartisanship in congress, it would be uniting to impeach Trump over something he does (take your pick!) within his first 9 months in office.

on day 1 trump will sign an executive order demanding that the credit rating increase

xp to me = Ted Cruz and his goons would lead the charge, and every person with a (D) behind their name would sign on.

Like for me the biggest disconnect is that the POTUS may be the most criticized person on the planet (whoever it is) and there are hundreds of examples of Trump being unable to take any criticism whatsoever

He's Putin with ridiculous hair.

Ted Cruz doesn't really have goons, but I can see Paul Ryan taking that role.

ted cruz is his own goon

Goos thoughts tombot. Makes sense that Putin would try to undermine the democrats via hacking/wikileaks

tom otm basically which i think will become clearer and become a lot of hill strategy as we go into the fall

For the sort of voter who finds Trump palatable, the idea of our debt rating being downgraded would be so remote from their concerns that Trump could simply flip it and make it a point of pride that the USA is the best and most powerful country in the world and can thumb its nose at debt ratings. Kind of like with Brexit voters.

idk, some voters are probably just voting for him bc he is a republican.

i talk to people who don't recognize trump's uniqueness

people who don't recognize Trump's uniqueness are not going to recognize the importance of debt ratings either

I'm still blown away by the absolute ignorance required to vote Trump. Either you'd really have to have no idea how the world, let alone America, works, or you'd have to completely not care, and with every interview of a Trump voter I hear, it sounds like a scary combination of these two things. Factor in Trump's near complete lack of details to date - he'll make America great/strong/rich though sheer force of will, it seems - and it's like watching people ride the world's biggest escalator to nowhere.
https://mollylauterbach.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/ic6gn6e0tapnh.gif

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-nato-we-have-to-walk

Is this shit for real? Was he actually referring specifically to NATO when he said they don't pay us enough?

he wants to run the US military like the mafia. we will protect their allies..... if they pay up

wtf is he even talking about?

oh, i guess this stuff: http://www.wsj.com/articles/nato-calls-for-rise-in-defence-spending-by-alliance-members-1434978193

lol:

Jonah Goldberg Retweeted
Garry Kasparov
✔
@Kasparov63

Bernie Sanders lost, but it’s a serious worry for America that he will have more capable followers & that Socialism is being normalized.
3m

you might just say we are all "pawns" to him, right Garry?

eff garry kasparov

eff chess

maybe it's time for Mr Kasparov to check...
...
...
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his privilege

Socialism is pretty normalized in every western European country, Garry. So your worrying need to broaden considerably. I suggest moving to a 20-hour day of worrying to make up for lost time.

man alive A+/gold star/nobel prize

Kasparov is genuinely bonkers and appears to believe in the Phantom Time Hypothethis iirc.

lkjjklgfdlk;jklcvfblvn.m,v .m,kl;mklnsdm,vxcmnvxljkjkllkjljkljjjkljkl

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/09/trumps-intellectuals/492752/

Have America’s leaders really “abandoned the basic principles of constitutional governance”? Masugi directs readers desiring amplification to something called the “Journal of American Greatness.” Noonan does too. She calls the journal “a sophisticated, rather brilliant and anonymous website that is using this Trumpian moment to break out of the enforced conservative orthodoxy of the past 15 years.”

That’s one way of describing it. During its four months of life, the “Journal of American Greatness”—which featured a collection of writers with classical pseudonyms and an affinity for the German American political theorist Leo Strauss—made a highbrow case for overthrowing America’s existing political order and replacing it with the raw, dynamic, intoxicating energy of Donald Trump. The journal shuttered itself in June after some of its contributors grew worried that their identities would be exposed. But the conservative author Steven Hayward, who knows several of its authors, predicts that they will continue publishing in other venues. Already, he says, they have received several offers for book contracts.

The “Journal of American Greatness” makes explicit what Noonan, Hanson, and Gingrich imply: that America’s current system of government is illegitimate. One article declares, “The digits of one hand suffice to count all of the truly committed defenders of American sovereignty, liberty, and nationhood in Congress.” A second asserts that the United States is “post-Constitutional.” A third accuses Washington conservatives of a “decadence so deep that it would take some Oliver Cromwell to puncture.”

Sounds v dark enlightenment

*rolls eyes* strauss luvrs *makes jerkoff motion*

Trump proves how useless Language is.

it's a virus i hear

I appreciate the sentiment, but Trump's single example cannot prove such a generality.

idk man I don't think proof matters very much when language is useless

especially sentences

trump never forms recognizable sentences, which right there tends to reduce the usefulness of his Language imo

Nothing is real, everything is permitted, man

I abide by the laws of physics.

Sure, the ones you know about

Trump is perfectly fluent in the contemporary language of images, which matters to a certain number of likely voters, though I guess we'll have to wait until after the first debate to see exactly how much it matters to how many

every day since reading it over the summer, I feel more deeply the truth of Vilem Flusser's pessimistic 1987 work, Does Writing Have A Future?

btw you heard it here first: Trump will resoundingly lose the debate among people who actually watch it, but will eke out a narrow victory in the polls overall once the shitty memes and lies start circulating (and really, any sign of life from the candidate or his campaign will suffice to meet the historically low expectations they face coming in to the event)

MIchiko Kakutani found a loophole in godwin's law: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/books/hitler-ascent-volker-ullrich.html

Donald Trump is not a Fascist, a truth so obvious as to be worth the clusterfuck that's about to ensue
― Coombesbat 18 (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, December 23, 2015 1:42 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not over yet of course but idk if it was worth it

i thought that hitler book review was hysterical and pretty blatant

yeah it's pretty on the nose

just gon' leave this here

http://gothamist.com/2016/10/11/talking_trump_zoltar_machine.php#photo-1