Push, you do a pretty good job of being consistent. Being consistent often puts you into a position where you have to defend people you disagree with.
I don’t support Trump, but constantly find myself defending him, which in turn makes me look like a supporter. An example. Trump says there are illegal immigrants bringing drugs and committing crimes in the U.S. This is absolutely true. But the media spins it “Trump says all immigrants are criminals.” “Trump makes racist comments about immigrants.” Point out the distortion and you have become a racist Trump supporter/“enabler.”
Many people find it hard to grasp the difference. In their minds not condemning the fictitious or skewed automatically brands you a supporter. Mention that the UV rape case was a false story and you’re blasted with “You don’t care about campus rape!” Unfortunately, the severity of the accusation continues to be more important than the facts.
What? No. Follow along. The libel laws thing satisfies one of the conditions, a condition which you yourself brought into question. “Fascism cannot exist without a certain degree of dictatorial powers being in place” is something you tried in objection to the (correct) position that Trump is creepily far along the fascism spectrum. I responded to your criticism by showing it to be the case that Trump is totally on board with “a certain degree of dictatorial powers being in place,” thus nullifying your objection.
What is dumb is that he went much further than that, as you are aware. Take a choice little morsel of idiocy he deemed so important as to include it among the opening statements of his candidacy:
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
When these words ignited controversy, you tried to defend them by suggesting that Trump had said “their rapists” rather than “they’re rapists,” implicitly nodding to and accepting the fact that “[they are] rapists” would be a ludicrous, xenophobic choice of phrase. Your suggestion lost out when the Trump campaign issued a “they’re” transcription (not that we needed that, as the syntax and grammar were clear). Importantly, Trump was lying: the strong claim “they’re rapists” and the weak hedge “some, I assume, are good people” unarguably lead, as co-propositions, to the conclusion that the people in question are more likely to be rapists than good people. This is not true, and there is no country on the planet the immigrants from which commit rape at anything remotely approaching such a rate.
Lying like an idiot about immigrants in order to make them seem worse than they really are: this is idiotic xenophobia, another condition for fascism. Another note hit, to go along with dictatorial tendencies and palingenetic nationalism. Maybe Trump is just a plain fuckin’ fascist after all. no “tendencies” needed. Either way, he is making PWI boring.
Nope. “Soundbites” are all we have, because all these people are doing is talking about what they want to do as president. Yours is a nonsensical objection, because, in fact, words have meaning. The words reproduced above – among the relatively few deemed by Trump worthy of forming the foundation of his candidacy – have a mendaciously xenophobic meaning, as I have shown beyond doubt. Thus, Trump’s candidacy has, literally from day one, been shrouded in a deliberate xenophobia, an effect caused and only caused by the literal words that came out of Trump’s mouth. There isn’t any question about this, and, again, it’s but another fascist note hit by the steaming pile of trash and shit that has been this candidacy and its popular support.
This is what I mean by boring: there is no question about any of this. It would be interesting to weigh Rubio, Cruz, and Clinton against each other. It is not interesting to evaluate Trump, just as it is not interesting to evaluate the mood-enhancing effect of colon cancer. It is simply too easy. What needed to be demonstrated here has been demonstrated. When the objection is But that’s just something Trump said!!, you know one side is trying to argue that the sky is not in fact blue.
I dunno if the below makes Trump a fascist, but it’s abhorrent and definitely not in keeping with American ideals.
“You look at the attack in California the other day numerous people, including the mother that knew what was going on. They saw a pipe bomb sitting all over the floor. They saw ammunition all over the place. They knew exactly what was going on."
“I would be very, very firm with families. Frankly, that will make people think, because they may not care much about their lives, but they do care, believe it or not, about their families’ lives.”
“With the terrorists, you have to take out their families,” Trump said during a “Fox & Friends” interview.
“When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families,” he repeated. “They care about their lives, don’t kid yourselves. But they say they don’t care about their lives. You have to take out their families.”
Except that he’s not, a fact which will be made very clear if the Northeastern states get a chance to choose between Trump and someone else in a general election. In fact, taking the state of New York as an example, Trump will win only in northern and western rural counties populated by fat, uneducated yokels – the kinds of places where failure to denounce the Klan on attempt number one is not necessarily a big deal (there are plenty of places like that in New York). He will however, win entire states in the South and Bible Belt, a fact which tells us exactly whom this dunce shares political sensibilities with.
Hey, I have never been one to pretend not to be right about something. I would admire that quality in Trump – if he could ever manage to be right about something.