Jim, if Trump *only* tweeted about baseball, he'd do a lot less damage.
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Originally Posted by Mark McDonnell
I'm not sure you can argue that people at the centre of the political spectrum are 'content to watch it happen' though.
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I argue this because they are vocally more concerned about the (rare, overblown) phenomenon of leftists on campus shutting down racist invited speakers than they are about far-right terrorists literally murdering people. I argue this because the press (which is basically centrist, outside of Fox News), continually gives lovely puff profiles to far-right ideologues (just as they did in the 1930s when Hitler was consolidating power, btw). I argue this because they are more vocally outraged about leftists yelling at Ted Cruz when he tries to eat at a restaurant than they are about the Republicans stealing children from their parents and putting them in cages. Do the centrists feel horrified by yesterday's events? I'm sure they do. They're not monsters. Do I have any confidence that they will do anything whatsoever to stop the Republicans, who at this point are a fascist party? It was hard to type that, it's such a laughable idea.
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Originally Posted by Mark McDonnell
US politics does baffle me. Where is your equivalent of our 'leader of the opposition'? Do the Democrats have a leader, a figurehead? It seems that all efforts by that party must be in reaching those 40 something percent of people who didn't vote at all in the last election.
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No, they don't have a leader. When they're not busy completely failing to stand up to Trump in any meaningful way (though, granted, Trump controls every branch of government; if they make gains in November maybe they'll be less useless), they're currently doing all they can to refuse to learn any lessons from the 2016 election. They have no identity besides not being Trump. Rather than move at all to the left to win over those who didn't vote in 2016, they'd rather try to win over the white working class votes who switched to Trump from Obama, because they (wrongly) think that was the difference maker in 2016. They'll probably run an empty suit like Cory Booker in 2020, and lose.
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Originally Posted by Mark McDonnell
Trump and his enablers are despicable, but you're a long way yet from fascism.
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The Holocaust historians I've seen analyze our current situation disagree. The philosopher I know who just wrote a book on fascism disagrees. I hope you are right, but I doubt it.