Comment

A Doctor Reacts to Trump's Dangerous Dog and Pony Show: 'It's All Propaganda'

218
retired cynic8/25/2020 9:10:57 am PDT

“Twelve More Years” by Jeff Sharlet, Vanity Fair

The media shrugs, yet again, as Trump makes extremist comments. It’s just a “provocation”—until it isn’t.

We tell ourselves Trump is too lazy, too incompetent, too fixated by his own image on the screen to look past it to fascism. Not just the gestures—those he’s already proved himself capable of—but the real deal, the full-fledged authoritarianism he’s teased in Portland and on the border and nearly every time he takes the podium. And it’s true—Trump lacks the drive of Mussolini or the will of Putin. He won’t seize that kind of power. He’s not actually that bold. But he’ll take it if he can. If it’s easy. Inertia, the tendency of things in motion to remain in motion, will carry him there if we don’t apply friction every inch of the way.