Hello, happy Tuesday. There are 20 days until the election, and today we’re talking about the F-word. Fear, fascism, and the fact that it has become the dirtiest word in the American vernacular.

In 2018, many of us (Apparently about 50% of us) Disgusted when Trump called El Salvador, Haiti, and some African countries “shithole countries,” he began experimenting with rhetoric that black and brown immigrants were dangerous.

Although it had not yet been widely reported, President Trump had already begun a brutal and systematic policy of forcibly separating children from their parents at the border. This was a tactic aimed at stopping families from coming to the United States without documentation, but it left thousands of parents stranded. There is no way to find a place to stay, let alone reunite with your children.

Of course, the cruelty was the point, not the by-products. But six years ago, we were much younger and naive. So we carried on thinking it couldn’t get any worse.

This year, he once again targeted Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, with the help of rap cum attack dog J.D. Vance. There’s no need to repeat the false claims about pet kebabbing, but it’s safe to say that this once sleepy Midwestern town will forever be associated with this bilious lie.

I believed Springfield was the low point of the election. It’s foolish, but this week President Trump has escalated his angry and violent rhetoric to such alarming levels that we cannot allow headlight defenses to block condemnation. .

“Liberation Day”

President Trump has long argued that the United States is “invaded” and “occupied” by immigrants.

More recently, he has begun calling Nov. 5, the day of the election he hopes to win, “Liberation Day,” as if the military would storm the beaches of Corpus Christi.

“We are now known around the world as Occupied America…But to all of you here in Colorado, and to all of you across the United States, I take this oath: On November 5, 2024, the United States of America It’s Liberation Day.” I will rescue Aurora and all the towns that have been invaded and conquered. And we will put these heinous, bloodthirsty criminals behind bars or drive them out of the country once and for all. ” President Trump wrote on social media: last week.

But he didn’t stop there. On Fox News on Sunday, he threatened to use the military against Americans who opposed him. President Trump told Fox host Maria Bartiromo about the possibility of post-election violence, saying the greatest threat to the United States is “people from within” and that he may have to respond with force. insisted.

“It could very easily be handled by the National Guard if necessary, or by the military if it was really necessary, because they can’t allow that to happen,” Trump said.

election chaos

But fascism is a big word, and many people wince when they hear it. Very nice.

What if Trump isn’t preparing to rain down the big “F” fascism on us? If it promotes the agenda of something smaller but no less uglier: a white Christian agenda, staffed by Vance-type people who don’t care about greedy, corrupt leaders; What if it was authoritarianism, perhaps driven by ego and greed?

Joan Donovan is an assistant professor of journalism at Boston University and an expert on extremism. Her recent study examined the legal filings of participants in the January 6 riot and found that 20% of them went to the Capitol believing they were told to go by President Trump.

Donovan argues that President Trump is “borrowing” strategies from his administration. Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines.

Duterte came to power on a platform of crushing the elite, alleviating poverty, ending government corruption, and solving the country’s drug problem – by any means necessary.

“Funeral halls will be full,” President Duterte promised. and they.

Mr. Donovan said that Mr. Duterte, like Mr. Trump, “demonizes the ‘debris of humanity'” and persuades people that the strong, without fearing the boundaries of the law, is the only way to save the country from catastrophic destruction. He points out that he was trying to convince her.

musk factor

But Trump is not the only person who would cross the border under this plan.

Whether billionaire Elon Musk is over-propaganda in the social media cesspool, so are his most ardent supporters. Attitude toward proposed work that would gut federal services At the Ministry of Government Efficiency with an Orwellian name, or a guy with a gun helping clear out undesirables in places they shouldn’t be.

Donovan said that in taking matters into their own hands, “they are actually responding to this rhetoric and truly believe they are within the law.”

In North Carolina, government aid workers withdrew over the weekend after reports that National Guard troops encountered armed militias “hunting” Federal Emergency Management Agency personnel, according to the Washington Post. I was forced to.

It turned out to be a hoax in itself. But on Monday, authorities arrested a man armed with a rifle and handgun whose threats against FEMA sparked a false report of a militia group.

The fear and uncertainty gripping the disaster areas is a direct result of right-wing rhetoric that goes so far as to claim that the federal government is expropriating the land of disaster victims who have lost their homes and businesses.

North Carolina and Springfield are disturbing evidence that even if many of us don’t take President Trump seriously, many others do. There is an urgent need to listen and understand what President Trump has to say, even if we don’t want to.

Look at Fox. No, really

So what should democracy-loving Americans, whether Republican or Democrat, do?

We have to listen to Trump.

If you don’t know what MAGA people are saying and believing, you won’t be able to see the full picture of what’s going on. If you don’t pay attention to the lies President Trump is spewing about FEMA, you won’t understand how serious it is that a lone man with a gun is threatening aid workers.

The man is the intended result. He is a man so divorced from our shared reality that no unbiased facts can shake him from fear, anger, or devotion.

We’re likely to see more of these desperate Americans in the coming days, armed and unarmed.

In Congress, state governments, and local election boards, MAGA believers are being asked to prepare for elections based on the belief that fraud is inevitable and that President Trump needs their help.

Those demands include going to polling places to monitor and even record voters, exposing voter fraud that they strongly believe the last election was stolen. They are being asked to monitor poll workers as they open mail-in ballots, check signatures to the extent allowed by election officials and look for fraud. They are being asked to keep a close eye on black and brown people who they believe are being paid by Democrats or forced to vote illegally.

“One of the biggest examples of the weaponization of the Department of Justice is the fact that it is suing the state of Virginia to restore to the voter rolls all illegal voters who were completely exposed and removed by Governor Glenn Youngkin’s significant efforts. “Obviously this was done to allow for fraud in the election. So sad! What happened to our once great country?” Trump said this week. I wrote this on the “Truth Social” website.

As Donovan puts it, we are in an information war with “real-time attacks on facts.” As we face barrage after barrage of harmful lies, some of us take each bullet as a blessing and embrace the alternate reality of America being destroyed by diversity. Some have wholeheartedly embraced a twisted mission to save America through hatred.

“This is a danger to the very practice of democracy,” Donovan said of the persistent lies.

November 5th will not free us from this post-fact reality. Elections don’t somehow defeat that.

But ignoring it is like turning your back on a loaded gun.

What else to read:

Must read: North Carolina authorities arrest armed man after threatening FEMA workers
Harsh reality: America is on the brink of a major political realignment. Already seen in Arizona
LA Times Feature: Man arrested at Trump rally denies assassination plot, threatens to sue Riverside County sheriff
stay golden,
Anita Chhabria

PS Goodbye, Lily, and thank you.

Lily Ledbetter, the Alabama grandmother who changed history by deciding that women should be paid the same as their male colleagues, died Saturday. The federal law that bears her name, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, was the first bill signed by then-President Obama.

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