The Terrible Potential of Trump.

I was as surprised as anyone else, when polls showed Donald Trump as the frontrunner...in spite of the GOP “establishment's” efforts at putting him back in his bottle.
Here is the quintessential Tea Party Great Leader...almost messianic...the One they've been waiting for.
After almost seven years of Denials and Coded Language and Euphemism, twisting themselves into knots to try to put the Tea back where it came from...to somehow confuse everyone enough that we wouldn't see what the Tea Movement was really all about...perhaps the elevation of Trump will finally overwhelm those efforts.
“Mainstream” Republicans...which includes folks like Ted Cruz(ha!)...at first dismissed Trump's outrageousness as somehow anomalous...
Some still do.
Cruz and others have given in, after looking at the latest polls, and embraced the message of Trump.
Here is Berzelius (“Buzz”) Windrip, made manifest.
An ideologue par excellence.
Most folks that I know on-line who are of the Right are for just about everyone else except Trump.
Jeb Bush is the current favorite.
But in the Real World of the Texas Hill Country, it's Trump.
I've overheard his name, in a positive manner, in gas stations and feed stores and in the produce aisle.
He's mentioned with a sense of hope and vengeance in the places on-line where the Locals go, and in which I lurk.
His Message could be lifted right out of Sinclair Lewis' terrifying warning of a book, “It Can't Happen Here”.
Indeed, it is as if Trump and whomever advises him took Umberto Eco's and Paxton's taxonomy of Fascism and by their Dark Arts summoned them into corporeal form.
Now, the Gerrymandering and tainted Voting Machines and Voter Suppression may have lost their luster for the Establishment of the GOP.
Tea was created and enraged and set loose,and this Creature has not only attacked all things Liberal...as intended...it has also turned on it's would-be Masters.
For 6 years, those Masters have attempted to keep a hold on the reins of their Vicious Pets, with decreasing effectiveness.
The Beast managed to get itself into the Halls of Power, and into Leadership Positions, and has effectively escaped the Paddock.
A True Tea Party President is the last thing the Masters wanted...the Beast was supposed to work for them, after all...help them maintain their increasingly tenuous hold on relevance.
At the same time, the Democrats are beginning their own Civil War...the Corpo-Dems, inheritors of the old DLC, are up against a real Socialist...with an effective Populist Message.
The similarities to Germany, 1929, are striking.
There are also parallels to the slow motion Collapse of Rome.
The latter took several Centuries to fall to pieces;the former, under 20 years.
Look to Napoleon, as well.
If you are in a Tea-colored area, pay attention.
Listen in the grocery store, watch the body language.
If you are in one of the more Liberal areas, stay there.
Liberals in the Occupied Zones will need a place to run to.
(it's a big book, but I encourage everyone to read William Shirer's 'Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'.
A good companion is “They Thought They Were Free...”, and Sinclair Lewis' book, mentioned above.)
For all of you Hidden Liberals in the Red Zones, keep a diary...hide it if you must...or stick it online on an anonymous blog.
Feral Journalists will be important, because I think we may be heading towards interesting and illuminating times.
“Apocalypse” does not denote the “End of the World”, outside of our ignorant popular culture: it instead means,”Pulling Aside the Veil”...Revealing the Reality of things.
I think a lot of our worst suspicions will soon be confirmed...all those things that polite civility* and Godwin's Law have prevented us from saying for so long.
(* I've encountered vanishingly few people of the Right who have practiced these niceties, but a great many who have ignored them totally, in order to make Liberals into the Proto-Fascists.)

The Great Three Legged Stool of the American Right...composed of the “Establishment”, the Libertarians and the “Christian Right”...that's been in place since the mid 1970's, has been getting more and more unstable.
Tea is a coalition of the Christian Right, and that portion of the Libertarian Wing that is on the lower end of the intelligence scale-- Hacks, in other words.
The Libertarian Lumpenproletariat, the Anti-Government, the Neo-Confederates, and the most vocal and incoherent of the Christo-Fascists are feeling Empowered right now.(How many states have their boys in power, right now?)
At least Consciously.
Unconsciously, they are secretly terrified of losing their Pride of Place in American Society.
California became Majority Hispanic just the other day...Kansas is not a Randian Paradise...nor are any of the other states where the Right has been in charge.
Greece is (hopefully) contributing dramatically to the message, already articulated by such diverse places as Iceland and Argentine and Bolivia, that Neoliberalism is not the only way....Thank heavens, because it doesn't seem to work as advertised.
Turns out that there are Alternatives(see”TINA-Margaret Thatcher”).
Gay People can get married, Obamacare still lives, and there is a growing movement of Black Folks and their Allies to finish killing Jim Crow.
Things look shaky from the American Right's perspective.
They have convinced themselves(with considerable help from the Establishment Right) that Obama is the AntiChrist, inflicting Communism upon the body of America.
Now Left Wing Christians are stepping up and challenging their Righty Brethren for their Pretend Martyrdom, attempting at long last to wrest total control of the public face of Christiandom from the most unChristlike people on the planet.
The Pope has joined the fray.
This is all perceived as a Resurgent Left...which, in a way, it is; but it is also something more: I think of it as a further Normalisation of a few more of the Ideals of the Left.
The seeds of this have been percolating away in corners since the Right's Counterrevolution began...the 60's are rippling around us again, after all these years.
These myriad phenomena, and more, are a Felt Thing on the Right...they feel it in their bones, and after all the remarkably long-lived Incoherence, it is taking shape.
Go you now and Lurk in their Fora.
Look to the Comments from ordinary folks.
And Eavesdrop!
If you're in the Red Zone, the proof is all around you.
“Let him who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
….......................................

Fascism has no easy and comfortable Antonym.

Anti-Fascism will have to serve.
“Liberal” and “Progressive” long ago were corrupted.
I've tried to reclaim them, as have many others, but they no longer contain the Unifying connotations that they once did.
“Democrat”, too...by the fault of the same Mindfuck Machine, as well as by movers and shakers within the Democratic Party who think it Prudent to continue to veer Rightward.
The word “Libertarian” also has diminished, and “Right Wing” has accreted to the front end of it.
I have had giddy thought lately that “Socialism”, or at least “Social Democrat” would have purchase...that would be sweet!...but it is hardly a done deal.
“Anti-Fascist” is what I'll be, for the time being.
Evidence that the Right, at least the Establishment and the Christians, are essentially Fascist is all around us...and ever more Visible.
The Libertarians are tying themselves in knots, rhetorically, after so many of their former exemplary Models have gone awry: they are having pains to justify more “reform”. At some point, the Business Class...the Uber-Rich....1% who run everything, will be forced to make a Choice(heretikos).
If they see outright Fascism, with a decidedly Handmaid's Tale-bent, as a thing they could live with, and even use to their advantage, that's which side they will choose.
Hyper-Militant, Xeno-Phobic, Racist, with a visceral Hatred of Muslims, Immigrants, and everybody else.
Subject to Jingoism, they will fling themselves on any enemy presented convincingly to them...the Boil is on the verge of popping.
All it will take is a Singular Event, of sufficient size and emotional content, to prick that membrane.