Fortunate Son

I'm not going to comment about this, not really. I'm just going to point you towards this post at Stonekettle Station. Read it. Read it!

Note that the post isn't necessarily going where you might think it's going. I'd like to quote the last two lines, because I feel exactly the same way. But read the whole thing. You won't get the ending without that.

Also, note that much of Jim Wright's background is similar to my own - up until he joined the military, at least (at which point our stories definitely diverge). I'm a little older than him. I'm also a straight white man, but I grew up watching those old TV shows myself.

And I lived in a small town that was 100% white and 100% Christian (as far as I knew, at least). Even when we went to a larger town for high school, all of my classmates were 100% white all through high school. I'd never even met a black person until college.

I've got a good life. I retired at 55, and I do whatever I want. Do you think I don't know how privileged my life has been? I've seen it all my life. Even as a child, I saw how differently I was treated because I was a boy. Later, I realized how privileged I'd been in other ways, too.

We weren't rich, but I'd always assumed that I'd go to college. I worked my way through college, but there was never any doubt in my mind that I would go there.

There was never any doubt in my mind that I could be whatever I wanted to be. (I didn't know what I wanted to be. That was the problem.)

OK, I am commenting, aren't I? Heh, heh. I don't mean to, but this just really struck home with me. Read the post. Jim Wright says it far better than I could. Optimism shouldn't be just the privilege of some of us!

Five misconceptions about undocumented immigrants

These are good points to keep in mind, don't you think?

Arab "sex mob" story wasn't true

These days, deliberate lying about immigrants and refugees seems to be more widespread than it's ever been - at least, since the days of Nazi Germany.

From the Washington Post:

On Feb. 6, Germany's most-read newspaper reported that dozens of Arab men, presumed to be refugees, had rampaged through the city of Frankfurt on New Year's Eve. The men were said to have sexually assaulted women as they went through the streets; the newspaper dubbed them the Fressgass “sex mob,” referring to an upmarket shopping street in the city.

Bild's report sparked widespread concern in Germany. The nation has taken in millions of migrants over the past few years, and there had been reports of a similar incidents in Cologne and other cities the previous New Year's Eve.

But police investigating the crime now say that the allegations included in the article are “without foundation.”

According to the Frankfurter Rundschau, the witnesses who spoke to reporters may be investigated themselves. Bild has now deleted the story from its website. The paper's online editor in chief on Tuesday said that the company apologized “for our own work.”

It's admirable that the newspaper apologized for the false story and deleted it from their website. But that won't undo the damage that it's done - and that it will continue to do.

These kinds of stories never die. They just continue to get passed around by people who don't know that they're false and by people who do know they're false but are fine with deliberately lying to push their ideological agenda.

There have been plenty of false stories about refugees and migrants in Germany over the past few years, in large part a reflection of divisive political views on the issue within the country and the increasingly fragmented world of online media. They include the story of the “Allahu akbar”-chanting mob that set Germany’s oldest church alight (quickly proved false), for example, or the refugee who took a selfie with German Chancellor Angela Merkel who was accused of terrorism links (again false).

But most of these stories have been driven by social media or spread by ideological websites like Breitbart.

Fox News was bad enough. Now we've got Breitbart. Not only that, Breitbart is in the White House, advising Donald Trump. Breitbart has been given political power at the highest levels of our government. Lying racists have taken control of America.

The not-a-Muslim-ban Muslim ban

I'm a little late with this, but when it comes to Donald Trump, the crazy never stops coming. It's depressing and tiring.

Luckily, there's Samantha Bee, who seems to have enough energy for all of us.

Can you hear the stormtroopers marching?

(Mike Luckovich)

Yeah, there's an avalanche of crazy coming from the Trump campaign. Nevertheless, IMHO, this hasn't received nearly enough attention:

There's a new conspiracy theory rapidly gaining traction among Trump supporters about the origin of the 'Access Hollywood' Trump tape which triggered days of new allegations about Donald Trump's alleged history of sexual abuse. The conspiracy theory is rapidly taking on an explicitly anti-Semitic character. As far as I can see it has not been pushed by the Trump campaign itself, at least not publicly. But it's catching fire with numerous supporters and surrogates - most notably Jerry Falwell Jr, a key Trump supporter among evangelicals and President of Liberty University, the school founded by his father.

The claim is also being pushed by Breitbart and David Duke in various neo-Nazi web forums. Notably, in recent months Breitbart, with which the Trump campaign has now effectively merged, has itself more openly embraced anti-Semitism.

You can see the details of the story in our write up here. The claim is that Dan Senor, a prominent GOP political operative, who is Jewish and married to former television reporter Campbell Brown, is behind the tape disclosure and part of a plot of "GOP elites" to destroy Donald Trump. In other words, in this conspiracy theory, Senor is now cast as the Jewish "traitor" working for the conspiracy of political elites, international financiers and the media who Trumped railed against today in his speech.

I've written before about the radicalizing tendencies of the Trump campaign. Avowed anti-Semitic supporters are brought into the mainstream. Trump bellows about conspiracies of traitorous elites and global financiers - charges which don't mention Jews explicitly but which closely follow the themes, vocabulary and villains of traditional anti-Semitic agitation. Then rabid Trump supporters who may not previously have thought in anti-Semitic terms or may have held only latent hostility toward Jews get swept into embracing and propagating anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and political agitation.

Frightening, isn't it? I've seen this antisemitism online, though admittedly not as frequently as general racism and... absolutely hysterical misogyny. Of course, I don't frequent neo-Nazi websites, either. What I see is just what leaks out from them.

Still, it's very clear that Donald Trump is preparing his supporters for a loss next month. And being Trump, none of it is going to be his fault. He's been talking about rigged elections for a long time, and about how the media are against him. But now, mainstream Republicans are part of the 'conspiracy' that's assaulting poor, defenseless Donald Trump.

His supporters are going to be looking for scapegoats. After all, Trump is a 'winner,' right? Just ask him. And winners can't lose a fair fight. Between Muslims, Jews, African-Americans, Hispanics, women, the media, Democrats, and now mainstream Republicans, there are a lot of people on Trump's enemies list. Who knows what to expect?

At best, after the election, Trump is going to milk his diehard supporters for every dime he can get from them, and the Republican Party will face even deeper divisions. Worse would be if his armed supporters try 'Second Amendment remedies,' which Trump has already encouraged. (We've seen other Republican politicians encourage violence, too, and also armed loons trying to intimidate the opposition.)

None of that would be as bad as Donald Trump actually becoming president, but it's not going to be good, regardless. I hope that Trump is absolutely humiliated in this election. That's the only possible way that he might crawl back into his hole (though it might be doubtful even then).

And I hope that the entire Republican Party faces a devastating defeat up and down the line. That's the only way they'll be willing to repudiate the dangerous, un-American 'Southern strategy' they've been using for the past few decades. Unfortunately, that does not look likely. (I don't understand it, I really don't.)

At any rate, this neo-Nazi stuff from Trump supporters is scary as hell - even for me, and as a straight white man, I probably have the least to worry about. We're at a critical point in American history.

Well, maybe we always are, I don't know. I hope I'm worrying for nothing.

(Mike Luckovich)

The dark history behind Donald Trump's nativist speech

Here's an experiment: Take Donald Trump's speech and everywhere he says "illegal immigrant," replace that with "Jew." How does it sound to you then?

It's the same thing, after all. Jews do commit crimes, sometimes - just like every other group of people. If he wanted, Trump could pick out and highlight horrific crimes from any group, including native-born white men like himself.

What Trump is saying is basically the same thing the Nazis said about the Jews in the 1930s. It's the same thing American bigots said about my Irish ancestors in the 1800's, not to mention about the Chinese, the Italians, the Eastern Europeans and, yes, the Jews. It's the same thing lynch mobs said about black people in the South.

As usual, Rachel Maddow does a great job here. We Americans are notoriously ignorant of history. In fact, all the right-wing cares about history is how they can distort it. But World War II wasn't that long ago, was it? Yes, it's history, but relatively recent history.

This isn't the first time we've seen such bigotry. We are a nation of immigrants, full of people who hate immigrants. Hell, Donald Trump's mother was an immigrant. It's almost funny.

Republican leaders brought Donald Trump on themselves with their notorious 'Southern strategy' of deliberately wooing white racists. For decades, they've been using bigotry for political advantage. And this has brought slime crawling out from under various dark, smelly rocks.

But I never thought I'd see one of our two main political parties nominate that slime as our next President of the United States.

Donald Trump's 'blood libel' hate speech

Well, after all this - the big buildup about 'softening' - Donald Trump finally gave his promised immigration speech and... he hasn't changed a thing about his blood soaked white nationalist politics, as Josh Marshall at TPM describes it.

Incredible, isn't it? Either this was a bamboozle from start to finish, or no one in the Trump campaign knows what's going to come out of his mouth, including Trump himself!

But that's not the part I want to talk about here. I want to point out this post, also by Josh Marshall, about Donald Trump's 'blood libel' hate speech, using victims as political props to ramp up anger and hatred. An excerpt:

If we went out and found victims who'd suffered grievously at the hands of Jews or blacks and paraded them around the country before angry crowds the wrongness and danger of doing so would be obvious. Now, you might say, that's not fair. American Jews and African-Americans are citizens, with as much right to be here as anyone else. But that's just a dodge. There's no evidence that undocumented immigrants commit more crimes than documented or naturalized immigrants. Indeed, there is solid evidence that immigrants commit fewer crimes than the native born. Simple logic tells us that undocumented immigrants face greater consequences for being apprehended by police and thus likely are more careful to avoid it. They're likely more apt to avoid contact with authorities than the rest of us.

There is a legitimate public policy question about how aggressive we should be in deporting those who our laws say should not be in the country in the first place. But the fact that some of them commit crimes is not relevant to the discussion. This is simply a way of whipping up irrational fear and hatred. Though I wouldn't use the word 'demonize', one could fairly argue that groups like MADD spent decades demonizing drunk drivers. But of course this is demonizing a specific activity which has caused thousands of deaths. The action itself is the cause of death and suffering. There is no comparable argument to be made about immigration status. It is simply blood libel and incitement.

Indeed, my hypothetical about Jews and African-Americans is no hypothetical. Anyone who is familiar with the history of the Jim Crow South or 1930s Germany and the centuries of anti-Semitism that preceded it will tell you that the celebration and valorization of victims was always a central part of sustaining bigotry, fear and oppression. We know now that many victims of lynching or blood libel were in fact wholly innocent. But of course not all of them were. The specific idea of ritual killing behind the phrase 'blood libel' was an anti-Semitic fantasy. But being members of an oppressed group is no exemption from human nature. There were blacks who raped and killed whites and Jews who raped and killed Christians. The valorization of victims was and is a way of provoking vicarious horror, rage, hate and finally violence whether specific individuals were guilty or not.

I must return to the point: the suffering of these exploited victims is real. Indeed, I'm no stranger to that pain. When I was a child I lost a beloved relative in an auto accident. I know from my experience the intense desire to find a scapegoat or someone to blame. I don't begrudge any of these families not only their agony but even their a desire to blame whole groups. Grief warps the mind. But there's no excuse for those who have themselves suffered nothing but exploit this suffering to propagate hate. That fact that we've become inured to this, that we now find it normal to see these cattle calls of grief and incitement as part of a political campaign is shocking and sickening. There's no other word for this but incitement and blood libel.

Watch Trump's speeches, with the yelling, the reddened face, the demand for vengeance and you see there's little to distinguish them from what we see at Aryan Nations or other white hate rallies that we all immediately recognize as reprehensible, wrong and frankly terrifying. This isn't 'rough' language or 'hard edged' rhetoric. It's hate speech. Precisely what policy solution Trump is calling for is almost beside the point. Indeed, it wouldn't be hate speech any less if Trump specified no policy solution at all.

This isn't normal. It was normal in the Jim Crow South, as it was in Eastern Europe for centuries. It's not normal in America in the 21st century. And yet it's become normalized. It's a mammoth failure of our political press. But it's not just theirs, ours. It's a collective failure that we're all responsible for. By any reasonable standard, Donald Trump's speech on Wednesday night should have ended the campaign, as should numerous other rallies where Trump has done more or less the same thing for months. There's a reason why the worst of the worst, the organized and avowed racists, were thrilled and almost giddy watching the spectacle. But it has become normalized. We do not even see it for what it is. It's like we've all been cast under a spell. That normalization will be with us long after this particular demagogue, Donald Trump, has left the stage. Call this what it is: it is hate speech, in its deepest and most dangerous form.

Sinclair Lewis once said, "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." That's what we're seeing in Donald Trump's Republican Party.

Indeed, it's even worse than that. We're seeing the rise of the American Nazi party, in all but name. We're seeing deliberate hate speech used to ramp up fear, bigotry, and hysterical anger. We saw the results of that in 1930s Germany. Heck, we saw the results of that in the American South for generations.

Donald Trump's hate speech will be a danger to America whether he wins or loses the election. We can only hope that sane Americans will get off their couches and actually vote - and thoroughly repudiate his campaign and his rhetoric. Hillary Clinton needs to win this in a landslide.

But whether she does or not, Trump's hate speech has already damaged our country. It's likely to incite violence. This isn't just a crazy white supremacist ranting to his fellow bigots. This is the Republican Party's candidate for President of the United States!

Hillary Clinton on Donald Trump

TPM posted the transcript of Hillary Clinton's speech in Reno, Nevada, yesterday, and you couldn't ask for a better take-down of Donald Trump. Really, she pulls no punches.

This is what needs to be said, over and over again. So I'm going to post a large part of it - because she really hammered him - here:

Everywhere I go, people tell me how concerned they are by the divisive rhetoric coming from my opponent in this election. I understand that concern because it’s like nothing we’ve heard before from a nominee for President of the United States from one of our two major parties.

From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia. He is taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican party. His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.

In just the past week, under the guise of ‘outreach’ to African Americans, Trump has stood up in front of largely white audiences and described black communities in such insulting and ignorant terms. ‘Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing. No homes. No ownership. Crime at levels nobody has seen.’ ‘Right now,’ he said, ‘you walk down the street and get shot.’ Those are his words.

But when I hear them, I think to myself how sad. Donald Trump misses so much he doesn’t see. This is a man who clearly doesn’t know about Black America and doesn’t care about Black America.

Donald Trump misses so much. He doesn’t see the success of black leaders in every field, the vibrancy of the black-owned businesses, or the strength of the black church. He doesn’t see the excellence of historically black colleges and universities or the pride of black parents watching their children thrive. He apparently didn’t see Police Chief Brown on television after the murder of five of his officers conducting himself with such dignity.

And he certainly doesn’t have any solutions to take on the reality of systemic racism and create more equity and opportunity in communities of color and for every American.

It really does take a lot of nerve to ask people he’s ignored and mistreated for decades, ‘What do you have to lose?’ Because the answer is everything.

Now, Trump’s lack of knowledge or experience or solutions would be bad enough. But what he’s doing here is more sinister. Trump is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters.

It’s a disturbing preview of what kind of President he’d be.

And that’s what I want to make clear today: A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far, dark reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military. Ask yourself, if he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?

Now, I know that some people still want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. They hope that he will eventually reinvent himself – that there’s a kinder, gentler, more responsible Donald Trump waiting in the wings somewhere.

Because after all, it’s hard to believe anyone – let alone a nominee for president – could really believe all the things he says.

But here’s the hard truth, there is no other Donald Trump. This is it.

And Maya Angelou, a great American who I admire very much, she once said: ‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.’ Well, throughout his career and this campaign, Donald Trump has shown us exactly who he is. And I think we should believe him.

When he was getting his start in business, he was sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to black and Latino tenants. Their applications would be marked with a ‘C’ – ‘C’ for ‘colored’ – and then rejected. Three years later, the Justice Department took Trump back to court because he hadn’t changed.

And the pattern continued through the decades.

State regulators fined one of Trump’s casinos for repeatedly removing black dealers from the floor. No wonder the turnover rate for his minority employees was way above average.

And let’s not forget that Trump first gained political prominence leading the charge for the so-called ‘Birthers.’ He promoted the racist lie that President Obama is not really an American citizen – part of a sustained effort to delegitimize America’s first black President.

In 2015, Trump launched his own campaign for President with another racist lie. He described Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals. And he accused the Mexican government of actively sending them across the border. None of that is true.

Oh, and by the way, by the way, Mexico’s not paying for his wall either. If he ever tries to get it built, the American taxpayer will pay for it. We’ll be stuck with the bill.

But there has been a steady stream of bigotry coming from him.

We all remember when Trump said a distinguished federal judge born in Indiana couldn’t be trusted to do his job because, quote, ‘He’s a Mexican.’ Think about that. The man who today is the standard bearer of the Republican Party said a federal judge, who by the way, had a distinguished career, who had to go into hiding because Mexican drug gangs were after him, who has Mexican heritage but who just like me was born in this country, is somehow incapable solely because of his heritage. Even the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, described that as ‘the textbook definition of a racist comment.’

To this day, Trump has never apologized to Judge Curiel.

But for Trump, that is just par for the course.

This is someone who retweets white supremacists online, like the user who goes by the name ‘white-genocide-TM.’ Trump took this fringe bigot with a few dozen followers and spread his message to 11 million people.

His campaign famously posted an anti-Semitic image – a Star of David imposed over a sea of dollar bills – that first appeared on white supremacist websites.

The Trump campaign has also selected a prominent white nationalist leader as a delegate in California. And they only dropped him under pressure.

When asked in a nationally televised interview whether he would disavow the support of David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Trump wouldn’t do it. Only later, again under mounting pressure, did he backtrack.

And when Trump was asked about anti-Semitic slurs and death threats coming from his supporters, he refused to condemn them.

Through it all, he has continued pushing discredited conspiracy theories with racist undertones.

You remember, he said that thousands of American Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks. They didn’t.

He suggested that Senator Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. Perhaps in Trump’s mind, because Mr. Cruz was a Cuban immigrant, he must have had something to do with it. And there is absolutely, of course, no evidence of that.

Just recently, Trump claimed that President Obama founded ISIS. And then he repeated that over and over again.

His latest paranoid fever dream is about my health. All I can say is, Donald, dream on.

But, but my friends-- but my friends, this is what happens when you treat the National Enquirer like Gospel. They said in October I’d be dead in six months.

It’s also what happens when you listen to the radio host Alex Jones, who claims that 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombings were inside jobs. He even said, and this really is just so disgusting, he even said that the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were child actors and no one was actually killed there. I don’t know what actually happens in somebody’s mind or how dark their heart must be, to say something like that.

But Trump didn’t challenge those lies. He went on Jones’ show and said, ‘Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.’

This from the man who wants to be President of the United States.

I’ve stood by President Obama’s side as he made the toughest decisions a Commander-in-Chief has to make. In times of crisis, our country depends on steady leadership, clear thinking, calm judgment, because one wrong move can mean the difference between life and death. I know we have veterans here and I know we have families - mothers and spouses and children of people who are currently serving.

The last thing we need in the Situation Room is a loose cannon who can’t tell the difference, or doesn’t care to, between fact and fiction, and who buys so easily into racially-tinged rumors. Someone so detached from reality should never be in charge of making decisions that are as real as they come.

That is yet another reason why Donald Trump is simply temperamentally unfit to be President of the United States.

Now, I hear and I read some people who are saying that his bluster and bigotry is just over-heated campaign rhetoric – an outrageous person saying outrageous things for attention. But look at his policies. The ones that Trump has proposed, they would put prejudice into practice.

And don’t be distracted by his latest efforts to muddy the waters. He may have some new people putting new words in his mouth, but we know where he stands.

He would form a deportation force to round up millions of immigrants and kick them out of the country.

He’d abolish the bedrock constitutional principle that says if you’re born in the United States, you’re an American citizen. He says that children born to undocumented parents in America are ‘anchor babies’ and should be deported. Millions of them.

He’d ban Muslims around the world from entering our country just because of their religion.

Think about that for a minute. How would it actually work? People landing in U.S. airports would line up to get their passports stamped, just like they do now. But in Trump’s America, when they step up to the counter, the immigration officer would ask every single person, ‘What is your religion?’

And then what? What if someone says, ‘I’m a Christian,’ but the agent doesn’t believe him? Do they have to prove it? How would they do that?

Really, ever since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, America has distinguished itself as a haven for people fleeing religious persecution, believing in religious freedom and religious liberty. Under Donald Trump, America would distinguish itself as the only country in the world to impose a religious test at the border.

Now come to think of it, there actually may be one other place that does that. The so-called Islamic State. The territory ISIS controls. What a cruel irony that someone running for President would equate us with them.

Don’t worry, some will say, as President, Trump will be surrounded by smart advisors who will rein in his worst impulses.

So when a tweet gets under his skin and he wants to retaliate with a cruise missile, maybe cooler heads will convince him not to.

Well, maybe.

But look at who he’s put in charge of his campaign.

Trump likes to say he only hires the ‘best people.’ But he’s had to fire so many campaign managers it’s like an episode from the Apprentice. And the latest shake-up was designed to – quote – ‘Let Trump be Trump.’ So to do that, he hired Stephen Bannon, the head of a right-wing website, called Breitbart.com, as campaign CEO.

Now to give you a flavor of his work, here are a few headlines they’ve published. And I’m not making this up.

‘Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.’

‘Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?’

‘Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement’s Human Shield’

‘Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage.’

That one came shortly after the Charleston massacre, when Democrats and Republicans alike were doing everything they could to heal racial divides that Breitbart and Bannon tried to inflame.

Just imagine – Donald Trump reading that and thinking: ‘this is what I need more of in my campaign.’

Now Bannon has nasty things to say about pretty much everyone. This spring, he railed against Speaker Paul Ryan for, quote ‘rubbing his social-justice Catholicism in my nose every second.’ No wonder he’s gone to work for Trump – the only Presidential candidate ever to get into a public feud with the Pope.

It’s truly hard to believe, but according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, Breitbart embraces ‘ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right.’ This is not conservatism as we have known it, this is not Republicanism as we have known it. These are racist ideas. Race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim, anti-Immigrant, anti-women –– all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’

Now, Alt-Right is short for ‘Alternative Right.’ The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loose, but organized movement, mostly online, that ‘rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity.’

So the de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for this group. A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.

This is part of a broader story -- the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.

Just yesterday, one of Britain’s most prominent right-wing leaders, a man named, Nigel Farage, who stoked anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum to have Britain leave the European Union, campaigned with Donald Trump in Mississippi.

Farage has called for the bar of legal immigrants from public school and health services. Has said women, and I quote, ‘are worth less than men,’ and supports scrapping laws that prevent employers from discriminating based on race. That’s who Donald Trump wants by his side when he is addressing an audience of American voters.

And the grand godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism is Russian President Vladimir Putin. In fact, Farage regularly appears on Russian propaganda programs. Now he’s standing on the same stage as the Republican nominee. Trump himself heaps praise on Putin and embraces pro-Russian policies. He talks casually of abandoning our NATO allies, recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea, giving the Kremlin a free hand in Eastern Europe. American Presidents from Truman, to Reagan, to Bush and Clinton, to Obama, have rejected the kind of approach Trump is taking on Russia. And we should, too.

All of this adds up to something we have never seen before. Of course there’s always been a paranoid fringe in our politics, a lot of it rising from racial resentment. But it’s never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone. Until now.

On David Duke’s radio show the other day, the mood was jubilant. ‘We appear to have taken over the Republican Party,’ one white supremacist said. Duke laughed. ‘No, there’s still more work to do,’ he replied.

So no one should have any illusions about what’s really going on here. The names may have changed. Racists now call themselves ‘racialists.’ White supremacists now call themselves ‘white nationalists.’ The paranoid fringe now calls itself ‘alt-right.’ But the hate burns just as bright.

And now Trump is trying to rebrand himself as well. But don’t be fooled.

There’s an old Mexican proverb that says ‘Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are.’

But we know who Trump is. A few words on a teleprompter won’t change that.

He says he wants to ‘make America great again,’ but more and more it seems as though his real message seems to be ‘Make America hate again.’

And this isn’t just about one election. It’s about who we are as a nation. It’s about the kind of example we want to set for our children and grandchildren.

Next time you see Trump rant on television, think about all the children listening across America. Kids hear a lot more than we think.

Parents and teachers are already worrying about what they call the ‘Trump Effect.’ They report that bullying and harassment are on the rise in our schools, especially targeting students of color, Muslims, and immigrants. At a recent high school basketball game in Indiana, white students held up Trump signs and taunted Latino players on the opposing team with chants of ‘Build the wall!’ and ‘Speak English.’ After a similar incident in Iowa, one frustrated school principal said, ‘They see it in a presidential campaign and now it's OK for everyone to say this.’

We wouldn’t tolerate this kind of behavior before and we wouldn’t tolerate it in our own homes. And we shouldn’t stand for it in a presidential candidate.

My friends, this is a moment of reckoning for every Republican dismayed that the Party of Lincoln has become the Party of Trump. It’s a moment of reckoning for all of us who love our country and believe that America is better than this.

Twenty years ago, when Bob Dole accepted the Republican nomination, he pointed to the exits in the convention hall and told any racists in the Party to get out.

The week after 9/11, George W. Bush went to a mosque and declared for everyone to hear that Muslims ‘love America just as much as I do.’

In 2008, John McCain told his own supporters that they were wrong about the man he was trying to defeat. Senator McCain made sure they knew – Barack Obama, he said, is an American citizen and ‘a decent person.’

We need that kind of leadership again.

We can have our disagreements, and believe me, I understand that. I think that’s healthy. We need good debates, but we need to do it in a respectful way, not finger pointing and blaming, and stirring up this bigotry and prejudice.

Every day, more Americans are standing up and saying ‘enough is enough’ – including a lot of Republicans. And I am honored to have their support in this campaign.

And I promise you this: with your help, I will be a president for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. For those who vote for me and for those who vote against me. I will be a president for all Americans.

Because I truly believe we are stronger together.

This is a vision for the future rooted in our values and reflected in a rising generation of young people. The young people in America today are the most open, diverse, and connected generation we have ever seen.

How many of you saw any of the Olympics? Right? I was so proud, I always get so carried away whenever the Olympics are on. And you look at the diversity of our athletes - look at our fabulous Olympic team representing the United Stated of America. Ibtihaj Muhammad, an African-American Muslim from New Jersey, won the bronze medal in fencing with grace and skill. Would she even have a place in Donald Trump’s America?

And I will tell you, when I was growing up, in so many parts of our country, Simone Manuel wouldn’t have been allowed to swim in the same public pool as Katie Ledecky. And now together on our swimming team they’re winning Olympic medals as teammates.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think we have a person to waste. We want to build an America where everyone has a place. Where if you work hard and do your part you can get ahead and stay ahead. That’s the basic bargain of America. And we cannot get to where we need to be, unless we move forward together and stand up against prejudice and paranoia. And prove, again, that America is great because America is good.

Yeah, that's a very long excerpt - most of the speech, in fact. But I wanted to show how she kicks Donald Trump up one side and down the other.

She hits Trump where it hurts - his bigotry, his white supremacist supporters, his conspiracy theories, his 'loose cannon' behavior, his disorderly campaign, his alt-right campaign manager straight from Breitbart.com, his love affair with Vladimir Putin,... and then brings it all back to his racism, again, and its effect on the youth of our country.

Hillary Clinton deliberately woos Republicans with this speech, and I think she's wise to do so. I certainly don't want her moving any further right in her policies, but in a sane America, presidents come and go. What is happening in the Republican Party right now is not sane and not American.

___
PS. Well, it's un-American, which is not quite the same thing, I guess. Racism, sexism, and xenophobia have always been a part of America, but as we've progressed, it's been a part increasingly relegated to the loony fringe.

Unfortunately, thanks to the Republican Party's notorious 'Southern strategy' of deliberately wooing white racists, that fringe became concentrated in the GOP. And now it has taken over the party.

Republican leaders keep trying to use those people, just like they've long used bigotry to advance their own interests (primarily for the political power to cut taxes on the rich). But the tail is now wagging the dog.

It's one thing to push sexism, but now that's blowing up at Fox News, as their own female employees have finally had enough. It's one thing to push racism, but as Lee Atwater famously explained during the Reagan years, you have to be subtle about it. (And Donald Trump is anything but subtle.)

Republican leaders have long thought to use the crazies. And many of them are still thinking that way. Others simply don't see a way out of this trap they've made for themselves - a way out that doesn't involve personal sacrifice, at least. (If they cared more about our country than for their personal ambition, they wouldn't have made this deal with the Devil in the first place.)

And still others - after decades of relentlessly wooing racists, sexists, xenophobes, and religious nuts - are fully on-board with the crazy, themselves.

For all of them, it's still about winning elections. But at what cost? Their 'Southern strategy' worked great for decades - terrible for America, of course, but 'great' when it came to winning elections. But now they're looking at a situation that might be terrible for America and for their ability to hold political power.

Sometimes, when you're in a trap, you have to gnaw off your own foot to get free again. Even if it's a trap you set yourself, that might be the only choice. Donald Trump has to lose big if sane Republicans hope to get their party back again. Nothing less than that will do it.

Admittedly, even that might not do it - not immediately, at least. After all, Republican leaders have spent decades encouraging the crazy in their own party, so it might not be quick and easy to get rid of it again. But it's going to continue to get worse if they don't start now.

At what point will Republican leaders decide that their own ambition isn't worth the damage they're doing to America? Is there such a point? I hope so!

What next with Donald Trump?

Friday, I posted the video of a powerful speech given at the Democratic National Convention by the father of a U.S. army captain killed in Iraq.

So how did Donald Trump react to that? He has mocked the grieving mother of that American soldier:

Lawyer Khizr Khan gave a moving tribute to their son, Humayun, who received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart after he was killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2004. During the speech, Khan's wife, Ghazala, stood quietly by his side.

"If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say. You tell me," Trump said, in an interview with ABC's "This Week."

Ghazala Khan has said she didn't speak because she's still overwhelmed by her grief and can't even look at photos of her son without crying. ...

Trump's comments about Khan came a day after he criticized retired four-star Gen. John Allen and slammed a Colorado Springs, Colorado, fire marshal for capping attendance at the event. The fire marshal, Brett Lacey, was recently honored by the city as "Civilian of the Year" for his role in helping the wounded at a 2015 mass shooting at a local Planned Parenthood.

Is there no limit to how low Donald Trump can sink? Of course, I've been saying that about the Republican Party for years, and there's been no limit so far. I mean, look at their nominee for president.

And maybe I should note this, too, while I'm at it:

Senior Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, remained silent, as did vice presidential nominee Mike Pence.

The thing about Donald Trump is that everyone expects shit like this from him. His supporters cheer it. The media take it for granted. And by and large, other Republican leaders enable it, because winning the election is all that really matters to them.

When Trump makes outlandish remarks every single day, they cease to have any effect. Of course, he's a celebrity, and for a celebrity, no news is bad news. Being outrageous is the best way to remain a celebrity. Heck, it's won the Republican Party nomination for him. It's the 'reality TV' version of a presidential election.

And the media love it, because they're making money from it. They're not in business for their health, you know. The purpose of American media is to make a profit.

America is better than Donald Trump, but money and political power tend to be of more immediate importance to the people who have both riding on him.

And among the general public, there's enough ignorance, apathy, bigotry, and wishful-thinking to make this a close election. Not just on the right, either. In fact, this probably wouldn't be a close election if some liberals weren't completely clueless.

Nothing Donald Trump has said has hurt him. His demonstrable lies haven't hurt him. His bigotry hasn't hurt him. His refusal to release his tax returns (which would likely demonstrate that he's not as wealthy as he says he is, and maybe even reveal his connection to Russian oligarchs) hasn't hurt him.

His unprecedented comments about NATO haven't hurt him. His refusal to offer policy details hasn't hurt him. His many bankruptcies haven't hurt him. Donald Trump is just a big mouth with a comb-over. There's zero substance to him. And yet he's this close to becoming our next president.

I was astonished when George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004, after we already knew what a complete disaster he was. But I'm more astonished this year that someone like Donald Trump has a real, non-zero chance of becoming President of the United  States.

Six minutes of sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton

You know, they didn't even include most of the attacks on Hillary Clinton's appearance - hair, clothing, makeup, etc.

The media can't seem to get enough of criticizing her pantsuits. And recently, Elizabeth Warren appeared on stage with her, and all the media could talk about was how they were both wearing blue outfits.

Of course, we all know that, when it comes to female politicians, what really matters is their appearance, right?  LOL

President Obama stands up to Trump bigotry

Refreshing, isn't it? When did sanity become so refreshing?

But it's the age of Donald Trump. It's the age of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and many other Republican lunatics, who are encouraged by Republicans willing to use that insanity in order to advance their own political ambition, no matter what it does to our country.

Note my last post, where I pointed out Christian pastors who were praising the Orlando shooting. Well, the Bible does tell Christians to kill gay people. Like Muslim extremists, those Christian extremists take such primitive superstition seriously. Does Trump want to discriminate against Christians, too, then?

No, it's just bigotry. It's the unholy combination of bigotry and politics, that's all. Barack Obama has faced that for almost eight years now. He's got to be getting pretty sick of it, don't you think?

Trevor Noah addresses the Orlando shooting

These events are so sickening that I hate to talk about them at all, or even think about them. But what's especially sickening is that we never do anything about it.

Well, if a grade school could be shot up without America actually trying to do something about it, what would get us to take action?

Here's another perspective:



And re. that last video, check out what these Christian pastors say about the Orlando attack:

After 49 people were gunned down in an Orlando gay nightclub in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, pastors in California and Arizona praised the gunman for massacring “perverted predators” and “pedophiles.”

In Sacramento, Pastor Roger Jimenez of Verity Baptist Church said the killer succeeded in making Orlando safer.

“Are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?” Jimenez said in a sermon originally posted on YouTube. “Um no, I think that’s great! I think that helps society. I think Orlando, Florida is a little safer tonight.”

In the sermon, delivered just hours after the rampage on Sunday morning, Jimenez also said, “I wish the government would round them all up, put them up against a wall, put a firing squad in front of them and blow their brains out.”

Tempe, Arizona preacher Steven Anderson also rushed to praise the “good news” that “there are 50 less pedophiles in this world.” ...

"The bad news is that a lot of the homos in the bar are still alive, so they're going to continue to molest children and recruit children into their filthy homosexual lifestyle," he said, adding the attack would be used to attack Christians and push gun control.

Maybe Republicans would like to ban all Christians from entering America?

Owen Jones: the terrorism in Orlando will fail

Great message, isn't it?

We've been here before

Do women walk around naked in women's restrooms? Are there no doors on the stalls? Do you just sit side by side, chatting with your neighbor?

Indecent exposure is still a crime. Nothing about transgender policy would change that. So what's the problem?

Now, in a men's room, there are urinals. But for some reason, we don't hear about the problem of women standing beside a man at one of those. (Admittedly, I probably wouldn't notice, because I don't look at the people peeing beside me, let alone at their genitals!)

As Trevor Noah points out, we've been here before. We've been here when racists were outraged about the idea of sharing a restroom with a black person. We've been here when homophobes were outraged at the idea of sharing a restroom - or a shower - with a gay person. It's the same thing.

Well, not quite, because transgender people are a tiny fraction of the population. If you're not one of them, chances are good that you will never have a problem or even anything that you could imagine as a problem. Indeed, they've always existed, and we've never had a problem before now. Do you routinely inspect the genitals of every person you share a restroom with?

For transgender people, this is a problem. It's a problem they face every day. But for the rest of us, it's not. For the rest of us, it's just bigotry or acceptance.

PS. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend this video. Transgender rights haven't been on the radar for most of us for very long. Ignorance is understandable, but can - and should - be corrected.

Rising xenophobia

In another incident of hysteria and xenophobia - as we've seen in previous incidents like this one - a blonde passenger on an American airlines flight became suspicious of her seatmate:

On Thursday evening, a 40-year-old man — with dark, curly hair, olive skin and an exotic foreign accent — boarded a plane. It was a regional jet making a short, uneventful hop from Philadelphia to nearby Syracuse. ...

Had the crew or security members perhaps quickly googled this good-natured, bespectacled passenger before waylaying everyone for several hours, they might have learned that he — Guido Menzio — is a young but decorated Ivy League economist. And that he’s best known for his relatively technical work on search theory, which helped earn him a tenured associate professorship at the University of Pennsylvania as well as stints at Princeton and Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

They might even have discovered that last year he was awarded the prestigious Carlo Alberto Medal, given to the best Italian economist under 40. That’s right: He’s Italian, not Middle Eastern, or whatever heritage usually gets ethnically profiled on flights these days.

Menzio had been on the first leg of a connecting flight to Ontario, where he would give a talk at Queen’s University on a working paper he co-authored about menu costs and price dispersion. His nosy neighbor had spied him trying to work out some properties of the model of price-setting he was about to present. Perhaps she couldn’t differentiate between differential equations and Arabic.

Yes, that brilliant American passenger couldn't distinguish mathematics from Arabic. Not that it would have mattered if this man had been writing Arabic. So what? Not that it should have mattered if he'd been of Middle Eastern, rather than Italian, ancestry. What in the world has happened to us?

You can read the whole story here. But it's completely insane. Like Donald Trump's candidacy, it's a triumph of hysteria, xenophobia, and irrational fear over sanity, courage, and common sense.

Actual Islamic terrorists must be laughing their asses off. This is exactly what terrorism is designed to accomplish. It works best on cowards, because cowards overreact. And what better way to destroy America than to encourage America to destroy itself? (They must be overjoyed at the rise of Donald Trump.)

It's bad enough that we have to take our shoes off before boarding a plane, because one guy tried - unsuccessfully - to explode his shoes. And it was certainly disgusting that we were willing to torture prisoners of war because we were scared (or because the Bush Administration wanted to justify their invasion of Iraq, take your pick).

But this degree of hysteria is just ridiculous. Now an Italian economist can't even take a plane in America? Or anyone who speaks Arabic to a relative on a phone? Or any Muslim at all? (Or anyone who even looks Muslim?)

What has happened to the America I love?

Barack Obama dividing Americans

(Jim Morin)

On Wednesday, Barack Obama visited a mosque:

President Barack Obama said Wednesday he wanted to assure Muslim-Americans that they were an important part of the country’s successes despite the rhetoric coming from some Republican presidential candidates.

Obama delivered his comments in Maryland after meeting with Muslim leaders at the Islamic Society of Baltimore. It marked his first visit to an American mosque as commander-in-chief.

He said that he had two words for Muslim-Americans that he said they don't get to hear often enough: "Thank you," both for keeping the country together and serving their neighbors.

He noted that this is "a time of concern" and "of some fear" for Muslim communities across the United States, attributing some of it to the "inexcusable political rhetoric against Muslim-Americans that has no place in our country."

“We’re one American family and when any part of our family starts to feel separate or second class or targeted it tears at the very fabric of our nation," he said.

"We’re one American family and when any part of our family starts to feel separate or second class or targeted it tears at the very fabric of  our nation."

To Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio, that was Obama dividing us, "Always pitting people against each other." Funny, isn't it? It's just like how Barack Obama divided America by being black, I suppose.

Obama should have realized that many Americans hate and fear black people. So why divide us by being black?

Likewise, many Americans hate and fear Muslims, so why divide us by telling American Muslims that they're an equal part of our country, one part of the "American family"? That's just so divisive, isn't it? LOL

Republicans, on the other hand, know how to bring us all together. Like this Republican state representative in New Hampshire:

A Republican state representative in New Hampshire on Wednesday submitted testimony to a state House committee hearing arguing that giving public assistance to Muslims amounts to treason. ...

"Giving public benefits to any person or family that practices Islam is aiding and abetting the enemy. That is treason," [Ken] Weyler wrote in his testimony...

Yeah, why couldn't Barack Obama have united us by calling some Americans - including those who've fought and sometimes died for our country - treasonous and "the enemy," based entirely on their religion?

After all, there's nothing that unites people like religious bigotry, right?

(Mike Peters)

Dr. Mary Anne Franks: fighting fundamentalism

This is a great talk, it really is - very perceptive and thought-provoking. It's not just about religious fundamentalism, either. Indeed, she seems to hit all of the hot-button topics.

Weirdly, the video has nearly as many down-votes as up-votes. Dr. Franks seems to be someone who gets her share of internet hate.

I have to wonder if they even listened to her talk, though. Even if I didn't agree with her (though I certainly do), I'd find it well-argued and interesting, and certainly nothing to get bent out of shape about.

Ah, but those hot-button issues - guns, race, internet harassment, abortion, etc.  Just the mention of them gets some people bent out of shape, huh?

Donald Trump and right-wing populism

This is a perceptive take on the Trump phenomenon from across the pond.

The societal sickness of Fox News

Another one from Josh Marshall at TPM:

It's hard to explain exactly why we submit ourselves to this. But in our New York City office we spend most of the day listening to Fox News. In moments of tension and incitement such as these it is difficult to capture the sheer scale and measure of the storm of hate, lies, nonsense and febrile fear that constantly flows out of it, minute by minute and hour after hour. I've become particularly focused in the last couple days on the almost constant stream of often small but highly significant falsehoods which go together to create a frightening and highly distorted image of the world.

Just now we're listening to this show "Outnumbered" where a woman named Andrea Tantaros (who manages to combine in her person in a concentrated form everything that is awful about Fox News) went on a tear about how it was that the San Bernardino shooter's brother was allowed to attend a press conference sponsored by CAIR the day after the attack, 'spouting CAIR talking points' as opposed to being in FBI custody. Why wasn't the whole family in FBI custody, she ranted? Well, as far as I know, the person she's referring to isn't Syed Farook's brother but his brother-in-law. His brother is actually a Navy veteran who lives in a different part of Southern California and, from everything we've heard, had absolutely nothing to do with his brother's crimes. ...

These might seem like small or picayune examples. But they are constant. And they build up to a whole tapestry of falsehoods, that combined with incitement and hysteria create a mental world in which Donald Trump's mounting volume of racist incitement is just not at all surprising. They are the false links that piece together the chain of distortion and lies that would simply collapse without them. You may have noticed that Fox felt compelled to suspend two on-air personalities yesterday because of rants about the President. But they were suspended not because of general tone or extremity but simply because they lapsed into profanity. When I saw this yesterday, it didn't seem surprising because the tone has become so hyperbolic and the climate of outrage and drama against the President not endorsing a military escalation or a clampdown on American Muslims so extreme that it's hardly surprising that a couple of regulars would slip into profanity.

As I wrote last night, this is sort of like a national Milgram Experiment. [Note that my post about that is here.] Are there limits on how far you can go as the possible nominee of a major national party? Seemingly not. ...

But it's not about Trump. It's about his supporters. A big chunk of the Republican base is awash in racism and xenophobic hysteria. And this is the food that they feed on every day. It's a societal sickness and we can't ignore it.

Fox 'News' - and the Republican Party in general - have fed Americans this toxic slurry of racism and xenophobic hysteria for decades now. It started long before Fox, with the GOP's notorious 'Southern strategy' of deliberately wooing white racists, after the Democratic Party abandoned the racist wing of their own party to support civil rights for black people and other racial minorities.

Politically, that was a huge success for the GOP. The Republicans took the entire South from the Democrats and attracted many northern racists, too. I've known many former Democrats who switched to the Republican Party at that time, because the GOP did such a good job of wooing racists.

Republican leaders were able to use those racists to advance their own political power and their own political goals (mostly, giving tax cuts to the rich). They had to throw the racists a bone occasionally, but mostly this was just rhetoric.

But it worked so well, they continued using it. For example, they've deliberately stoked panic about Hispanic immigration. (That's worked particularly well here in Nebraska.) Right-wing talk radio exploded with Rush Limbaugh and others competing on who could be the angriest, who could proclaim the most outrageous lies, who could most ramp up his gullible listeners to the heights of hysteria.

And then Fox 'News' came along and showed how you could really make money - and advance Republican Party goals - by pushing anger, bigotry, and right-wing lies.

Today's Republican Party has thrived on garbage like this. Fear, bigotry, anger, hysteria - all have greatly benefited the GOP financially and politically. But as sane people have increasingly left the party, and elderly white racists die off, the crazy has become more and more concentrated. This is the party base now. This is the Republican Party.

All of the Republican candidates for president have taken advantage of the sickness they've helped create. Donald Trump just does it better than anyone else. But people like Ted Cruz aren't far behind, not at all. This is the Republican Party today.

It used to be that Republicans were careful to use racist dog whistles - messages that resonated with racists without being too blatant. Blatant racism would turn off more moderate voters. (Racism would still work on those voters, of course, but only if they could tell themselves that they weren't racist.)

Most Republicans try to do the same thing when it comes to Hispanics and Muslims. They try not to be too blatant about their bigotry and xenophobia. But Donald Trump doesn't even bother. After all, he's trying to woo the Republican base, and the base doesn't have such qualms. Not anymore.

As I've said before, this reminds me of the French Revolution. When fanatics take control, you can never be too fanatic. When the mob rules, you can never be too extreme. In the French Revolution, as the mob rushed madly to the left, the people left behind lost their heads (literally), even when they'd been leading the revolution previously. You couldn't stand still. You had to be more and more and more extreme all the time.

It's similar in the Republican Party of the 21st Century, only they've all been rushing madly to the right. You can never be too extreme for extremists. Note that the worst thing one Republican can call another is "moderate." Moderation is the kiss of death in today's Republican Party - not literally, not yet at least. So far, Republicans only lose their heads figuratively, not literally. But no Republican politician can stand being considered "moderate."

This is extremism. This is bigotry and xenophobia. And increasingly, as I noted yesterday, this is fascism in America. Have we forgotten how Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler came to power?

Our national Milgram Experiment

(TPM)

From Josh Marshall at TPM:

You may think of Donald Trump as a crafty blowhard intuiting the darkest recesses of the American mood and riding that wave into ever-escalating racist incitement, militant derp and extremism. But this evening it occurred to me that it may not be that at all. ... You probably know about the notorious Milgram Experiment, conducted by the late Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1961. In the experiment subjects were tested to see how far they would go in inflicting extreme pain - escalating electric shocks - on other test subjects simply because a figure in authority, the person running the experiment, told them to do so. So how far would the subjects go?

It turns out really, really far. Sometimes they'd keep inducing shocks with a chilling indifference. In other instances it would be clear that the test subject knew what he was doing was wrong. But instructed to continue, in almost every case, that's what they did. (The person on the other side of the glass wasn't really being shocked; they were pretending, but quite convincingly and often begging for mercy and expressing fear of death.)

And here we are, the experiment taken nationwide.

Intended or not, we have a grand national version of something very similar. How far will this go? Donald Trump started calling Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers. Then he called for the rushed expulsion of over 10 million residents of the United States. This was followed by proposals to create a national registry or database of American Muslims. Late last month it was the continued invocation of a lurid racist fantasy of thousands of U.S. Muslims cheering the fall of the Twin Towers from across the river in North Jersey on 9/11 — in many countries something that might be charged as racist incitement to violence. And then today, we have the culmination — or perhaps better to say, since this can't possibly be the end of it, the next massive upping of the ante — which became inevitable in the wake of everything that preceded it: Donald Trump, frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, says Muslims as a religious class should be banned from entering the United States.

What's next?

It reminds me of Nazi Germany, of the lead-up to the "final solution of the Jewish question" by the Nazis.

I'm serious. I'm very serious. The Nazis didn't start by killing six million Jews. That was just where they ended up.

Already, we have people supporting torture - Americans supporting torture!  I still struggle to believe it. Already we have Americans proposing to end freedom of religion. Already, we have fear-mongering, exaggeration, and stereotyping.

This is fascism. What's next? Where will it end?