Trial Runs for Fascism

By the time it's obvious, it's too late to prevent it.

Irish Times:

To grasp what is going on in the world right now, we need to reflect on two things. One is that we are in a phase of trial runs. The other is that what is being trialled is fascism – a word that should be used carefully but not shirked when it is so clearly on the horizon. Forget “post-fascist” – what we are living with is pre-fascism. 

It is easy to dismiss Donald Trump as an ignoramus, not least because he is. But he has an acute understanding of one thing: test marketing. He created himself in the gossip pages of the New York tabloids, where celebrity is manufactured by planting outrageous stories that you can later confirm or deny depending on how they go down. And he recreated himself in reality TV where the storylines can be adjusted according to the ratings. Put something out there, pull it back, adjust, go again.

Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.

One of the basic tools of fascism is the rigging of elections – we’ve seen that trialled in the election of Trump, in the Brexit referendum and (less successfully) in the French presidential elections. Another is the generation of tribal identities, the division of society into mutually exclusive polarities. Fascism does not need a majority – it typically comes to power with about 40 per cent support and then uses control and intimidation to consolidate that power. So it doesn’t matter if most people hate you, as long as your 40 per cent is fanatically committed. That’s been tested out too. And fascism of course needs a propaganda machine so effective that it creates for its followers a universe of “alternative facts” impervious to unwanted realities. Again, the testing for this is very far advanced.

 Read the whole thing.  

Then VOTE. Vote like your life depended on it. Because it does.

Wrong Kentuckian for Supreme Court

From the Herald:

A group opposed to President Donald Trump's judicial picks is taking aim at a Kentucky judge who has made the president's short list of potential Supreme Court justices.

Demand Justice has rolled out an ad that seeks to paint Amul Thapar, who was confirmed last year to a seat on the federal appeals bench, as a friend of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and a "far right" judge who authored a court decision that would allow wealthy donors to influence elections.

Yeah, he's a typical Trump-taint-licking motherfucker.

There's one Kentucky lawyer with the kind of boots-on-the-ground political experience that a court full of appellate judges who have never had to solve real-life problems desperately needs: Governor Steven L. Beshear.

Because if we're serious about Resisting, if we're going to stand our ground and fight everything this fascist un-government tries, if we're going to rally the voters we need to take back the Congress - and the state legislature! - in November, then we have to spit right in their faces with what WE want.

And we want Steve Beshear on the Supreme Court.

Who from your state do you want on the Supreme Court? 

Where Are We Going and Why Are We In This Handbasket?

Digby:

Addie Stan clarifies the historical moment for us by throwing a glass of ice cold water in our faces and telling us to wake the hell up:

SNIP

She concludes:

We’re in the grips of a shift in national identity, one in which democracy and adherence to human rights as stated national values (however flawed in their actual execution) are giving way to an acceptance of authoritarian rule. And we’re allowing our country to align itself against the democracies of the world at the hands of a president who is looking more and more every day like a traitor. A president who is helping to fuel the rise of the authoritarian right in Europe.

Just days after Trump walked away from the G-7 consensus statement with a slam at the prime minister of Canada, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it was planning to “strengthen the northern border.”

And that announcement, you could say, “barely registered.”

 Don't despair.  Fight.

Sound Familiar?

Noah at Down with Tyranny:

Ethnic Cleansing in America

And for those sent back to be tortured and murdered, mass deportation is nothing less than genocide.

Erik Loomis at LGM:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a fascist police force engaging in widescale ethnic cleansing of the United States. Now that Trump and Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (and I don’t care that Trump is bullying Sessions. That racist elf deserves everything that happens to him) have given ICE agents free run to be the racist strike force many of its employees want to be, they have acted wtih impunity. Because these victims of these fascists are poor, live in the shadows, and often don’t speak English (or even Spanish as many are indigenous), the mainstream reaction against Trump has put this issue too much on the backburner. But on the ground, it is horrifying.

Example A:

A 42-year-old Los Angeles pastor with two U.S. citizen children was detained by immigration authorities on Monday morning.

Noe Carias is the lead pastor at an Evangelical church near Echo Park, a position he has held for a number of years. He is originally from Guatemala and has been in the United States since he was 14 or 15, according to his wife. Carias was reportedly detained during a court appearance Monday during which he had been hoping to receive a stay of removal. His deportation order reportedly dates back to 1994 or 1995, according to advocates for the family. He previously received a stay of removal in 2014, and that same stay was extended in 2016.

“He has a U.S. citizen wife and he has two little children,” pastor and community organizer Martin Garcia told LAist. “They own a house, and at this moment the whole family is going to crumble because he was the economic support for the family. It’s going to have an impact.”

Then there are the legal immigrants snatched at INS offices where they came to get official papers.  And the orphans snatched out of adoptive homes and thrown into detention - and not the nice kind with protections against rape and beatings.

This revolting ethnic cleansing conducted with a government-approved fascist terrorist force has to be the top target of resisting Trump. Or a top target at least. We must not only demand that this stop, but that ICE should be disbanded and reconstituted with a different mandate and under a much more accountable authority. So long as we do not speak out against this agency and its agents on an individual agents if we know who they are, then we are culpable with the ethnic cleansing of our nation.

Shame on all of us who stand by and let this happen, good little germans that we are.

Total Immunity for All Cops

So a prosecutor finally has the courage to put on trial a murdering cop not once, but twice, and his reward for two mistrials is the police union demanding his dismissal or they will start enforcing martial law.

Zandar:

Understand that the issue with Sgt. Heine's testimony is a smokescreen, the issue is that Deters dared to ever indict Tensing.  The police union is making it very clear that the collaborative agreement between the police, the City Council, the Mayor, and the black community is dead unless Deters is fired, and that's something Mayor Cranley can't afford to let crumble as he faces re-election.

That puts Cincinnati in a very bad place.  If the police union bails from the Collaborative Agreement, Cranley is toast and he knows it

Bringing in an outside prosecutor won't fix this; cops will punish the city all the same.

Banning police unions will usher in massive, nation-wide strikes by cops who are now armed with state-of-the-art military weapons.

No, I don't think the Orange Loser's exhortation to cops to beat suspects was accidental at all.

The Resistance: The Navy Follows Its Own Rules

Sometimes, presidents have to learn the hard way that the military has rules - based on U.S. Constitution - that trump even the Commander in Chief.

Andrew Wolfson at the Courier:

An unspecified number of Navy Special Warfare forces have been punished for flying a Trump flag on a military convoy seen traveling through Louisville last month, igniting fears of an authoritarian state among some motorists.

An inquiry by the unit’s commander found that the service members “violated the spirit and intent of applicable DoD regulations concerning the flying of flags and the apparent endorsement of political activities,” according to a statement issued Tuesday by Lt. Jacqui Maxwell of the Naval Special Warfare Group 2 in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

She said “administrative corrective measures” were taken with each individual based on their respective responsibility.” She declined to elaborate on the punishments or how many were punished.

The Navy had previously said flying the flag was inappropriate and that a command inquiry would be initiated.

The spotting of the flag-flying convoy on Interstate 65 on Jan. 29 ignited a furious national debate.

Stage Two

What are you doing to prevent Stage Three?

Divine Irony:

We are at stage 2.

(Source: welcometoyouredoom)

And the Roundups Begin

After Kristallnacht, this is the next step.  But it's just the "criminals" with parking tickets so don't worry.

 

Political Animal:

According to more recent reports, a blueprint has been put together for Trump’s immigration crackdown.

On Monday, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly issued memos to senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that provide instructions for implementing two executive orders President Trump signed January 25, regarding immigration enforcement on the US/Mexico border and within the United States…

Under President Trump, the massive immigration enforcement “machine” of the US will now have nearly free rein to arrest, detain, and deport unauthorized immigrants wherever it finds them.

In addition to deputizing local law enforcement to arrest undocumented immigrants, the challenge is to figure out what to do with them. They’ve come up with two solutions. First of all, there is this deplorable plan:

It can take years after an immigrant is apprehended for that immigrant to get deported, because immigration courts are massively backlogged. The executive order signed by President Trump lays out a possible solution: sending people back “to the territory from which they came” while their cases are still pending in immigration court.

Basically, it’s a “deport first and ask questions later” strategy.

Secondly, the Trump administration is planning to detain a lot more people.

But given that America’s detention system for immigrants has been running at full capacity for some time now, where is the president going to put all of these people before deporting them?

In new jails, for starters. In the same executive order that called for the construction of a southern border wall, Trump instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to build out its sprawling network of immigration detention centers. Starting “immediately,” his order said, ICE should construct new facilities, lease space for immigrants alongside inmates in existing local jails, and sign new contracts—likely with private prison companies.

The initial targeting of people like DREAMers, victims of domestic violence and those who are cooperating with law enforcement sent a chilling message that is designed to quiet undocumented immigrants who might otherwise fight back against these efforts. That is why they will depend on those of us who are legal citizens to raise our voices in resistance before it’s too late.

Digby:

This is going to cost the taxpayers billions and will result in nothing positive for our country and untold misery for many people. But it will make bigots have an orgasm and that's what really matters in America these days. They will surely enjoy the sight of Latino families being torn apart. They hate them that much:

SNIP

By the way, immigration from Mexico is the lowest it's been in over 40 years. They're "solving" a "crisis" that doesn't exist, purely to give their bigoted followers a thrill up the leg.

Praise Dear Leader or Suffer the Consequences

The trumpies are right:  It's not a Muslim ban. It's a loyalty test.  But not to the nation or even the Constitution.

Crooks and Liars:

A Muslim mom gets turned away at the border, for the sin of wearing a hijab and having prayers written in Arabic on her person.

This is how it starts, folks.

Source: CTV News

A Moroccan-Canadian woman says she was turned back from the Vermont border after four hours of interrogation, including questions about her mosque attendance, thoughts on the Quebec City shooting and opinion about U.S. President Donald Trump.

Fadwa Alaoui, who has lived in Canada for more than 20 years and holds a Canadian passport, said she was on a day trip with her children and a cousin on Saturday when she faced the intense questioning.

When grilled about Trump, the Montreal woman said she told the guards “it's not in my interest -- he has the right to do whatever he wants in his country.”

Alaoui said she was forced to hand over her phone and the guards inquired about a prayer on her phone written in Arabic.

She said she was eventually told she could not enter the U.S. due to “videos and concerns.”

Alaoui now wonders if she can ever visit her parents, who live in Chicago. Her situation was also raised in Canadian parliament on Wednesday, with Prime Minister Trudeau and his Minister taking questions on the matter.

In Question Period on Wednesday, Public Security Minister Ralph Goodale said his department was looking into the situation, which he described as "troubling."

"To the best of my knowledge, this was one incident, but it's one incident too many. And I will want to examine it, but I need to get the detail of exactly who and when it happened so that I can follow it up," he said.

Normalizing Everyday Acts of Cruelty

It was bad when Smirky/Darth normalized American troops committing torture.  It was worse when the wingnut freakout over President Obama normalizing demonizing other human beings - other Americans - as sub-human.

But when an unabashedly fascist "president" normalizes literally Nazi behavior among federal employees - when the Nuremburg defense is automatic and not even questioned - it's worse than it's ever been.

Erik Loomis at LGM:

It’s a well-established observation that the way that authoritarian regimes work is that people cooperate. They empower little people to be cruel and that is the base of governance. The same thing is happening with the rise of fascism in the United States. The everyday acts cruelty in enforcing Bannon’s Muslim ban are what makes one sick.

A week ago, men and women went to work at airports around the United States as they always do. They showered, got dressed, ate breakfast, perhaps dropped off their kids at school. Then they reported to their jobs as federal government employees, where, according to news reports, one of them handcuffed a 5-year-old child, separated him from his mother and detained him alone for several hours at Dulles airport.

At least one other federal employee at Dulles reportedly detained a woman who was traveling with her two children, both U.S. citizens, for 20 hours without food. A relative says the mother was handcuffed (even when she went to the bathroom) and threatened with deportation to Somalia.

At Kennedy Airport, still other federal employees detained and handcuffed a 65-year-old woman traveling from Qatar to visit her son, who is a U.S. citizen and serviceman stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C. The woman was held for more than 33 hours, according to the New York Times, and denied use of a wheelchair.

The men and women who work for the federal government completed these and other tasks and then returned to their families, where perhaps they had dinner and read stories to their children before bedtime.

When we worry and wonder about authoritarian regimes that inflict cruelty on civilians, we often imagine tyrannical despots unilaterally advancing their sinister agendas. But no would-be autocrat can act alone. As a practical matter, he needs subordinates willing to carry out orders. Of course, neither Donald Trump nor Steve Bannon personally detained any of the more than 100 people held at airports over the weekend pursuant to the administration’s executive order on immigration, visitation and travel to the United States. They relied on assistance.

The men and women who reportedly handcuffed small children and the elderly, separated a child from his mother and held others without food for 20 hours, are undoubtedly “ordinary” people. What I mean by that, is that these are, in normal circumstances, people who likely treat their neighbors and co-workers with kindness and do not intentionally seek to harm others. That is chilling, as it is a reminder that authoritarians have no trouble finding the people they need to carry out their acts of cruelty. They do not need special monsters; they can issue orders to otherwise unexceptional people who will carry them out dutifully.

This is powerful stuff. It shows the need to fight fascism wherever we see it. This is one reason why protest is so necessary. It demonstrates that people will stand up to cruelty. Making these people pariahs, calling them out by name, this is a critical strategy to resisting fascism. After all, it took millions of collaborators for the Holocaust to happen. The Nazis ruled Paris with very few soldiers because so many France were willing to play along. The examples go on and on. It is fairly easy for a person to become a collaborator with dictatorship and evil if it is in their interests to do so and it so often is because it is easy and allows them to be little dictators on their own. Fighting this is a central struggle in the next four years and probably for the rest of our lives.

Everybody Darker Than a Paper Bag, Citizen or Not

They're going to sweep up everybody who's easy to grab, including 10th-generation European-Americans with tans. They don't care.  It sates their slavering hordes of voters and terrifies and intimidates their remaining enemies.

Next time liberals warn you about facism, maybe you'll listen.

If there's anybody around to do the warning.

Digby:

But there are many more xenophobic atacks on the agenda as well:

When President Trump ordered a vast overhaul of immigration law enforcement during his first week in office, he stripped away most restrictions on who should be deported, opening the door for roundups and detentions on a scale not seen in nearly a decade.

SNIP

Deportations of this scale, which has not been publicly totaled before, could have widely felt consequences: Families would be separated. Businesses catering to immigrant customers may be shuttered. Crops could be left to rot, unpicked, as agricultural and other industries that rely on immigrant workforces face labor shortages. U.S. relations could be strained with countries that stand to receive an influx of deported people, particularly in Latin America. Even the Social Security system, which many immigrants working illegally pay into under fake identification numbers, would take a hit.

SNIP

“We are going back to enforcement chaos — they are going to give lip service to going after criminals, but they really are going to round up everybody they can get their hands on,” said David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. and an immigration lawyer for more than two decades.

SNIP

It's impossible to know how much the local law enforcement agencies will cooperate or how the courts will deal with it. But I think we must be prepared for them to try to do a lot of this. It's fundamental to Trump's worldview and promises --- and he's surrounded himself with white nationalist eager to "purify" the nation.

And Trump wants to take the gloves off.

SNIP

He literally has no idea how our system of government works. He's stunned that there are check and balances on his power and that a "so-called judge" could stop some blatantly unconstitutional act.

The sad truth is that the president does have a tremendous amount of power and unless members of his party decide that the need to save the country outweighs their opportunity to get their pet projects on his desk for him to sign, he can do a lot of damage even if the courts do their job.

This is going to be a long and difficult fight.

Cops Already Have All Your Info, Just Waiting for the Right Charge

And under the Fascist Tangelo, Living While Non-White, Non-Male, Non-xian and Non-Straight will be capital crimes.

Patricia J. Williams at The Nation:

This lack of regulation—and public ignorance of such systems’ existence—means that police departments are able to use facial recognition to identify and track law-abiding citizens as well as criminal suspects. Many police departments are able to run “continuous, real-time scans of people walking by a surveillance camera”—without warrant, reasonable suspicion, or any other limitation. The report found that of 52 agencies polled, only one prohibits officers from “using face recognition to track individuals engaging in political, religious, or other protected free speech.” In addition, facial-recognition technologies are manufactured by private companies using proprietary algorithms generally classified as intellectual property or trade secrets. Hence, few measures exist for ensuring accuracy through public oversight, regular maintenance, or published operating standards.

In addition, the potential for error—particularly racially based error—seems built into the machine

Having “nothing to hide” only gets you so far when there is no way to contest the judgments of a hidden gaze. “We don’t want the bad guys to know that we’re out there,” declared Rhodes. “We want them to worry about whether or not they’re being watched.” This appropriation of surveillance authority creates a pervasive us versus them mentality, eradicating the boundary between liberty and license. So here we are, fellow citizens—at a moment when libertarianism’s distaste for oversight intersects with technological totalism. We flow seamlessly, helplessly, into sweeping currents of the quietly totalitarian.

My Answer is "Never"

You know what happens when you attempt to "work with" people who are openly trying to kill you?

 

They kill you.

 

Refuse. Resist. Fight.

 

PZMyers:

What’s this? Principles? Taking a stand? I am thankful for Charles Blow. He doesn’t hold back at all in his criticism of Donald Trump’s recent meeting with the NY Times.

The very idea of sitting across the table from a demagogue who preyed on racial, ethnic and religious hostilities and treating him with decorum and social grace fills me with disgust, to the point of overflowing. Let me tell you here where I stand on your “I hope we can all get along” plea: Never.

You are an aberration and abomination who is willing to do and say anything — no matter whom it aligns you with and whom it hurts — to satisfy your ambitions.

I don’t believe you care much at all about this country or your party or the American people. I believe that the only thing you care about is self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment. Your strongest allegiance is to your own cupidity.

Here are our next few years: one long and consistent struggle.

No, Mr. Trump, we will not all just get along. For as long as a threat to the state is the head of state, all citizens of good faith and national fidelity — and certainly this columnist — have an absolute obligation to meet you and your agenda with resistance at every turn.

I know this in my bones, and for that I am thankful.

Fascist Tangelo Throws Temper Tantrum

If the entire cast of Hamilton had screamed obscenities at Pence and then dropped trou and mooned the motherfucker, they still would absolutely not owe him an apology.

Apologize for free political speech?  What the fascist tangelo (props to Shakezula) thinks is appropriate punishment for actual protesters has the Abu Ghraib torturers terrified.

Shakezula at LGM:

Sure Pence is a man who has used his position to oppress gay people and women. Yes, there’s strong evidence that he dabbled in disenfranchisement. Yes, he’s second banana to a fascist tangelo. And no, you haven’t heard him utter a peep against the rest of the white supremacist goons on Team Trump. But Dave Itzkoff saw the man attend an insanely popular musical while surrounded by a Secret Service detail and knew he must be trying to engage [something] and could possibly get some ideas [about something]. Therefore the fact that some members of the audience booed Pence (others cheered), made Itzkoff ;_;.

SNIP

Anyone who has reason to fear fascist goons, tough shit on them and their 1st Am. rights. Should a member of the cast or theater staff, or some guy making deliveries to the building or someone who looks a bit Hamiltonish get mauled because the PEST blamed them for the booing, that will of course not be the fault of the Donald. And give him another chance, because he’s trying.

Stop Pretending They Are Not Stone-Cold Racists

The last dying remnants of the mainstream media are already frantically normalizing the fascist pigs of the trumpian campaign.  Resist. Fight back.

 

PZ Myers:

The right is building a new culture that is openly comfortable with racists. They are proudly making American conservatism synonymous with racism, while at the same time sniffing indignantly if you dare to point out that fact. And we’ve got lots of liberals going along with this rebranding, protesting that we’re going to offend a lot of voters if we are so brazen as to recognize that the views they are espousing are in fact racist.

SNIP

Do not let them get away with using a blasé media to normalize their delusions. Remember how disastrous that reshaping of perceived reality was in the Bush administration, and realize that their new efforts are going to be just as destructive.

They’re racists. They’re fascists. Their goal is to undermine civil liberties and loot the country to benefit themselves and their ugly, hateful kin. You can’t honestly report on Richard Spencer or Steve Bannon or Donald Trump without stating this fact.

Taliban Matt Hits the Burka Trail

Skirts below the knee?  Are you fucking kidding me?

Let's see if we can figure out the real goal here.

Shame female employees?  Check.

Shame low-paid employees who can't afford the new fascist "professional" look?  Check.

Vague guidelines that make it easy for Bevin appointees to fire non-repug, non-freakazoid, non-white, non-straight and non-male employees without just cause?  Check.

From the Courier:

No flip-flops. No bare midriffs. No camouflage. And watch the hemline on that skirt.

Gov. Matt Bevin's administration is rolling out a new dress code for state workers, but some departments' individual tweaks to the rules – including a ban on  "extremely low necklines" – are raising eyebrows at the state workers' association.

Employees recognize that employers have the right to set standards, said David Smith, executive director of the Kentucky Association of State Employees, but who's to say what the proper length for a dress is? "You're dealing with a fashion issue, and fashion changes," he said.

Personnel Cabinet Secretary Thomas Stephens said in a recent memo announcing the new guidelines that the executive branch's roughly 31,000 employees should maintain "a neat, professional appearance" because they represent the commonwealth.

SNIP

However, agencies are free to tweak their dress codes since different departments do different kinds of work, and people can request accommodations if they have a medical, religious or disability-related need. Violations could result in employees being asked to leave the premises or being subjected to disciplinary action, including possible dismissal.

Stephens also is instituting several additional rules that only apply to the Personnel Cabinet's 206 employees.

Personnel Cabinet employees can wear casual dresses and skirts only if they are knee-length or longer and cannot wear spaghetti-strap dresses unless they're covered by a sweater, according to an early-October memo from Stephens. Tops with "extremely low necklines" are prohibited, as are pajama pants, exercise pants, camouflage-patterned clothes and shorts. Men must keep their dress shirts tucked in, although polo shirts don't have to be.

Smith said the association has members who work in every state cabinet and every state agency, and some employees – the majority of whom have been women so far – have reached out with concerns about the new dress codes.

SNIP

And the Personnel Cabinet cannot oversee how each agency and manager enforces these rules, Smith said. Supervisors potentially could use a dress code violation as an excuse to discipline or fire someone they dislike.

"Is it too interpretive, and do we believe it could cross a line? Absolutely," Smith said.

If someone has religious or personal views about what is modest or appropriate and what isn't, those ideas shouldn't be forced on employees, he said.

He also said state workers may have to buy new clothes to meet their agency's dress code if, for example, their skirts fall above the knee. Employees will make an effort to meet whatever requirements their agencies institute, Smith said, but professional clothes can be expensive.

Especially for employees hired since Governor Fascist Dictator cut the state employee minimum wage from $10.10 to $7.25 about 10 seconds after he was inaugurated.

Fascism in Defense of Jingoism

It's demoralizing to see how public displays of worship toward national symbols have displaced public service and loyal dissent as proof of patriotism.

People who truly hated this country, who truly want to see its democratic government torn down and replaced by plutocratic and Dominionist rule would protect themselves with the most blatant demonstrations of symbol-worship.

Those are the dangerous ones.

Digby:

Here's some of that tolerance on display:

"I attempted to get up to use the restroom, rather urgently, during the 7th inning stretch as God Bless America was beginning. As I attempted to walk down the aisle and exit my section into the tunnel, I was stopped by a police officer. He informed me that I had to wait until the song was over. I responded that I had to use the restroom and that I did not care about God Bless America.

"As soon as the latter came out of my mouth, my right arm was twisted violently behind my back and I was informed that I was being escorted out of the stadium. A second officer then joined in and twisted my left arm, also in an excessively forceful manner, behind my back. I informed them they were violating my First Amendment rights and that I had done nothing wrong, with no response from them.

"I was sitting in the Tier Level, and of course this is the highest level of the stadium and I was escorted in this painful manner down the entire length of the stadium. About halfway down, I informed them that they were hurting me, repeated that I had done nothing wrong, and that I was not resisting nor talking back to them. One of them said something to the effect that if I continued to speak, he would find a way to hurt me more.

"When we reached the exit of the stadium, they confiscated my ticket and the first officer shoved me through the turnstiles, saying 'Get the hell out of my country if you don't like it.'

I think we all know what happened to those Dixie Chicks when they dared say they were ashamed of the president.

So really, all this whining about liberal intolerance and Stalinist authoritarianism because a couple of cretinous bigots want to be able to refuse to serve gays is just a teensy bit over the top considering the furious reaction one gets for saying anything the right doesn't like about guns, God or the flag around these people.

Only Bad Guys Demand to See Your Papers

It's in all the movies. Nazis, Commies, dictators of all stripes. The defining characteristic of a totalitarian hellhole is the demand that innocent citizens present proof of submission to authority at any time, any place.

And yes, it's us.

Digby:

So we now have "interior checkpoints" in America where they demand your papers? Who knew? Ryan Grim has the story:  

SNIP 

Evidently, the Border Patrol has set up "interior checkpoints all over the Southwest sometimes a hundred miles from the border where they can search anyone without probably cause and demand your papers. And it is obviously at this American airport examining papers and ID --- for people on flights within the country. The Border Patrol. WTH?

Such checkpoints are located throughout the Southwestern U.S. border, comprising of a 100-mile wide, Bill-of-Rights-free strip where authorities have claimed the privilege to do things they would not be permitted to do anywhere else in the country, such as executing a “routine search" without a warrant or probable cause, or asking American citizens for papers.

I had family living in Mexico for many years and went over the California border literally hundreds of times and never faced anything like this. The border was murder and I've had my car thoroughly searched and been heavily questioned many times, but once in the US you're in. I've flown out of airports all over the US and have never encountered border patrol. TSA, yes. But this wasn't TSA.

Rational Warning

Steve M. at No More Mister Niceblog:

But I actually think fascism could eventually be what Americans turn to.

I say this not because Americans have an insatiable spiritual hunger for community that's being crushed by a mechanized ethos, or whatever the hell Douthat is saying. I think fascism might, someday soon, appear to offer a way out to a society for whom traditional politics and economics have offered absolutely nothing. We have a major party that allows the have-nots to keep losing (including, now, the middle class) and another major political party that wants the have-nots to lose much faster. Our economic overlords now consider any gains by the middle class and poor to be thoroughly unacceptable. If traditional politics offers most Americans nothing forever, sooner or later the guy who wants to send intellectuals or certain ethnic groups or certain sexual minorities to camps might start to seem pretty appealing. That's my fear, not an unsatisfied thirst for belonging.

Every time a Democratic candidate goes mealy-mouthed on Democratic values or runs away from Democratic accomplishments (I'm looking at you, Alison Lundergan Grimes), every time a Democratic voter sits at home on election day because no one on the ballot is standing up for her, every time liberals fail to call out the repug motherfuckers for fucking their mothers, we get one step closer to fascism.