Hispanic Fanatic

One of the problems America faces is the incredulity of our citizens. Even a year into round two of Dystopia Kingdom, many of us still refuse to believe Trump is as bad as he seems. There is no way the country elected a corrupt, bigoted madman for the second time, right? He’s just playing 3D chess when he blubbers incoherently, institutes overtly racist policies, and threatens to invade allies. Yup.

But the truth is that the insanity and neo-fascism are on full display, all the time. You don’t have to dig for this.

Even when disturbing facts are pointed out, however, Americans launch into denial. Before the last presidential election, voters in focus groups were informed about the Republican agenda. When they heard “accurate descriptions of real GOP proposals, the truth struck those voters as so cartoonishly evil that they found the charge implausible.”

For example, it might strike you as unbelievable that that “with increasing momentum, voices on the Christian right are preaching that empathy has become a vice.” This is indeed confusing, because as many theologians have pointed out, empathy is “the whole message of Jesus.”

And if conservative Christians no longer agree with Christ, who are they following?

More and more, it looks like Hitler.

I know, it’s bad form to compare one’s political opponent to der fuhrer, and certainly most Christians, even the right-wing ones, are not fond of the guy.

But “a growing constituency on the right wants America to unlearn the lessons of World War II,” and MAGA influencers are actively working to rehabilitate Hitler as a misunderstood dude who may have been correct about a few things.

Consider also that “neo-Nazi voices are becoming more obvious in the MAGA party.” We’re talking about “hardline pro-Trump factions of Young Republican groups” that text each other witticisms about “slavery, rape, gas chambers, and torturing their opponents” while expressing “admiration for Adolf Hitler.” We’re also talking about White House nominees for high-ranking positions who proudly say they have “a Nazi streak.”

That can’t be true, right?

Yeah, it is.

But one can argue that the infiltration of sociopathic Christians and self-proclaimed Nazis is a relatively minor contingent of the MAGA base. I’ll grant that the Republican Party is not awash in Hitler-loving goose-steppers (even though anything above zero percent should be cause for alarm). I will insist, however, that the people at the top are, how to say this politely… fucking morons.

You see, Trump “has attracted acolytes by being the patron saint of the third string, gathering people who seem to feel, for various reasons, that they were iced out of national politics” or dissed by so-called elitists, who tend to value absurd concepts like experience, intelligence, creativity, competence, and basic decency.

The Trump Administration is an obnoxious gaggle of “crude people displaying their incompetence as they flail about in jobs—including the presidency—for which they are not qualified.” They are “people who in a better time would never have been allowed near the government of the United States,” and have provoked the “collapse of a superpower into a regime of bullies and mean girls and comic-book guys.” 

You might ask why Americans keep “electing a class of public officials who seem to be all id” and who are “driven by grievance and a continual, unfocused sense of injury.”

It’s because hardcore Trump supporters are angry Americans who “want to bring others down to what they think is their own underappreciated station and identify scapegoats to bear the blame for their misfortunes, real or imagined.” These furious conservatives “see politics as a way to get even with almost everyone outside of their immediate circle,” but the “juvenility and coarseness among both the Trump elite and its most loyal supporters” doesn’t translate into meaningful change or innovative solutions. You won’t get that from cackling jerks who “treat grave issues of national and even global importance as little more than raw material for mean-spirited jokes and obscene memes.”

Indeed, it remains “wildly ironic that MAGAs now have control of the Presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court, and yet they still manage to feel themselves oppressed, still picture the world as unfair, still rage against a machine they’ve made and are part of.”

As touchy-feely liberals have pointed out, MAGA is a perpetually torch-wielding mob, and “the only time they do show anything resembling joy is to reflect the arrogant, self-satisfied sneer of their leader; almost always in the face of someone else’s heartache or misfortune, almost always when someone else loses something,” and the “only happiness they seem capable of manufacturing is in response to pain.”

And since they are striving only to inflict punishment on others, and not make anyone’s lives better or improve America is any significant way, there is no end goal. There is no point where they can claim success, because there will always be another freak to attack, another culture war to ignite, another deviant who just doesn’t conform. 

They have found out, and the rest of us now realize, that getting all that power doesn’t make their misery go away.

As of this writing, they still have not captured the person who murdered that fascist guy.

You may have noticed that I referred to the victim as a fascist because, well, that’s the truth. Getting assassinated does not convey sainthood.

This fact seems to have confused many Americans. We are being told to grieve for a man whose history of bigotry is undisputed. We are being ordered to show respect to a right-wing extremist who damaged many people’s lives and gloated about it. 

The media coverage refers to him as a conservative voice, as if he had the gravitas of a George Will rather than the calamitous impact of a smug racist whose views are straight out of the 1950s but with more animosity.

Listen, you can say he was wretched person without rejoicing in his death. You can denounce this killing, as all sane people should, without wallowing in crocodile tears.

The implication is that all Americans must refrain from badmouthing a man who despised everyone who was not a straight, white Christian male and who worked tirelessly to demean and dehumanize whole segments of American society. 

This demand for compassion is all the more jarring considering that much of it comes from conservatives, who have taken great delight in insisting that empathy is bad and kindness is for losers.

Yes, the modern conservative movement has nothing but contempt for empathy, unless they want it for themselves, in which case it must be given without delay or pause, and in huge heaping piles.

So what happens when all the eulogies from conservatives and weak-willed liberals fade away? Most  likely, there will be more political violence. It is obviously unavoidable at this point, and the fact that the Republican Party has amplified and intensified calls for political violence is something the GOP wants you to forget at the moment. But threats and bullying are the Republican brand now. The only surprise is that conservatives are shocked that their hyper-aggressive behavior and sociopathic mocking of victims has infected society. I mean, who could have called that?

Speaking of violence, it is indeed ironic that the victim in this case regarded gun deaths as no big deal because of, you know, freedom and stuff. Most likely, when he was rationalizing the deaths of thousands as necessary for the Second Amendment’s functioning, he was assuming that all that death would happen to someone else — probably some pagan immigrant who had it coming. Nobody who loves guns ever assumes that they will be the one who gets shot, the person who has to pay the price for this God-given right that is so essential that school kids have to wear bulletproof backpacks. Nope, it won’t them — until it is.

I also find it interesting that so many people assume that the killer had military training to make such a complicated shot. That’s certainly possible.

But it’s also possible that with millions of guns in the hands of millions of people, and with thousands of those gun owners spending lots of time at shooting ranges, at least one highly motivated lunatic would devote the effort to becoming an ace sniper.

Hell, there are probably hundreds of Americans who have never served in the military who could have fired that rifle. 

Does that make you feel safer?

The Iraq War was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then Hurricane Katrina was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then Trump becoming the party’s nominee was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then Trump winning the electoral college in 2016 was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then the botched response to Covid was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then the January 6 attack was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then Trump winning the nomination again was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then DOGE was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then tariffs was supposed to be the GOP’s death knell.

Then…

OK, the point is that we are closing in a dozen death knells, yet here is the Republican Party, in control of all three branches of government and executing its maniacal agenda with incredible speed (although not with incredible efficiency).

Also, this theoretically moribund political movement currently enjoys a higher approval rating than its opposition.

But it hasn’t stopped political commentators from declaring, “This is really it. The death knell of the GOP is coming. We mean it this time.”

Yup, I’m sure this time it will be different.

In truth, the fight between progressives and conservatives will likely go on as long as this country exists. Of course, that might not be for very  much longer, but let’s be bold and optimistic.

There are many reasons to believe that the GOP is doomed in the long run, ranging from the dismal history of xenophobic political parties to the high death rate of the Republican base to the likelihood of right-wing implosion.

But even if the GOP goes the way of the Whigs, there will always be a remnant of lunacy in American culture. There will always be a large contingent of people who feed on fear, hatred, and ignorance. The objects of their scorn and the wars they declare will look different, but there will never be a time when progressives will sit back and say, “Everybody relax. We won.”

Consider that even if Trump literally destroyed America, 20% of the survivors would still worship him. Another 20% would turn on him, but refuse to admit that liberals were right. They would eventually go back to voting Republican (or the equivalent in a post-apocalyptic society that still allowed voting) in the next election. So even in a worst-case scenario, about 40% of Americans would continue to reject liberalism.

Clearly, there will never be a death knell that abruptly finishes off the right-wing mindset.

The fight is permanent and unending.

I’m not a conspiratorial person. But even I have to wonder about the following scenario:

A foreign adversary seeks to bring down the United States by installing a sympathetic mole as the president. This easily manipulated doofus then implements economic plans that everyone — as in anybody with even a modicum of political, historical, or economic knowledge — agrees serves no purpose other than bringing about a second Great Depression. To be honest, it looks like the guy is deliberately trying to crash the economy.

But wait, this boorish loudmouth also lashes out at our allies and embraces the dictatorial whims of the foreign adversary. His actions undo almost a century of American foreign policy and national security within just a few weeks. Yeah, it looks like the guy is surrendering without a fight.

OK, I’m not saying Trump is a spy. But I’m saying that he could not harm this country any worse than he already has if he were actively working for Russia. Seriously, he is at maximum Putin puppet right now.

Let’s start with the tariffs, which as of this moment, are off. But check back in nine minutes. 

Even if his much ballyhooed tariffs never get implemented, the damage that this on-again off-again threat has inflicted is very real. Not content with shaking Wall Street to its core, the administration is now casually noting that “Americans are going to have to suffer.”

I guess the worst burst of unemployment since the Great Recession is not sufficient. Now the GOP wants Americans to collapse into poverty because… wait, what was the point again?

Who knows?

We’re all still reeling from the shouting match at the Oval Office, a calamity so bizarre, so grotesque that even lifelong conservatives are saying they are ashamed to be American. Trump and Vance yelling at Zelenskyy is “the equivalent of the US switching sides in WWII.”

For all our talk about being the moral center of the universe, “these are the actions not of the good guys in old Hollywood movies, but of the bad guys.”

U.S. policy is now aligned with Russia, a situation that even the most ardent Trump supporter would not have predicted in 2016. But it’s ok, because Trump has made it clear that he trusts Putin, which is “an odd statement from a U.S. president, whose loyalty is supposed to be dedicated to the Constitution and the American people.”

Meanwhile, we get the great man himself pontificating and bloviating about how he is the most wonderfulest president since Washington (and even better than him, of course) in a longwinded, meandering speech stuffed with “his by-now-standard mix of braggadocio and self-pity, partisan bile and patently absurd lies,” which only proves that “even the most unhinged of presidential speeches can seem kind of boring if it goes on long enough.”

Once again, I’m not saying the guy is a Russian spy.

But can we stop with the claims that he is playing 4-D chess or kickstarting his master plan? 

Because there is no plan. It should be obvious to anyone playing any attention that this corrupt baboon simply makes shit up day to day.

He is an easily distracted narcissist who bases US policy on his personal grievances, petty jealousies, and spur of the moment whims.

So how long will we allow a megalomanic with an insecurity complex to align America with the most bloodthirsty despot alive?

How long will we let the world’s largest economy be guided by the fluttering thoughts and bubbling rage of an erratic lunatic who has no idea of what he’s doing?

More important, by the time we finally reject all this madness, hatred, and corruption, will it be too late?

As I mentioned last week, I reside in Los Angeles, and we are currently living through a full-on cataclysm. 

Last week, my family and I checked into a hotel near Disneyland (the ultimate indignity) because the air quality in our neighborhood was so bad. It was also a precaution to avoid waking up to a house on fire.

We’re back home now, and our place is intact. But we know people who were not so fortunate.

One of my friends lost her house to the Altadena fire. When I asked how she was holding up, she responded, “All I know is that dry January can fuck right off.”

Indeed, this is a time for heavy drinking in LA.

It is not, however, a time to play politics, but we’re Americans, so of course that is exactly what we will do.

Our good friends in the GOP are threatening to withhold federal aid unless we all agree to become Republicans. They also want to teach us a lesson, and are openly questioning whether we “deserve” assistance.

This is what debauched inhumanity looks like.

It also hypocritical, because the federal government has never placed conditions on disaster aid for red states. And let’s not forget that for decades now, California has been “literally subsidizing the rest of the United States, red states in particular, through the federal budget.”

We can also question the religious bone fides of those Christians who revel in the death and destruction afflicting America’s second-largest city. Hey, it’s what Jesus would have done, right?

There is also the fact that our president-elect and his unelected billionaire sidekick are spewing conspiracy theories, blatant lies, and idiotic proposals at a speed faster than any wildfire. That always helps.

And if anyone wonders whether conservatives are making even the slightest attempt to distance themselves from the bigotry that has long defined the Republican Party, we have right-wingers shrieking about lesbians, black people, and DEI all causing the fires. Apparently, these are more foundational causes for a natural disaster than climate change, which as we all know, doesn’t even exist. Nope.

Now, there have been legitimate questions about how prepared California’s leaders were for this inevitability. Because I’m not in a cult, I’m willing to criticize Democrats if they indeed messed up (we need more information to be sure about that). 

But I find it ironic that conservatives are questioning the competence of Democratic leaders. After all, Trump’s response to the Covid pandemic was so abysmal, clownishly inept, and homicidal that whole libraries could be devoted to the books that will inevitably be written about his administration’s incompetence. This is a glaringly obvious glass-houses situation.

But then again, nobody even remembers Covid. It’s like the January 6 attacks on the Capitol. Neither one of them ever happened.

In any case, LA’s firefighters — yes, even the gay and black ones — will continue to battle the inferno. After the fires are extinguished, the city will rebuild.

And I’m sure Republicans will be focused on recovery, solutions, and moving forward.

Or they’ll continue complaining about, I don’t know, people communicating in sign language or something equally insane.

Yes, you can count on the GOP to keep things in perspective.

In my last post, I discussed how the GOP’s war on reality has convinced Americans that we are living in a dystopian hellhole where the solutions are idiotic proposals that will only backfire and cause calamity.

For example, after decades of obnoxious perseverance, pro-lifers succeeded in overturning Roe vs. Wade. As a result, “following the Supreme Court Dobbs decision that revoked the federal right to an abortion, hundreds more infants died than expected in the United States.” So congratulations, pro-lifers, on killing more babies. Oh, and those draconian abortion bans “also affect access to broader health care, which can lead to increased risk for both babies and mothers.”

Thanks again, religious zealots.

The GOP has convinced the populace that up is down, evident in the continued insistence that the Trump years were better for the economy, even though almost every indicator shows that this is not true. Despite our strong economy, a huge chunk of Americans “wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession.”

Republicans also want you to know that ice is hot, and fire is cold.

As a final example, let’s consider the idea that so many Americans think Trump is a tough guy who will stand up for our nation in times of crisis. They “support him precisely because they believe he can protect the country in a way no other politician will.” In truth, his style of incoherent, impulsive governance would create “a politically chaotic” America, where “other countries assert more global influence.” Indeed, our “biggest global rivals believe that a Trump victory will serve their interests instead.”

Clearly, millions of Americans are basing their decisions not on facts or even emotions. Rather, they are clamoring for what they sincerely believe is real, despite acres of easily accessibly evidence that shows them they are wrong.

They are listening to Republicans, whose stated goal is to “make America great again, because it’s not great now, what with Black people protesting the police, Pride flags flying, and immigrants seeking new lives in America.” Conservatives don’t want “to hear Spanish at the supermarket or be aware that someone is dressed in drag,” and they are filled with anger at all those “New York and Los Angeles elites who, in the estimation of many Republicans, are actively discriminating against White people and Christians.”

At this point, “it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality.”

It is also becoming more difficult to deny that the GOP candidate for president has, right before our eyes, gone “from being periodically adrift and sporadically demented to being 24/7 unfit and in need of permanent medical attention.” The guy is “one cloudless night away from baying at the moon.” 

And yet, whole swaths of Americans will vote for him, vote for this Wonderland logic, and insist that the truth is on their side.

In a sane world, a babbling old man who threatened to deploy the US military against American civilians would be shuffled off to nap time at the facility, rather than hailed as a conquering hero to millions of conservatives who have the audacity to call themselves patriots.

But the GOP has succeeded in turning our country into a bizarro world of contradictions and backward logic.

This accomplishment may be Republicans’ only achievement of the century, as every other project they have led over the past 20 years—Iraq, Covid, the economy, etc—has ended in full-fledged disaster.

As an example of the fun-house mirror that America has morphed into, consider that Republicans continue to insist that immigrants are invading the country, raping and pillaging at will, stealing everyone’s job, taking over whole swaths of the country, and eating all our pets.

In reality, immigration is a key reason that our economy is doing better than other industrialized nations. Furthermore,  “the ‘magic bullet’ driving the post-pandemic population revival of major US urban centers is immigration,” and immigrants are filling a labor gapthat, if left unfilled, would lead to financial devastation. In fact, studies show that “the large influx of immigrants” over the past few years have “helped grow the U.S. economy.”

As for those rampaging immigrants killing and looting nonstop, even Republicans admit that they are making those stories up. Immigrants have lower rates of crime than native-born Americans, as we all know.

Any while we’re at it, please note that “crime rose rapidly at the end of Trump’s term but is now dropping.” In particular, the homicide rate recently saw “the largest single-year decline in the last 20 years.”

That hasn’t stopped the GOP nominee from advocating for a real-life version of The Purge, in which one violent day would bring down crime rates that aren’t that high in the first place.

There are more ways in which conservatives have it completely backwards, but I will save those examples for next week’s post.

Here are some fun statistics for you: 

“A majority (52 percent) of Trump supporters say they believe the claim about Haitian migrants abducting and eating pet dogs and cats.” Slightly fewer believe that “in some states it is legal to kill a baby after birth,” and almost a third think that “public schools are providing students with sex-change operations.” As nuts as these viewpoints are, they pale in comparison to the 81 percent of Trump supporters who believe “Venezuela is deliberately sending people from prisons and mental institutions to the United States.”

But they constitute a serious political party, and we should respect their opinions. Right?

Of course, among Trump’s strongest supporters are Christian nationalists. These are people who talk a lot about how much they love Jesus but in reality despise almost everything the guy actually taught. Trump-centered Christians “are not churchgoers and are looking for what they see as retribution against those they believe are destroying traditional values, those who defend a secular society in which everyone is treated equally before the law.” Their support for the GOP is “less about religion than it is about a cultural and political identity: one in which Christians are considered a persecuted minority, traditional institutions are viewed skeptically, and Mr. Trump looms large.”

They have found a cozy home in The Republican Party, which is “68 percent white and Christian in a country that is 42 percent white and Christian.”

We’re talking about “Christians who had jettisoned their credibility—people who embraced the charge of being reactionary hypocrites, still fuming about Bill Clinton’s character as they jumped at the chance to go slumming with a playboy turned president.”

These religious zealots are “developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas in [Trump’s] administration should the former president return to power.”

And what are those plans? Well, it’s the usual right-wing obsession with overturning same-sex marriage, enacting a nationwide abortion ban, and reducing access to contraceptives. But they also want to create “a restrictionist immigration agenda” that allows only those newcomers who “accept Israel’s God, laws, and understanding of history.” 

So basically, they want an America that is virtually 100% Christian, with a few conservative Jews allowed to hang around.

The GOP is so hyper-religious that they enthusiastically nominate fundamentalists who preach violence in the name of God. And if those lunatics indulge in all the behaviors that they condemn, plus a few straight-up vile acts that should disqualify them from society, well, the Republican Party will stand beside them.

This push for religious theocracy comes at an interesting time in American history. You see, about 28% of Americans say they are “religiously unaffiliated — a group comprised of atheists, agnostic and those who say their religion is ‘nothing in particular.’ ” This makes them the largest religious cohort in the country.

In essence, America is becoming less religious even as the dwindling group of extremists among us get more fanatical.

God help us all.

There has been much talk — misguided, self-serving, and delusional talk but active speech nonetheless — about Kamala Harris “reaching out” to Republicans or adjusting her policies to better appeal to conservatives.

Let’s set aside the fact that asking the GOP to do this is never broached. Even in the years before the Republican Party acquiesced into lemming-like obedience to a felonious madman, it was laughable to even consider that conservatives would pull back on their antiquated, frequently obnoxious ideas just to obtain liberal sign-off.

No, it always progressives who must compromise, be civil, go high when others go low, and in general, abandon their principles.

But let’s say that Harris, for some bizarre reason, decides to do this. What exact Democratic idea should she kick to the curb? Democrats are already timid on climate change, gun control, and universal healthcare. Should Harris say, “In the spirit of compromise, I will outlaw gay marriage”? Would that be enough for conservatives?

Ha — no.

Most of the Republican Party has made it clear that they would rather burn the country down than work with groomer Satanists and the woke mob (that is, anyone who doesn’t have a MAGA tattoo inked across their chest). The hard right cannot be appeased.

The few semi-sane Republicans remaining have long ago dropped Trump, so it is unclear what mythical segment of the conservative movement would now acknowledge that the guy is a toxic, gibbering mess who is a direct threat to America. They are more than willing to go down with any ship for which he is the captain.

Pressuring Harris to kowtow to extremists who would happily imprison her is an absurd suggestion. It is also historically dubious.

For example, back in 1964, Lyndon Johnson cut a deal at the Democratic National Convention with Dixiecrats who were ostensibly in the same political party but were also raging bigots. Johnson agreed to “a compromise that would permit the seating of an all-white Mississippi delegation.”

And how did this moral abnegation work out for the Democratic Party? Well, in the 1964 election, they lost Mississippi and the rest of the Deep South. And they have continued to lose those states in every election since then, as the racist wing of the Democratic Party absconded to the GOP, where they found a cheery welcome and the foundation of a political base that endures to this day.

So backing down to lunatics didn’t help the Democrats in 1964. And it will not help them in 2024.

By the way, all those xenophobes in the modern GOP had better enjoy their cozy home. Because there is nowhere else for them to go. The political parties will not be flipping back. The Republican Party owns the bigot base for the foreseeable future.

Of course, those lunatics didn’t just self-generate, ex nihilo, when Obama was elected (although everybody knows that the nation’s first black president had a catalyzing effect on racism). No, the backlash to Obama was “really a long-running ‘whitelash’ that’s intricately woven into American history and currently targets not just black people, but any group that threatens a shifting consensus of who is American and who is not.”

Perhaps the GOP will kick out the racists and rebrand (although that won’t be happening anytime soon), or the racists will form a third party, European style. Who knows?

But for this election, at least, the right-wingers are ensconced in the GOP, and the Democratic Party gains nothing by appeasing them.

For once, the Democrats can’t afford to back down.

What’s behind the GOP’s Ragnarokian rage?

It’s both an excellent question and a great excuse to use the term “Ragnarokian,” which I’m pretty sure is not even a real word.

But why are conservatives so determined to destroy America unless they can reshape it into a right-wing utopia?

Well, for decades, rich jerks tried to control our political system for their own economic benefit. And while they were successful (the wealth gap is a very real thing), they needed the middle- and working-class to vote Republican to maintain this system. After myriad culture wars and made-up threats, many of those voters came to believe they are in a literal holy war against satanic progressives. 

So now we have millions of religious fundamentalists “hellbent on overthrowing democracy to impose their religious will on the American majority.” I will quote the historian Heather Cox Richardson at length here:

“In the United States, [there is] a movement of people who are willing to overthrow democracy if it means reinforcing their traditional vision. Christian nationalists believe that the secular values of democracy are destroying Christianity and traditional values. They want to get rid of LGBTQ+ rights, feminism, immigration, and the public schools they believe teach such values. And if that means handing power to a dictator who promises to restore their vision of a traditional society, they’re in. It is an astonishing rejection of everything the United States has always stood for.”

But don’t believe me and some egg-head historian. Conservative leaders have gotten up in public and shouted that they want to overthrow democracy and unleash “righteous retribution for those who betrayed America.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

Millions of Americans no longer believer in the Constitution, and “have no interest in the stewardship of American democracy.” Instead, these theocrats “seek to commandeer the ship of state, pillage the hold, and then crash us all onto the rocks.”

This is not a fringe movement within the Republican Party. No, the GOP threat to democracy is now systemic, and Republican leaders “tolerate or condone antidemocratic extremism because it is the path of least resistance.”

The guiding lights of the modern conservative movement are threatening violence if they don’t get their way, which consists of “restructuring the country so that the right — meaning primarily straight White men, as was the case 100 years ago — can decide how power and status are allocated.”

They want us to be like Hungary (only bigger) or Russia (only smaller).

And speaking of international trends, a recent study concluded that 71% of the world’s population currently lives in autocracies, which “constitutes a 48% increase compared to ten years ago.” And before you think despotism exists only in those sepia-toned third-world nations that provide anonymous villains for Hollywood blockbusters, please note that almost half of the population of industrialized nations “think a system in which a strong leader can make decisions without interference from parliament or the courts is a good form of government.”

That apparently includes America, where democracy is frail as it faces the onslaught of fundamentalist maniacs. 

After 250 years, it can all go away overnight.