++Charlie Chaplin sad his biggest regret was making "The Great Dictator". Odd, a powerful great film. But he sad it was one thing to make audiences laugh at Adolf Hitler and another to warn them about him. He said he failed to deliver the adequate warning.
++"This is How Fascism Comes To America." Robert Kagan joins the fray. He doesn't mince words. Trump has anything to do with ideology. nothing to do with the Republican Party. It is allegiance to him and him alone. If he makes it to the White House, he will owe no one anything.
++Kagan says that Trump offers his attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo. He displays disrespect for the niceties of democratic culture that he claims produced natural weakness and incompetence.
++Kagan reminds everyone Fascism doesn't begging with an ideology or policy proposals . Trump's program is "Get tough with foreigners and people of nonwhite complexion." He'll deport them ,bar them, get them to knuckle under, make them pay up or shut up."
++Trump "is simply and quite literally an egomaniac."
++He details the various approaches people have to Trump--embrace him, distance themselves from him, try to copt him. His detailed descriptions of these different approaches is excellent.
++Trump has tapped into a "mobocracy". Kagan says conservatives have warned against the state taking over liberties but this time he says it is the situation that DeTocqueville warned bout: people, exited, angry and unconstrained,that might run roughshod over institutions created to preserve freedoms.
++How does fascism come to the United States? Kagan runs through the fascist regimes and includes Putinism. He says a "television huckster, phone billionaire,text book egomaniac with a national political party falling in line." He says if you expect Republicans to pull him back than you don't know the Trump supporters who have nothing but contempt for the party.
++Kagan reminds us that less than 5% of the electorate has voted for Trump. But warns that if wins the election , a majority would have voted for him. Do you think he could become humble then?
++I applaud neoconservatives like Kagan, Max Boot and Eliot Cohen of providing the intellectual framework for fighting against Trump. While their efforts were misplaced about the "freedom agenda",they did understand the basics of our democracy,just not other's cultures and political systems.
++I wonder just how persuasive they can be with their intellectual arguments since Trump is about Emotion and deeply repressed white anger.
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