Neo-Liberals, Neo-Conservatives, Neo-Fascists, Neo-Nazis... There's A Difference?

My friend Frank-- whose dad was one of the 3 founders of the Moral Majority movement-- left evangelical Christianity many years ago... loudly. Yesterday, je sent me this video from Italy, where he's on vacation. He sure doesn't like fascists! "Be warned, America," he said, "when you elect a Nazi German to represent your country, who then calls other people "foreigners," when he is a foreigner-- because it is not an American idea to put children in cages... When you tell people of color to go back where they came from... when we forget that history, we will end up with places like this or their metaphorical equivalent." He was speaking from the ruins of a German bunker.

Commentary was founded by left-of-center Jewish intellectuals in the aftermath of the Holocaust and became a leading component of the new post-war Jewish identity until 1960 when a radical right freak, Norman Podhoretz, took over and turned it into a neo-conservative/neo-fascist magazine, destroying all credibility the magazine had developed in it's first decade and a half. His son, John Podhoretz, is the current editor and even nearly as toxic as the father. A #NeverTrumper, he broke with the fascist right on immigration policy: "[A]s a Jew, I have great difficulty supporting a blanket policy of immigration restriction because of what happened to the Jewish people after 1924 and the unwillingness of the United States to take Jews in." But, more recently, he gravitated back to his neo-fascist roots and supports both Trump and putting immigrant children in cages. I don't know much about Noah Rothman other than his position as online editor of Commentary. His new book, Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America, was published by neo-fascist publishing firm, Regnery. And his new post for Commentary, pathetic: "both sides" trash, that would have had the pre-Podhoretz editors of the magazine puking. His first couple of paragraphs sucked me into reading the article: "The 2016 election cycle was a forsaken orgy of racial anxiety, political violence, spineless complacency, and depravity of a scale that was abnormal even for American politics. The 2020 election cycle will be worse. America got a taste of what Donald Trump’s reelection bid is going to look like on Wednesday night, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. The president had only hours earlier intervened in a destructive civil conflict among Democrats by insisting that the conflict’s more progressive belligerents, all of whom are of minority descent with only one born abroad, should 'go back' to the countries 'from which they came.' Aware of the damage these remarks could do both to the GOP’s political prospects and the social fabric, some responsible Republicans dissented. Most did not. Those members of Trump’s phalanx who did not stifle their criticisms flattered the president and applauded his instincts. It was inevitable that his most committed supporters would do the same. So, when the topic turned to 'squad' member Ilhan Omar at Wednesday night’s rally, the crowd followed Trump’s lead." Eventually, so did Rothman.

First he noted that "There’s an ugly condescension inherent in the unspoken assumption that repudiating bigotry might fracture the president’s winning coalition of voters who are otherwise underserved by elite opinion-makers on the coasts, but there is no better explanation for Trump’s politically foolish compromises. Trump’s approach to constituency maintenance routinely manifests in the stoking of racial and class tensions, and there’s no reason to expect that to abate when the presidency is on the line." But then came the both sides bullshit conservatives can never resist:

Equally tragic is the fact that the Republican Party Trump represents is losing, or has already lost, the moral high ground in its efforts to call out Rep. Omar’s unveiled expressions of anti-Semitism for what they are. Democrats certainly aren’t doing so. Absent any check on her instincts, Omar and the 'squad' can be expected to renew their commitment to a special brand of ethnic and sectarian antagonism. For her part, Omar has transitioned from making anti-Semitic comments to crafting anti-Semitic policy. This week, she introduced a House resolution in support of the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement-- an amalgam of anti-Israel interests whose actions inevitably manifest in naked Jew-hatred-- equating Israel to Nazi Germany in the process." In other words, equating anti-Semitism with supporting the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and national identity. The brakes are off, and the temperature is rising. As the campaign season intensifies, so, too, will the emotions around the consequences of the next presidential cycle. The acts of political violence that we’ve witnessed over the last three years-- some of which are attributed to overheated political rhetoric by their perpetrators-- are unlikely to abate. As the legislative process grinds to a halt ahead of the upcoming election year, the crises that exacerbate these tensions, like the unanticipated explosion of migrants crossing the Southern border, will go unaddressed. Those crises will be demagogued; they always are. But there are no cooler heads left to prevail.

A responsible political culture can withstand the actions of a few reckless provocateurs, even if one of those provocateurs is the president. But ours is not a responsible political culture, and things are going to get worse before they get better.

Oh, well, at least I learned to never read anything by Noah Rothman again, nor to bother reading anything in Commentary. From now on, when I want to hear from delusional Republicans, I'll just stick to Andrew Sullivan, whose a lot smarter than Rothman and Podhoretz combined. His contribution to yesterday's dialogue: Trump Is Betting That Indecency Can Win in America. "In the deeply disturbing moments after Donald Trump invoked a three-minutes-of-hate session toward Congresswoman Ilhan Omar Wednesday night, and the crowd erupted with chants of 'Send Her Back! Send Her Back!', a protester yelled something inaudible, and caused a commotion. As security was called, the crowd chanted 'USA! USA!' and eventually the young man was handcuffed and led out of the stadium, to the mob’s vocal derision and pleasure. In those moments, you can see Trump pause to allow the mob to vent against the dissenter. Frenzied participants gleefully whipped out their phones to take photos of the man, who was holding up pictures of Jeffrey Epstein and Trump together and wearing a Native Trash T-shirt-- a defunct Charlotte band but also presumably," ventured Sullivan, a reference to all those who surrounded him."

This country has had volatile civil conflicts before. What’s different now is we have a president whose instinct in such turbulent times is actually to intensify the turbulence with rhetoric and mass rallies that foment greater and greater mutual hostility. Most presidents regard it as their responsibility to tamp down racial and cultural conflict. Trump, having no concept of any broader interest than his own, is incapable of it. His malignant narcissism prevents him from any other way of behaving, and each outrage becomes a new baseline for the next one.

So yes, we are in an abyss. And as Trump becomes increasingly emboldened by his survival, and one of the two major parties has become a cult, the bottom seems even more elusive than before. Think of what might happen if Trump loses the popular vote in 2020 by an even bigger margin but still ekes out an Electoral College victory. Think of how a close election could lead to Trump’s refusal to concede, and how the wheels could come off the entire system. What we know for certain is that, for the first time, we have a president who doesn’t care if that happens, who’d rather destroy the legitimacy of liberal democracy than compete legitimately within it.