Thursday, March 10, 2016
Towelheads for Trump
The BBC has a fascinating story on view right now; Meet the Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus supporting Trump.
That headline has to be a bit of a mind fuck if you're not used to thinking for yourself and you get your news from American mainstream news purveyors. After all, the Trump=racist and Trump=fascist memes dominate virtually all coverage of the Trump campaign.
This BBC story might help dispel the racist part of that equation. As for the fascism factor, I think Trump is the candidate least qualified for that label, and that includes Bernie. The word "fascism" is tossed around by the media in a context devoid of any serious consideration of what it actually means. Hitler was a compelling orator who knew how to captivate a crowd. So is Trump. Ergo, Trump is a fascist.
Martin Luther King was a compelling orator who could captivate a crowd too. Does that make him a fascist?
While there is no single universally agreed upon definition of "fascism," serious people who have spent their careers pondering the matter generally agree that a mature fascist state combines a private sector dominated by defence contractors with a government that is in a symbiotic revolving door relationship with that sector. That's an apt description of America today, isn't it? The elite in the beltway and the elite in the defence industry play non-stop musical chairs. Top generals in the military and senior people at State routinely find themselves in senior posts with the private sector war profiteers, and vice versa.
Hillary is universally acknowledged to be completely beholden to that crowd, and everyone other than Trump on the GOP side has been desperately pandering to it.
Bernie Sanders would seem to be a special case, but appearances and campaign proclamations aside, he's not. Here's something worth reading if you think Bernie is independent of the war machine.
Which leaves Trump.
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