Jon Johanning wrote:
>
>
> But all this still doesn't make them Nazis. So far, at least (and I
> don't pretend to be able to predict their future any more than anyone
> else's), I see them as playing a very determined and clever game of
> poker on the table of the existing U.S. political system, rather than
> getting ready to knock over the table and chop it into kindling wood,
> the way the Nazis and the (real) Fascists did. Perhaps that's just
> because, up to now, they have been spectacularly successful working
> "within the system." Where will they go when they start losing?
>
Yes.
The Nazis were not the only very nasty bunch who ever ruled a nation -- and if one subtracts the death camps and examines their rule otherwise, it brings them out of the realm of fantasy land. And then it becomes possible to compare their rule with other species of authoritarian rule, seeing both the resemblances and the very real differences.
We are clearly moving towards a very unpleasant condition in the u.s., and I think it important to see how much more unpleasant it could get or may well get. But I really don't see how it helps either to understand that condition or to fight against it to make such dissolute use of language as is involved with throwing around the labels "fascist" and "nazi."
If we can't fight outrage without using the label "fascist" our politics are pretty thin.
Carrol