Trapped in the Trumpocene nightmare

[marmar]

Trapped in the Trumpocene nightmare
Is there any way to escape this era?

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED APRIL 20, 2023 5:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) Are we closer to the end of the Age of Trump or still somewhere near the beginning? Stuck and wandering in circles in the middle of it all?

I do not know. There is solid evidence to support all those propositions.

Donald Trump has (finally) been arrested and arraigned in New York for alleged crimes connected to hush money payments he made to his mistresses during the 2016 Election. This is the first of other, far more serious indictments that likely await him for election fraud, financial fraud, and stealing top secret and other highly classified documents. These legal cases could, in theory, force Trump out of the 2024 presidential contest. Of course, Trump has publicly stated that he will not end his presidential campaign even if indicted or on trial.

Trump remains very popular among his MAGA base and Republican voters more broadly. He almost quite literally owns the Republican Party and remains its presumptive 2024 presidential nominee. However, Trump's support continues to soften among the right-leaning independent voters that he would presumably need in order to capture the White House again. Republican Party elites and other insiders are continuing their efforts to undermine Donald Trump because while they agree with his neofascist agenda they increasingly view him personally as a liability and not the best vessel for injecting that poison into American society long-term.

....(snip)....

As political scientist Bertram Gross warned in 1980, Ronald Reagan was "the friendly fascist." In that role, Reagan, a B-movie celebrity pitchman actor and supporter of the Red Scare, who then became governor and soon after President of the United States, was an agent and symbol of a culture of distraction and intellectual and emotional immaturity. The embodiment of capitalism and consumerist excess, Reagan was a man who used racism and white supremacy as political weapons and was among other horrible things a tool of the moneyed classes and other financial elites who gutted the social safety net and placed the American Dream even further out of reach for the average American.

....(snip)....

As unseemly and frightening as it may be to the mainstream news media, the political class, and many among the general public, Donald Trump and ascendant neofascism are not as a blip or aberration in American history. They are actually the result of decades and centuries-long forces and processes. In many ways, Donald Trump is a "great" man of history. ........................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/04/20/trapped-in-the-trumpocene-nightmare/