This excerpt from a piece by Adam Gopnik, writing in The New Yorker, sums up why I'm not willing to accept Donald Trump as a harmless clown:
What all forms of fascism have in common is the
glorification of the nation, and the exaggeration of its humiliations, with
violence promised to its enemies, at home and abroad; the worship of power
wherever it appears and whoever holds it; contempt for the rule of law and for
reason; unashamed employment of repeated lies as a rhetorical strategy; and a
promise of vengeance for those who feel themselves disempowered by history. It
promises to turn back time and take no prisoners. That it can appeal to those
who do not understand its consequences is doubtless true. But the first job of
those who do understand is to state what those consequences invariably are.
Those who think that the underlying institutions of American government are
immunized against it fail to understand history. In every historical situation
where a leader of Trump’s kind comes to power, normal safeguards collapse. Ours
are older and therefore stronger? Watching the rapid collapse of the Republican
Party is not an encouraging rehearsal. Donald Trump has a chance to seize
power.
Hillary Clinton is an ordinary liberal politician. She has
her faults, easily described, often documented—though, for the most part, the
worst accusations against her have turned out to be fiction. No reasonable person,
no matter how opposed to her politics, can believe for a second that Clinton’s
accession to power would be a threat to the Constitution or the continuation of
American democracy. No reasonable person can believe that Trump’s accession to
power would not be.
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