GOLIKEHELLMACHINE: again with the cognitive dissonance — i think it’s fair to question whether trump really follows this pattern with intention, but the people who work for him absolutely do, and they’re not all stupid, some of them know what they’re doing and in each other, they see plenty of opportunities.

again with the cognitive dissonance — i think it’s fair to question whether trump really follows this pattern with intention, but the people who work for him absolutely do, and they’re not all stupid, some of them know what they’re doing and in each other, they see plenty of opportunities.

Trump's use of Nazi "reich" terminology to frame his campaign isn't an accident -- it's a Trial Balloon. As usual, he's floating offensive and outrageous idea to push extreme ideas and test public reaction. More at FrameLab with @georgelakoff.bsky.social LINK: www.theframelab.org/unified-reic...

“is trump a fascist” is almost incidental to the point, trump doesn’t actually “believe” much at all, but the more important question is “does trump recognize that he can harness fascism and ride it into authoritarian power on the backs of fascists” is pretty unequivocally a yes

Yup. He has authoritarian instincts and recognizes the fascists are a cheap ticket to staying out of jail and lining his pockets, and that's enough.

That's actually true of all fascists. It's not really a consistent ideology beyond "blame the outgroup" and "hurray for the leader". Otherwise it'll embrace anything, capitalism, socialism, monarchy, statism, libertarianism. Whatever gets it more power in the moment, then it pivots to something else

Suppose he’s not a fascist but he’s number one with fascists. You vote these people out every chance you get. Not a single problem can be improved by letting them near any amount of power.

Ding ding ding

a lot of people think being effective and being smart are the same thing but none of trump's little communication tricks require any intelligence whatsoever, any more than car dealers who scam professors need to be smarter than them.

a lot of people have never 1:1 dealt with brutes, vicious thugs, conmen or thieves

Despite some pretty anarchist-adjacent beliefs, I have a hard time escaping the feeling that if we did ever manage to slay leviathan we’d immediately start rebuilding him.

The Player-Piano problem, you might say.

It's like a cockroach's legs scuttling; there's not much intelligence there, just activity & a vector

And no shame about being a filthy little shit.

It's the Alex Jonesification of everything.

He kept a book of hitlers speeches next to his bed. Whether it’s intentional in a strategic way or not he certainly has a model.

The alt-right version of boiling the frog.

Trump was using the Hitlerisms and stuff back during his 2016 campaign too. However mentally checked-out the guy may be nowadays, he was undoubtedly aware and intentional about it when he first got MAGA going.

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