While the mainstream media is still largely tiptoeing around exactly what we can expect from a second Trump term, Robert Reich at Inequality Media has been turning out videos that talk about it in plain language and pull no punches. There seems to be some puzzlement in the media why people seem to have what is almost nostalgia for the 4 years Trump was in the White House. If more people see these videos, that might change.
What will be Trump’s agenda? This is probably the clearest description you will find of what Trump’s 2024 ‘platform’ is, with the full backing of the Republican Party: Day One Dictator
This is a follow-up to a video that answers the question: Is Donald Trump a Fascist? The F-word gets casually thrown around a lot, but Reich does an excellent job of defining it and showing how it manifests in practice. You can see and hear how the themes Reich talks about are showing up in Republican rhetoric these days. There is no “both-siding” this.
Godwin’s Law has been taken to mean (incorrectly) that any argument descends into irrelevance and becomes invalid when someone starts throwing comparisons to Hitler and Nazis around — but Godwin himself states this is not the case when the comparisons are valid — despite Trump’s denials. Trump may not be lying when he says he has never read Mein Kampf, but he is certainly appealing to those who have and has picked up on what they want to hear. And then there’s “All the best people” he surrounds himself with — like this guy.
BONUS MATERIAL:
Reich talks about how Fascism turns on the ideal of the Strongman as the leader from whom all else follows. The idea of someone who will simply ‘cut through the bullshit” and just “get things done” is seductive — especially when the functioning of government is being deliberately obstructed for partisan gain. Part of the Republican war on government is to make people disenchanted with it, along with their denial of the common interest and the public good.
Republican frustration with democracy and their desire to discard it is rooted in their inability to sell voters on their plans, and inconvenient things like the rule of law that gets in their way. (A big reason they are packing the courts with activist judges to make sure the law is interpreted in ways they could never get through the legislatures.)
They want to streamline that with someone who can magically make their dreams come true just by ordering it done. It’s all through the pages of Project 2025 — the idea that radical actions are necessary to — eventually — return America to their idea of the ideal constitutional republic of the Founders.
Timothy Snyder writing at his sub stack newsletter Thinking About, talks about:
Quite a few Americans like the idea of strongman rule. Why not a dictator who will get things done?
I lived in eastern Europe when memories of communism were fresh. I have visited regions in Ukraine where Russia imposed its occupation regime. I have spent decades reading testimonies of people who lived under Nazi or Stalinist rule. I have seen death pits, some old, some freshly dug. And I have friends who have lived under authoritarian regimes, including political prisoners and survivors of torture. Some of the people I trusted most have been assassinated.
So I think that there is an answer to this question.
Strongman rule is a fantasy. Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won't. In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it.
emphasis added
Timothy Snyder goes on to expound in detail all of the ways life under a Strongman leader is a nightmare that touches all things and never stops. Read The Whole Thing.
Share it, and the videos from Robert Reich. We can’t trust the mainstream media to get the word out on this; we have to do what we can in what has now become the Disinformation Age.