Comments by "" (@DavidJ222) on "Expert compares Trump's politics to fascism" video.

  1. History: "You people don't listen, and you sure as he// don't learn. How many more times must I repeat myself? How many more times must I show the world what happens when people allow despotic and authoritarian dictators like Adolf, Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin, Putin, Pol Pot, Kim Jung Un, and now Trump to come to power. It NEVER ends well. It never has, and it never will. For the umpteenth time, If you want to destroy a democracy, and create a despotic dictatorship, this is how you do it."
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  2. On Aug. 7, 1974, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction, and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal. Nixon announced his resignation the next day, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974. In his 2006 book "Conservatives Without Conscience," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio "traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign." In his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon "knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished." This was back when the Republican party still had at least a modicum of dignity, decency, integrity, and a sense of right and wrong. Today, thanks to Trump, Moscow Mitch, Graham, Nunes, Jordan, Barr, Meadows, and others, the wholesale corruption of the GOP is now complete. The Republican Party is now led by a kleptocratic crime boss who rules over the most scandal-ridden administration in history. Many of his closest advisers and associates have either been imprisoned or are facing prison time. Trump himself is trying to cheat in this election in order to stay in office and avoid prosecution. Nixon’s administration may have been  riddled with criminality—but in 1973, the Republican Party was still a somewhat normal party,  that still played by the rules, so Nixon was forced to resign. But not anymore. Those days are long gone. The corruption we see in the Republican party today can be defined as institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means. Today’s Republican Party has cornered itself in with a base of ever older, more male, more rural, more radical conservative voters. They could have tried to expand; instead, they’ve hardened and walled themselves off. This is why the Republican Party lies about the risks of voter fraud, so that it can pass laws to suppress voter turnout. Taking away democratic rights—extreme gerrymandering; blocking an elected president from nominating a Supreme Court justice; selectively paring voting rolls and polling places; creating spurious anti-fraud commissions; misusing the census to undercount the opposition; calling lame-duck legislative sessions to pass laws against the will of the voters—is the Republican Party’s main political strategy. Republicans have chosen suppression and authoritarianism, because unlike the Dems, their party isn’t a coalition of interests in search of a majority. The Republican party isn't interested in what the majority of Americans want. Trump is now the grotesque face of the rot within the party itself. And it reeks of corruption, paranoia, fascism, wild conspiracy theories, racism and other types of hostility toward entire groups. Trump is no different than his authoritarian counterparts abroad: immoral, demagogic, hostile to institutional checks, demanding and receiving demagogic obedience and protection from the party, and knee-deep in the financial corruption that is integral to the political corruption of authoritarian regimes..
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