It’s easy to make her sound like a victim when you ignore the fact that she did everything in her power to rig the DNC primaries in her favor AND propped up Trump’s early campaign as much as she could. The situation we find ourselves in is certainly not exclusively her fault but she definitely deserves more of the blame than any of us do. She set the board exactly how she wanted and still couldn’t win the game.

I agree with you that it wasn’t a cakewalk, but the problem was she treated it like a cakewalk. She assumed she had it locked up, and ignored all polling that didn’t support her landslide victory. She punished downticket candidates who didn’t bend the knee by skipping their districts in places like Wisconsin and Michigan, because she assumed people would show up for her.

She ran a terrible campaign, kowtowing to the worst attacks, thinking it was politics as usual, acting like she was above the fray while she was face down in the mud getting stomped on.

She should have gone on the offensive. She should have presented a vision for a better America. She failed us all, and for that she deserves as much scorn as we can conjure.

One guy thought Trump had a chance. Ome guy kept saying that Trump was going to beat Hillary, and we needed a better strategy than hers.

If everyone that would have voted against Trump had shown up (less than 60% of eligible voters turned out in 2016), it would have been no contest.

Everyone needs to read and comprehend this. The number of people who didn’t want Hillary or Trump was greater than the number of people who voted for them. But the system doesn’t reward abstaining. Trying to make a statement by not voting only serves to reward the people who you are abstaining from. Fucking vote, people! Write a candidate in if you have to. Vote for your dog. But get off your asses and use the right that hundreds of thousands of people died to protect.

I wouldn’t even call them center right, anyone. They’re what the right used to be.

I don’t know why people listen to Trump, but they do, and that means he’s good at speaking.

You might want to look up Umberto Eco’s definition and I think it might be called something like “needs served by ur fascism”…

…but basically it’s authoritarian indoctrination into the idea that all individuals are subordinate to the state, and in order for them to be seen as having value they must give themselves entirely to the state’s goals and ideals to the point of happily, willingly, unquestioningly, and mindlessly giving their lives for/to the state.

It’s a kind of religious faith and fervor. It’s designed to replace and subordinate all other values and more often than not, places absolute power and faith in a single individual… And there’s often an irrational “cult of personality” around that individual. That person can “do no wrong” and is sometimes praised as a god or thought of as divine or having elements usually reserved for religion. They’re sometimes cast in the role of a father figure or God Emporer, and are always a “strong man leader”. Protection and veneration of them is the highest Aim in fascism (because everyone’s brainwashed by propaganda to believe he can do no wrong, and followers are sometimes scared to question or admit otherwise).

Fascism is named after the Roman “fascia” which was a bundle of sticks (sometimes with a long axe handle in the middle), that was used to beat unruly crowds and protestors (this goes along with the “strong man dictator imagery”). The internal fascist perspective is that this represents the strength through binding of strict rules into a community that is stronger than the sum of its parts, so the individuals no longer matter, they must move as the collective community of fascist believers demand.

So it’s a sort of radical authoritarian collectivism. It’s very much like a cult, but a cult that grips the whole of political society and the masses, it usually involves propaganda, and religious overtones, meaning the people giving up their rights, freedoms, bodies, and lives believe it’s in their best interests and may even get a substantial power trip from being the purveyors of popular violence in the name of their political religion. It usually involves political purges, and a complete conversion of society.

Fascism always requires enemies, and victims, people to target, blame, and be violent to. This often starts out as being the political opposition, then might also include demographic or ethnic or religious types, and almost always gay and queer people. Anyone different or who doesn’t abide by the group’s convictions around uniformity.

In Nazi Germany it was Gays, Jews, Subversives, and Criminals. In PolPot’s killing fields it was anyone who didn’t look Cambodian enough, or had any health defects, or disagreed or spoke out against the Khmer Rouge. In Hindu systems of Fascism it’s often Muslims.

Each culture and nations fascism has different aspects, but they all have key characteristics, which is what Umberto Eco was trying to define.

So that’s Fascism, named after some Roman shit, and usually has an angry “leather daddy” whose actually a loser at the top. It’s kinda pathetic and usually recruits people who don’t have a good sense of themselves and their own free will. People with low self-esteem who are angry and have grievances, who are upset at society or how it’s treated them, and who don’t question themselves or have a lot of empathy or self awareness of how others might be view things or be effected. Recruits are people who want to feel strong, but can’t for whatever reason. The group fascism makes them feel they’re being strong, and good, have a place in the world and brotherhood.

The best way to avoid fascism is to have a society based on shared community, transparency, justice, and empathy where everyone gets a say, but certain individualist limits are respected (eg. Self-autonomy, intellectual and political freedoms ect…) - and by making fascist movements and elements illegal or difficult to get away with. Also see Karl Popper’s “The Paradox of Tolerance”, or Herbert Marcuse’s essay on “Repressive Tolerance” for more on this.