DeSantis and Mussolini" Thom Hartmann compares the two

DeSantis and Mussolini: Thom Hartmann compares the two

By Hal Brown

Above: Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler at Munich Station in Germany in September 1937, with DeSantis who happens to be walking in lockstep added by me. Scroll down to see how photo was made.

Below is the photo that was used to illustrate Thom Hartmann's Raw Story article 

America finally facing politician who has Mussolini’s guile, ruthlessness and willingness to see people die

Above: It only took me a few minutes to add DeSantis to the photo.

Here's the comment I added to Hartmann's Raw Story + option essay:

Thank you for the important history lesson, Thom. The comparison between Mussolini and DeSantis is right on. The evils of Mussolini don't resonate with most Americans the way those of Hitler do, arguably because he didn't, from what I know of Italy, have an easy to demonize portion of his population to try to exterminate. Had one been in the place of the other I think Mussolini would have had his own version of the Holocaust. DeSantis is a straight on sociopath minus the grandiose narcissism and delusional thinking of Trump. It is chilling to think he could become president.  

Hartmann makes excellent comparisons between DeSantis and Mussolini. He also has examples of quotes from people sharing their stories of how DeSantis' policies hurt them. The article is on the subscription Raw Story +. 

Hartmann's main point can be summarized in this excerpt:

Historians and political observers have been predicting that America would get our very own Mussolini ever since the days of Barry Goldwater. And there’s been no shortage of candidates: bribe-taking Nixon; Central American fascist-loving Reagan; Gitmo torturing and war-lying Bush; and, of course, Trump.

But with Ron DeSantis, we may finally be facing an all-American politician who has Mussolini’s guile, ruthlessness, and willingness to see people die to advance his political career, all while being smart and educated enough to avoid the easily satirized buffoonishness of Trump.

Since the essay requires a subscription to read, here are a few bullet points for those who don't subscribe:

• Ron DeSantis refuses to expand Medicaid, even though 93 percent of the cost is covered with money from Washington, DC. It’s the principle of the thing, apparently: he’s one of 11 red state governors who believes that working poor people simply shouldn’t get health coverage. After all, they didn’t have the good sense to be born into a wealthy family!
• Violence, hate, bigotry, and cruelty are the four cardinal points of fascism. Compassion and concern for the greater good, for the poor and weak, for the victims of fate and accident have no place in the fascist world.
• George Washington, in his Farewell Address, warned us of the possible rise of politicians like DeSantis who would suggest other Americans are enemies of the nation’s values, who would exaggerate policy differences in war-like terms, and who would ascribe the most evil of motives and intentions to simple political opponents.
• Using rhetoric that feeds bigotry and hate against gay, lesbian, and trans people.
• Intimidating the college board so they strip the Black Lives Matter movement out of their advanced placement African-American Studies curriculum.
• Lying to asylum-seekers to get them on a plane to Martha’s Vineyard as a stunt to elevate his own political fortunes.
• And now as many as 2 million more Floridians will join the ranks of the uninsured in the coming months.

In giving examples of Mussolini-like things DeSantis has done, Hartmann inserts these lines eight times:

Quote of the day is from Mika Brzezinski 

"I mean, we're saying this with all seriousness and without trying to -- I mean, it's hard," she said. "You have to say it like it is. We have a stupidity problem on the Republican side, literal stupidity, or something worse then -- stupidity with a violent edge to it. I mean, they want to have loaded -- this is -- what has become of Republicans in Congress?" In 

'Headache-inducing' Lauren Boebert claim shredded by MSNBC's Mika

This relates not only to many members of Congress, particular those in the House Freedom Caucus, but probably more significantly and tragically to many of the people who voted for them and are eager to vote for Trump, DeSantis, or another far-right candidate. 

It has become, perhaps always has been, a third rail of American politics to disparage the intelligence of one's opponents lest you be considered an elitist. Whether it is true or not doesn't matter.

Here's another way to put it:

For my aprox. 200-300 weekly readers in Russia:

Лучшим веб-сайтом для чтения последних американских новостей является Raw Story. Я суммирую статьи на веб-сайтах, доступных только по подписке, а если вы подписаны на Raw Story +, на нем есть отличные эссе с мнениями.

Using InPixio

Some thoughts about Putin's Russia and Trump's MAGAmerica

Some thoughts about Putin's Russia and Trump's MAGAmerica

by Hal Brown 

I used for a background this natural-color image which combines cloud-free data from over 500 Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) orbits with shaded relief Digital Terrain Elevation models from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) and other sources. It shows an astonishing diversity of geological features, ecological systems and human landscapes. I meant it to show how from space there are no state lines.

I'll start with the comment I put on the following David Ignatious column in today's Washington Post (subscription):

The parallels between Russia under Putin and what the of MAGA part United States has become struck me. Even if Trump never gets a second term his MAGA cult will remain with us. They envision a United States chillingly similar to those who want Russia to be an imperial fascist country. The equation to describe these segments of the two countries looks like Russian First = America First. The remedy is the kind of transformation that occurred in Germany after World War II.  I don't know how this can happen without the resounding military defeat the NAZI regime suffered. It will require not only a victory of morality over immorality for both countries, but a moral awakening among a large portion of those who adhered to the belief that ultra-nationalism was their credo.

These are what I thought were the most important observations in the column. As you read them substitute how the Ukrainians view Russia with how you view MAGAmerica and how you think these MAGA cultists want the United States to be.

Through Ukrainian eyes, this terrible conflict has become a clash of civilizations. They argue that most Russians support Putin’s brutal war in the way that most Germans supported Adolf Hitler. Unless Russia as a nation abandons the imperial dreams that Putin has evoked, the conflict cannot be resolved through negotiations.

“Russia has to go through the same process that Germany did after World War II,” presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak insisted Saturday in an interview with me and the other members of a group organized by the German Marshall Fund, of which I’m a trustee. “If Russian society doesn’t understand what they’ve done, the world will be brought into chaos.” He enthusiastically predicts that postwar Russia will dissolve into five or six smaller nations.

The word "rebirth" below jumped out at me:

For me, thinking about how this war ends juxtaposes two conflicting lessons of the 20th century. Historians generally agree that the punitive peace imposed on Germany after World War I helped bring on the vicious Nazi quest for revenge. But historians also agree that the decisive outcome of World War II, with Germany and Japan pounded into unconditional surrender, allowed the miraculous postwar rebirth of both countries.

I would rephrase the last paragraph...

Surely, this is a war worth winning. I don’t want to see Russia destroyed, and I think any argument that it is forever an alien civilization is wrong. But the ideology that Putin represents, and that many Russians embrace, must be defeated.

 ... in this way:

Surely, the war against MAGAmerica a war that Democracy loving Americans must win. MAGAmerica can't be literally destroyed the way NAZI Germany as a military machine was. MAGAmerica is currently a country within a country. I think any argument that it is forever an alien civilization is wrong.  But the ideology that Trump and his cult represents, and that many Americans embrace, must be defeated. Those who "reside" in MAGAmerica can't be exiled. They have to be rehabilitated.

This will be a long arduous process which would ideally follow the kind of Democratic Party win in November which Michael Moore predicted (and I wrote about here). 

It would be too much to hope that Rupert Murdock fired his Hitler-Mini-Me money makers, in particular Tucker Carlson. It would certainly help if these ultra-nationalists didn't have a major television platform. 

Obviously it would help the most if Donald Trump, probably reinstated on Twitter, would at least develop severe chronic laryngitis.

We can't be naive. If Trump was indicted, tried, and found guilty of any crimes, and even sentenced to prison or home confinement this would have a huge backlash as his cult would believe he was a victim of the "deep state" and would make him into a living martyr. 

No matter what the January 6th Committee reveals, no matter whether that have incontrovertible proof as to Trump's culpability in more than inciting the attack on the Capitol but being part of a felonious conspiracy it won't matter to these MAGAmericans. They will take this as his being the most patriotic of all patriots.

Liberals like us see articles like this (top) and this (bottom) and hope for eye-popping revelations.

It won't matter because for the MAGAmericans "fascist" is simply a word describing the country they want to live in and the promotion of violence is laudable as long as it is their violence.

We see articles like “Utterly devastating”: Legal experts say DOJ filing “pulverizes all of Trump’s arguments” to SCOTUS on Salon but while this news pleases us, it hardly matters because show me a resident of MAGAmerica who reads Salon or even follows news about the legal peril Trump is in and I'll show you a  Where's Waldo where some prankster decided not to put Waldo in the picture.

By chance as I completed this David Ignatius was being interviewed about this column on Morning Joe. There's a good chance that if you are reading this you are a regular viewer of MSNBC and you may even read their website but we can't delude ourselves that any warnings about what Donald Trump's American fascism would look like in reality are even heard by residents of MAGAmerica. I summarized the David Montgomery Washington Post Magazine article "What Will Happen to America if Trump Wins Again? Experts Helped Us Game It Out" here. 

What is horrifying is that diehard MAGAmericans want the country to look like this.

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