Politics – Page 3 – Verba Sparsa

The President and the Fourth

July 4 is not about celebrating the president, but it’s good to have a president who understands and supports the values that July 4 celebrates.

Henry Wallace, varieties of fascism, and two classes of Trumpists (an experiment in diagnosis)

In which I discover Henry Wallace and reflect on his his diagnosis of different types of fascism in his 1944 essay about American fascism. I suggest two different types of Trumpism and conclude that both types are fascist, in the way in which Wallace understood fascism.

Where we are politically in the USA, and where I am

Trump lost the election, which has bought us some time. But Trump has not stopped claiming that he won, GOP senators and reps and apparatchiks have not repudiated him, and neither have the millions who voted for him. The lower-IQ Trumpists still speak of him as the best thing ever. The higher-IQ Trumpists still pretendContinue reading “Where we are politically in the USA, and where I am”

Speaking of Hitler

Are you comparing Trump to Hitler? Now there’s the ultimate third rail, right? A friend, reading my Facebook posts quoting from Stroud’s introduction to his selection of sermons preached under the Third Reich, asked me this question. Trump is not Hitler. Maybe Hitler is Trump’s (and our) Ghost of Christmas future. But Trump is notContinue reading “Speaking of Hitler”

The genealogy of white supremacy and vote suppression in the USA

Vote suppression in American from KKK to GOP.

Read Timothy Snyder; skip Ben Sasse

[Originally posted on Facebook May 24, 2019. I had been reading The Road to Unfreedom slowly, posting quotations and comments as I went. This was my concluding post.] OK, a concluding comment about Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom. For me Snyder was a scales-from-the-eyes read. His European and specifically Ukrainian and Russian focus throughContinue reading “Read Timothy Snyder; skip Ben Sasse”

The profanity presidency

The Profanity Presidency” is the title of Peter Baker’s column in today’s New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/us/politics/trump-language.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share Baker says: “No one has debased the civil discourse in this country more than President Trump, and the president really does set the tone in the country,“ said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California. “We see it reflectedContinue reading “The profanity presidency”