Fascism is destroying us from the bottom up

 When I saw this PBS article about the Republicans' normalization of violent rhetoric, it reminded me of how broad the GOP's war on decency is.

The most evil part of this is who it targets.

They no longer limit themselves to presidents and governors and other high ranking politicians who, frankly, expect quite a bit of nastiness as part of the job but accept it as the price of their ambition.

Fascist/Trumpist rhetoric is increasingly targeting ordinary people doing fairly low-profile jobs: elections bureaucrats, teachers, public health workers, (unpaid) school board members. 

 

It's a no-holds barred war to destroy our country from the grassroots by targeting the very people who make our communities function.

Punish the first coup attempt so there isn't a second one

On this first anniversary of the terrorist insurrection that tried to overthrow Joe Biden's comfortable 2020 election win and with a second coup clearly in the works, remember this. 

 

Although it was a ham-fisted coup attempt, Weimar German authorities did not adequate punish the white supremacist fascist authors of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. They barely got a slap on the wrist. A few months in jail for treason and attempting to overthrow the republic. Enough to make them invent more grievance against the democrats (lowercase d) but not enough to deter them. 

 

They didn't fail the second time. 

 

Within a decade, they fabricated an excuse to seize absolute power - an attack on their national legislature building, mind you - and eventually genocide and world war.