Trump revels in adoring crowds, and is terminally addicted to holding rallies where he rambles for hours, insulting everyone from former presidents to Hollywood stars to poor people just trying to live without violence in their lives.  Whenever any of his staff (this week Scott Pruitt) gets more press coverage from him, you can bet he’ll wing his way out to some remote Red State town and hold a tightly controlled rally where he is the star attraction to make outrageous statements and lie in a continuous stream to bring the attention of the press back on him.  The tactic is as predictable as tomorrow’s sunrise.

But it’s worse than Trump just feeding his ego.  The mantras that Trump chants from the stage are corrosive; hateful; untrue; misogynist; racist; divisive; insulting to millions of Americans.  He displays the worst possible behavior of any major political figure in US history, and he gets away with it.  The audience, herded up tightly around the stage to make it look more crowded than it actually is, roars approval to every word of propaganda uttered by His Orangeness. Truth is I can’t even watch anymore, but the few Trumpists I know (and still talk to) love it and repeat the falsehood that he just “says it like it is,” or “says what needs to be said.”  The effect of Trump’s babbling is that he pushes reason and common decency further off the margins of a civilized society.

The problem, though, is that non-Trumpists (especially mainstream Democratic leaders) refuse to confront Trump’s falsehoods head-on.  They worry that they might lose votes from people who wouldn’t vote for them ever, even if their lives depended on it.  Combine the Democrats’ passivity with the GOP’s invertebrates in Congress, Trump dominates our national conversation virtually unchallenged.  Trump’s behavior (even staged like one of his cheesy reality television shows) is that of a tyrant;  he listens to no one; there is no right and wrong, only Trumpisms; truth doesn’t matter.

No one wants to say it, so I will.  Trump’s rise signals the US teetering on the edge of totalitarianism and fascism.  Comparisons to Hitler’s and Mussolini’s rise to power in the 1930s are not inaccurate.  With the complicity of evangelical Christians and malleable social conservatives, fascism is taking hold of our society.  Our government is now actually engaged in secret prisons holding separated families, violating international laws and common decency.  The government has started a de-naturalization program to revoke US citizenship and deport legal immigrants who have lived in the US for decades.  The US military is now actually discharging immigrants from its ranks who enlisted with the promise of citizenship.  Scholars and academics are persecuted and insulted.  White supremacy is growing at a rate not seen in decades.

The question is, can fascism take hold here in the US?  The answer is, you’re Goddam right it can because it is happening right now.  Do we have an example of this ever happening in the US before?  Again, the answer is yes.  In the late 1930’s while the darkness of fascism was descending over Europe, the same thing was taking hold here.  In fact, it was growing rapidly, and I’ll show you actual incontrovertible evidence of it.  On February 20, 1939, the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi organization established in the US, held a massive rally in Madison Square Garden in New York City.  Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, together with the American Jewish Committee and American Civil Liberties Committee, went along with the rally based on free speech and free assembly rights.  The result was chilling and even included the beating of a Jewish protestor on the stage.  The only event that stopped this movement in the US was the war in Europe.  Here is a short video of the rally produced from historic footage by Field of Vision.  Watch it.  Then tell me that it’s not ominously similar to what we are witnessing today.