John Ganz, a fairly center-of-left voice found in the pages of The Nation, had correctly condemned Trump as a “tyrant”, citing such evidence as Trump’s decision to send in federal troops into major cities, and how Trump simply ignores basic tenets of the U.S. constitution. Ganz so far as to argue too, however, that Trump should not be seen as a “fascist”, since the regime is so “cheap and tawdry that to give it the name of a grand historical tragedy like ‘fascism’ grants it a dignity it does not deserve”. Yes, Trump is a bumbling, fumbling buffoon as much as he’s a tactician, pressing his thumbs into the wounds of the American system when it counts. But what’s so fascinating here about the critiques levelled by a Ganz, not to mention an Ezra “Charlie Kirk did politics the right way” Klein among others, is that even with their critiques of Trump, they oftentimes still offer a rather incomplete view of A) the Trump administration’s connective tissue to previous administrations that have paved the way for us to get here and B) muddy the waters in terms of what phrases like fascism actually should mean.
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