Mitch McConnell Is Fully Prepared to Shut Democrats Out of Impeachment

[CrispyQ]

14. Good question.

The woman's march of 2017 was the largest ever & has been significantly smaller since. And we didn't even have a march for the kids in cages. People are getting used to the outrageous.

Fintan O’Toole: Trial runs for fascism are in full flow
Babies in cages were no ‘mistake’ by Trump but test-marketing for barbarism

Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 05:00
by Fintan O’Toole

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-trial-runs-for-fascism-are-in-full-flow-1.3543375

Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.

One of the basic tools of fascism is the rigging of elections – we’ve seen that trialled in the election of Trump, in the Brexit referendum and (less successfully) in the French presidential elections. Another is the generation of tribal identities, the division of society into mutually exclusive polarities. Fascism does not need a majority – it typically comes to power with about 40 per cent support and then uses control and intimidation to consolidate that power. So it doesn’t matter if most people hate you, as long as your 40 per cent is fanatically committed. That’s been tested out too. And fascism of course needs a propaganda machine so effective that it creates for its followers a universe of “alternative facts” impervious to unwanted realities. Again, the testing for this is very far advanced.

Other president's approval ratings go up and down, but Trump's approval number holds steady right around 40%. This chart is really interesting.

https://news.gallup.com/interactives/185273/presidential-job-approval-center.aspx