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In May 2020 there was a real chance my mother was going to die alone in a hospital room because of fascist policies enacted to stop transmission of an illness that doesn't kill people. Day after week after month after year I still see people entirely seriously using the term fascist to refer to those most opposed to pound-for-pound the worst lie in the history of this country. Of course I know they don't truly understand what fascism is, if they understood it, they could recognize it; if they recognized it, they would realize everybody screaming fascist over the last 10 years are those most inclined to supporting and perpetrating fascism. I know it just means to them "this thing is viewed by my ingroup as bad, and with this term I am signaling to my ingroup that I am one of them." It's galling, at times I've felt the temptation of a rage and frenzy, but I'm pretty good at keeping a cool head and I know when it comes down to it the people saying these things are deeply unserious.
You provide no substance here; the story of Carlson's supposed texts is old and baseless. Dominion sliced apart internal communications and arranged them to falsely portray things like Carlson hating Trump. His frustration has been known and as a non-federal-voter with limited subject interaction with Trump supporters, my impression has been they too view him as not delivering much on what they had hoped. If he's actually grifting, well his latest grift is getting Alex Jones back on Twitter and being Melania's pick for VP so I imagine Trump might be wondering if he could get any more Tucker-tier grifters on his side. On the prosecution, Carlson voicing concerns is easily explained; he believes the system is sufficiently corrupt to baselessly convict. I'm sure /pol/ is full of the blackpilled who would describe moral certainty of Trump's innocence and equally of his inevitable conviction. Nybbler might have even said it here already. Thinking that means any of them believe he's guilty is kafka shit.
But that's not what I'm here for, this is: is the American government bursting at the seams with depraved criminals? You can answer wrongly, but it's yes.
I have a postulate I put here a while back detailing my view on election fraud, most briefly it's "If possible, certain." The basis is that depravity. I saw someone here last week thinking apropos "They would [defraud voters] if they could" a suitable response is nevertheless "Sure, where's the evidence?" But no, you don't understand, if you truly understand how they are criminals who will take whatever they can the only rational consequent is "Can they prove they didn't?" And so likewise with the prosecution of Trump when you truly understand the overwhelming criminality present within the American government it's not the midwit's pattern-match of "whataboutism" it's the necessary consequent of "Can everyone involved prove their allegiance to justice?" Nope, they can't. So what do you go to, "He's a unique threat to the constitution"? Government organizations and taxpayer dollars censored speech, 1A out. The left is quite clear on guns, 2A out. NSA soldiers spying on homes and American citizen communications, 3A and 4A out. Or to cut to the quick, believing people who don't pay taxes should get to vote, that's the foundational ethos of the country out. The law doesn't matter to these people and the constitution doesn't matter to these people. (And please, I speak not the map but the territory.) What remains?
Trump won't be convicted. If and when this reaches the supreme court they'll rule 8-1 on what could be the utterly flimsiest of procedural issues that won't otherwise be immediately applicable as precedent for however many thousands of cases. The 8 members of actual merit will understand this is all politics, and so those 8 members of actual merit, appreciating their places in history and/as the only people with real power and real principle in 21st century America, will decline from participating in fuckery befitting the Roman senate.
So, if you too understand this truly, that this is entirely politically motivated, then you won't waste my time with the unserious person's poor gotchas or crimestop pattern-matches. Trump could have broken the law, probably even, so arcane is much of American law, but the law doesn't matter to those prosecuting him so why waste everybody's time here talking like it does? Trump does however represent a threat to their particular order, and that finally brings us to the only thing worth discussing in this entire affair: of Trump or those on the side of his prosecution, who deserves power?
My mother survived, and a politician I campaigned for as a bright-eyed youth got my dad in the hospital room. I'll back him forever for that just as I will never forget those who made it so I had to make that call.
Lockdowns aren't on the pareto frontier of policy options for even diseases significantly deadlier than covid imo, just because rapid development and distribution of technological solutions is possible, but ... covid killed one million people in the united states. Yes, mostly old people, but we're talking about protecting old people here. No reason to pretend otherwise.
The texts were:
Even for this, I agree it's possible he was just really mad at Trump and is usually pro-trump even in private, and that was his defense. People say a lot of things, in a lot of contexts, and cherrypicking can do almost anything. But ... on the balance, those are very strong statements. What makes you call it baseless?
... are they? I know some people in the Democrat Establishment. Mostly, they follow the law and the rules and try to do what's right. I don't think this is good evidence against election fraud, but it is strong evidence against them being moral mutants who hate truth and all that is good. Are my enemies innately evil?
Whether the policies may or may not have protected any old people has nothing to do with whether they were fascist or not. I could deprive everyone of freedom of movements this holiday season and probably save several thousand people from the flu, but that does not mean it is not fascist.
My reply didn't address whether or not it was fascism, I was replying to him saying covid didn't kill anyone.
I (of course) don't at all agree that covid lockdowns were fascism. And, like, I'm not anywhere near as psychologically opposed to proper Fascism as you'd guess, so I'm not saying that because I like lockdowns, they're just totally different things. But saying lockdowns are fascism is pure 'i don't like it so it's the same as everything else i don't like'. I didn't address it in my OP because, well, it's like arguing with a BLM protestor about how IQ has a strong genetic component that varies by race, it's not going to be a productive conversation unless you put a truly heroic level of effort and persuasion into it.
Lockdowns are fascism because using a trumped-up emergency (whether or not it killed people it was obviously trumped up - particularily the threat to children, young, healthy, and "long COVID") as pretext to confine your population to their homes only to be let out when your approved political causes are up for support is bad, well working with the media and technology companies to censor any opposition to your views is like, basically the dictionary definition. Like what political system would it be if not?
Fascism is when you exalt strength, might, and glory, and Will, when you devote yourself to the State, when greatness takes priority over weakness and the lie of equality is laid bare, when the noble races are given their due, when the parasite of judeo-bolshevism is purged from the blood of the nation.
And so on. Or at least it claims to be that, but if it doesn't sound like that, it's probably not fascism. Moldbug? BAP? Sure, clearly similarities there. Lockdowns may be state overreach, but they aren't fascism.
would you prefer authoritarian?
Forgot about the whole "yeah the 1st amendment doesn't apply anymore, no religious services or protests (except the state-sanctioned ones)"
I still disagree with 'authoritarian', mostly because I think this scale of societal intervention in itself is inevitable, both for good and for ill (consider prohibition, drafts in existentially threatening wars, etc). But it's much closer to what you seem to be arguing than fascist.
Do you think the "state" had a genuine desire to harm religion by closing religious services? That's what this seems to imply. Yet it makes much more sense to me that religious services were shut down along with similar kinds of businesses.
I think it is more likely a happy accident then a deliberate targeting, but it is hard to say for sure. There is much about what went on in March 2020 that is still very unclear to me. I think it is definitely possible it was more a general egregore that drove the shutdowns than any one specific thing (China is sometimes mentioned, though if so they were clearly drinking their own kool-aid rather than trying to sabotage anyone).
EDIT: I should say I'm referring to an "egregore" being responsible rather than directly the "state", as in my mind much of 2020 is better explained by some sort of social media/traditional media/political expediency/current thing/good 'ol fashioned hysterias then more concrete concepts such as "the state"
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