It's inaccurate to blame Trump. He is a greedy egotistical idiot. Blaming Trump is like blaming a rock that hit you in the head. Look up and pay attention to who threw the rock. Blame them.

The Trump presidency is the culmination of a roughly 45 year campaign to return the United States to the Gilded Age, and to ensure it stays that way until it's bled dry and nothing remains of its corpse. The political and social problems that led to his second election have been a long time coming.

What's interesting is that the gaps in our political system that allow him to do so many illegal and distasteful things have always been there. The framers of the constitution never anticipated all three branches of government colluding together in alignment and bad faith, with the vociferous support of roughly half the voting population.

A country doesn't become fascist solely because of one man. If my previous comment implies that, I worded it poorly.

If I blame anyone it's the American electorate.

It's tempting to continue and discuss which phenomena I blame for the poor judgment of the average American, but that would triple the length of my comment.

The American electorate, especially the group that voted for Trump, has been abused by their federal and often also state governments, sometimes for decades. Not everyone is a good person and not everyone can be "saved" for lack of a better term. But by and large their support for Trump is rooted in desperation, and they have been cruelly manipulated by a powerful propaganda machine. Many of Trump's supporters already are or soon will be his victims.

Maybe desperation is warranted, or maybe social media has distorted reality.

Either way, it's beside the point: if there is one lesson to remember from the 20th Century it is 'never support an authoritarian'.

> Maybe desperation is warranted, or maybe social media has distorted reality.

Some parts of the country never really recovered from 2008. Obama took the smug liberal approach of telling people it was all over when it clearly was not all over. The country was primed for the Tea Party to step in and offer the promise of a remedy. You and I both know that the remedy was bunk, and it was just a rebranding of the same old far right, who saw that the Evangelical Christian movement that they were previously allied with had lost influence. And so into the propaganda brainwashing funnel went millions and millions of people.

Right wing media was already powerful and influential long before Trump started his own social media company and Zuckerberg switched sides. Blaming social media doesn't make sense either, because if it wasn't for social media, it would've been something else.

The points about America can be discarded wholesale because 21st century authoritarianism is a global phenomenon.

Social media became a major force after 2010, and indiscriminately affects nations around the world.

Since the nations with rising authoritarian movements have little else in common, social media clearly is the cause.

I don't think it follows at all that social media is the cause. It's clearly an enabling factor, especially in places that didn't already have a healthy right wing media like the USA. The common cause is long-standing discontent over economic issues, unaddressed by liberal or center-left institutions, and a right wing eager to regain power by fomenting culture war.

There is long-standing discontent over economic issues, yet the people are equally furious about toxic 5G radio towers, and a thousand other delusions.

The public, before social media, was better informed about the world. They have access to much more information now, but that means little when the information they consume first has been sharted out the asshole of some idiot podcaster.

For various reasons, social media incentivizes knee-jerk antiestablishment takes: "Get angry! The MSM is hiding the horrible truth we are about to share with you! Like and subscribe or be kept under their control!" That is why any nation with social media, and a sufficient number of gullible citizens, tends towards violent revolution and pugilistic leadership.

That's the nature of fascism, it molds itself to fit different societies. German fascism would never have worked in America, American fascism is draped in the flag and holds the cross.