Donald Trump: The Fascism check list!

Echo opinion published in the Whidbey Island News-Times newspaper in Washington state: 

Dear Editor:These are the warning signs of fascism:

Trump Fascism!

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism (including "Christian Nationalism"

2. Disdain for Human Rights

3. Identifying Enemies as a Unifying Cause

4. Rampant Sexism

5. Supremacy of the Military

6. Control of the Mass Media

7. Religion and Government Intertwined

8. Corporate Power Protection

9. Suppression of Labor Power

10. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

11. Obsession with Crime and Punishment

12. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption

13. Controlling Elections

14. Attacking Voting Rights

Fascism!

This is Donald Trump, who has shown us time and time again his affinity for all that Fascism represents. We were warned by generals and those who worked in his administration. And yet, 49.8% of the electorate (hardly a mandate!) still voted for him in a razor-thin election. And, if he had lost, we would be inundated with his cries of a “rigged election.”

Democracy is still threatened and the fight for it must go on. Otherwise, 2024, will be the last fair, free and democratic election of our lifetimes. 😟😞

Project 2025 spelled out in detail what we could expect if Trump was elected. Reality is now setting in. (Rumor has it that some Trump voters are now rueing their vote - too late😞.) Well, it’s too late for regrets. When you buy the ticket, you get the ride!

From: Valetta Faye in Oak Harbor, in Whidbey Island

Donald Trump failed again in Paris #myUS_apologies

Dear citizens of Europe, as an American citizen, please accept my sincere apologies for the ongoing embarrassment of Donald tRump.

#myUS_apologies

The New York Times reports
By Peter Baker and Alissa J. Rubin

PARIS — Dozens of leaders from around the globe marched in the soaking rain down the Champs-Élysées on Sunday, expressing solidarity for an international order that had its origins in the end of a world war 100 years ago, an order now under increasing pressure on both sides of the Atlantic.

Only after these leaders arrived by foot at the Arc de Triomphe did President Trump show up, protected from the rain as he made an individual entrance. A few minutes later, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia did the same.

For Trump, at least, the separate arrival was attributed to security concerns. But somehow it felt apt that these two leaders would not arrive with the crowd.

No one has done more to break up the postwar global system in the last couple of years than Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin. As the anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I was commemorated on Sunday, Mr. Trump’s brand of “America First” nationalism was rebuked from the podium while he sat stone-faced and unmoved, alienated from some of America’s strongest allies, including his French hosts.

But while he may have been out of step with many of the leaders gathered around him, Trump remains at the vanguard of forces that are redefining the Western political paradigm in countries like Poland, Hungary, Italy and Turkey. In Britain and Germany, two of the Continent’s major powers, nationalist movements have upended the establishment.

Recalling the forces that led to World War I, Mr. Macron warned that “the old demons” have been resurfacing and declared that “giving into the fascination for withdrawal, isolationism, violence and domination would be a grave error that future generations would very rightly make us responsible for.”

Mr. Trump, who recently declared himself “a nationalist,” appeared grim as he listened to the speech through an earpiece and clapped only tepidly afterward.

He had no speaking role and made no mention of the issues Mr. Macron raised during an address later at a cemetery for American soldiers killed in the war.

The ceremony led by Mr. Macron encapsulated the tension in the international arena as Mr. Trump seeks to rewrite the rules that have governed the world in recent decades. He has abandoned international agreements on trade, nuclear proliferation and climate change, and disparaged alliances like NATO and the European Union.

On the campaign trail this fall, Mr. Trump railed against what he called the “rule of corrupt, power-hungry globalists,” as he put it at a rally in Houston. “You know what a globalist is, right? You know what a globalist is? A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly, not caring about our country so much. And you know what? We can’t have that.”

Mr. Macron has now, in effect, given a rebuttal. In addition to the speech, he also used an interview with Fareed Zakaria of CNN that aired Sunday to define himself as “a patriot” rather than a “nationalist.”

“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said in a speech at the Arc de Triomphe, welcoming the leaders and extolling an old system now under siege. “Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism by saying: ‘Our interest first. Who cares about the others?’”