Nicholas Kristof points out the undeniable: Trump is moving the national culture – or mood or discourse or limit on what’s acceptable. There are a lot of things you can call it, but whatever it is, Trump is having an effect on it, and not in a good way.

This community of Forest Grove, near the farm where I grew up in western Oregon, has historically been a charming, friendly and welcoming community. But in the middle of a physics class at the high school one day this spring, a group of white students suddenly began jeering at their Latino classmates and chanting: “Build a wall! Build a wall!”

The same white students had earlier chanted “Trump! Trump! Trump!”

From Ian Kershaw’s The Hitler Myth:

Even after the triumph of the 1930 election, many intelligent and informed observers of the German political scene felt that the Nazi party was bound sooner or later to collapse and break up into its component parts. Its social base was diffuse – that of an out and out protest party; it had no clear political programme to offer, only a contradictory amalgam of social revolutionary rhetoric and reactionary impulses; and not least it was heavily dependent on the personality cult surrounding the demagogue Hitler – seen as the mouthpiece of petty-bourgeois resentments, but ultimately a dilettante who, despite temporary success in the conditions of severe economic and political crisis, was bound in

More from Jim Wright on Facebook.

Yesterday, Miami, Florida. Trump interview. Subject: US Navy Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba:

Reporter: “Would you try to get the military commissions, the trial court there, to try U.S. citizens?”

To be clear, the reporter is asking the man who wants to be president of the United States, the man who claims he’s READ THE CONSTITUTION, if he as president would try United States citizens — UNITED STATES CITIZENS, civilians — in a military court.

Repeat, Trump was being asked if he would consider trying US civilians in a military court. That’s what he’s being asked. There is no ambiguity. The question is clear and specific: Should military courts have authority over US citizens?

Trump has decided that the thing to call his foreign policy is America First. I heard that on NPR a couple of days ago and was stunned. Hello Colonel Lindbergh? We’re going openly pro-Nazi now? Seriously?

Plus also it’s just hideous on its face, for the obvious reasons? It’s like sitting down at a crowded dinner table and shouting “Me first!”

I’m late in noticing this, but you know how it is – I was hoping to be able to get away with ignoring Trump, until the convention made that no longer tenable.

The New Yorker was on it a couple of weeks ago.

When the New York Times interviewed Donald Trump in March, one of the reporters, David

The Harvard Republican Club has “for the first time in 128 years” declined to endorse the Republican candidate for president.

The club gives policy reasons but the real energy is in the problems with Trump the human being.

Perhaps most importantly, however, Donald Trump simply does not possess the temperament and character necessary to lead the United States through an increasingly perilous world. The last week should have made obvious to all what has been obvious to most for more than a year. In response to any slight –perceived or real– Donald Trump lashes out viciously and irresponsibly. In Trump’s eyes, disagreement with his actions or his policies warrants incessant name calling and derision: stupid, lying, fat, ugly, weak,

The New York Times did a 3 minute compilation of the sexist racist xenophobic homophobic dreck people shout at and after Trump rallies. “Fuck that nigger,” “Trump the bitch,” “fuck political correctness,” men (and a few women) swelling with rage like water balloons.

It’s worth watching.… Read the rest

Fareed Zakaria called Trump a bullshit artist on CNN this morning.

Zakaria pointed to the pattern that has emerged in Trump’s efforts to defend or clarify his controversial statements.

“Every time it is demonstrated that Donald Trump is plainly ignorant about some basic public policy issue, some well-known fact, he comes back with a certain bravado and tries to explain it away with a tweet or a statement,” Zakaria said.

“Bravado” is a very sweet way of putting it. Psychopathic shamelessness is how I would put it.

“It’s entertaining,” Zakaria said of Trump’s shtick, “if the guy is trying to sell you a condo or a car. But for the president of the United States, it’s deeply worrying.”

It was … Read the rest

Also they’re coup-plotting.

At a Monday campaign event in Columbus, Ohio, Donald Trump teed up for a potential challenge to the integrity of the fall general election, an escalation of his rhetoric about the “rigged” primary system.

“I’m afraid the election’s gonna be rigged, I have to be honest,” Trump told the crowd.

While Trump has often questioned the integrity of the primary contests in both parties, his newest remarks seemed to begin laying groundwork for him to contest the Nov. 8 election results.

“Contest” it as in inciting a coup to overturn it. That’s the logic of what he’s saying, whether he realizes it or not.

It was a line of attack that longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone

Robert Kagan on Trump back in May:

We’re supposed to believe that Trump’s support stems from economic stagnation or dislocation. Maybe some of it does. But what Trump offers his followers are not economic remedies—his proposals change daily. What he offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger. His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of “others”—Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans,

Another rung on the fascism ladder:

An official adviser to the Trump campaign has escalated the attacks on Khizr Khan, the gold star father who was critical of Trump at the Democratic convention, baselessly accusing him of being a “Muslim Brotherhood agent.”

The adviser, Al Baldasaro, tweeted a link to an article from Shoebat.com, a fringe anti-Islam conspiracy website. The article also suggests (without any evidence) that Humayun Khan, who was awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze, was a jihadist who joined the military to kill Americans.

…

The piece, written by Theodore and Walid Shoebat, is less of an article and more of a fever dream of conspiracies strung together.

Tell us more about Theodore Shoebat.

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