A Stark Choice Between Good And Evil, Competent and Incompetent, Moderate/Progressive and Extreme Right

We have a choice in this election. A man who brags about assaulting women, who incites violence against minorities, who doesn’t pay the people he hires, who has reaped many millions by bankrupting companies and violating contracts, who promises to imprison his opponent, who has no relevant experience for the job, very limited understanding of the issues, and an unstable personality and hair trigger. The list is almost endless… Why is Donald Trump still supported by as many people as he is. To quote a famous song title: It Smells Like Team Spirit. He can be a monster but he’s their monster. By the way, Donald Trump will be brought into court on multiple fraud charges in November, and child rape charges in December.

The other candidate, Hillary Clinton is being questioned about her managing of an email account. Why is this an issue? Because the Republicans could find no other issue to attack her on. Ever Since Nixon the Republican strategy has been to attack the Democrats’ strongest candidate and tear them apart. They’ve done that and found nothing to attack but her womanhood and her use of email. Her strengths are obvious and many. Her weaknesses have all been attacked to death and she is still standing, a remarkable testament to her fiber and courage.

The Email issue is not a scandal, it's a witch hunt. SLATE asks why we're still talking about it with all that's at stake.

Trump meanwhile promises a dangerous sea change unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

Donald Trump’s thirst for revenge is almost as great as his thirst for power and money

NBCNews reports on Donald Trump's vengeful world view. Once in power he will use that power to punish and destroy his opponents.

The GOP is now the authoritarian party angry white men have been dreaming about

New York Magazine has this analysis of the extremist authoritarian angry white man's party the GOP has become.

Some Americans Long For A Dictator

Trump continues to talk like a dictator. Jailing his opponent? Who does that? Tin pot dictators do. Putin does that and worse. Journalists and political opponents and garden variety critics in Russia are disappeared fairly routinely.

There are a lot of Americans who want a dictator and they seem to have the weird idea that this dictator would take dictation from them personally.

Maine's embarrassing bigoted governor said this week that America needs Trump to assert some "authoritarian power." Find the story here, via USAToday. Governor LePage longs for a bully boss, a mob-enforcer-in-chief, a dictator. The same people who shout the loudest about enforcing the Constitution shout even louder demanding we tear it up.

Americans are unfamiliar with what dictators do, because we’ve never had one here.

Actually, we have. I think the people (white, male, angry, Southern and rural predominantly) who long for a dictator may base their longing upon the experience of local dictatorships, local sheriffs for instance, who they’ve never felt the hard, sharp edge of, never suffered from, because they’re white and they’ve been chummy with these little rural dictators. These weren't the sweet, gentle Southern sheriffs played by Andy Griffith.

There may be some in urban areas who miss the old city bosses in once corrupt cities like KC and Chicago and points east. You can bet that Trump's supporters in those places are nostalgic for the days when their political boss meted out vengeance on the other party's followers when he won.

Trump's most rabid supporters don't mind the idea of dictatorship here because they were never the ones who suffered when it occurred. They were the ones favored by these corrupt bosses and tinpot sheriffs. They received the benefit of harm done and confiscations targeted at various minority groups.

If it sounds familiar in another way, this was the way Nazi Germany financed its economy during the thirties, by confiscating the property and businesses and land owned by the Jews. In the Jim Crow South sheriffs routinely swept up black laborers returning home from work, charged them with loitering, and sent them as unpaid laborers to the timber and mining operators; they also financed their county budgets out of the fees these industries paid them for the slave labor, and out of the fines the laborers were charged for "loitering." An excellent and disturbing film was recently made about this and broadcast on PBS.

This tin-pot caricature is a familiar one from movies and novels about the South and Jim Crow. African Americans remember its ugly side even if most Americans have never learned about this sorry legacy. Women suffered too. Abused women who tried to get justice over sexual assault know this good ol’ boy clubbishness and how it invalidated their full citizenship. The authorities dismissed any complaint a woman might make the same way Senator Jeff Sessions dismissed the outrage over Trump's sexual assault boasting.

The dictator figure has been very real and a problem in the parts of America where Trump’s fan base lives.