Yeah, so have a lot of other idiots…

But then when you look at the facts….

And who the hell is “Oboma”?

I’ve said before I love the idea of a “wall”. It’s been a problem for decades and no one addresses it. It’ not about hating Mexicans. Hell, I had a Mexican girlfriend. Her family was wonderful and made me part of it. I’ve traveled to Mexico four times and one of the reason I return is the Mexican people. It’about the 50 to 300 billion dollars (depending on which estimate you prefer to believe) that illegal immigration costs the American tax payer every year. ER’s right, we need to prosecute employers.

It’s also about deported criminals that return to murder 5 people.

Let’s see what happens. For one thing, we have constitutional protections that would guard against your much feared “Fascism”. Trump will have his handlers just like G-dub did and will bring him up to speed on the realities of the system.

If Trump doesn’t treat Hillary better than his Republican opponents there will be a backlash. That’s if he’s nominated. He’ll also have to flesh out his policy ideas.

I wouldn’t worry Robert I don’t think he’ll be elected. At least the bigots like me will have had a voice, even though you guys tried to shout it down

Half of America believes Donald Trump’s campaign exhibits fascist undertones, with only 30 percent disagreeing, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll. The sentiment isn’t contained to Democrats, who unsurprisingly are willing to agree with a negative statement about their political rivals. Forty-five percent of independents also say Trump’s campaign has echoes of fascism, as do a full 28 percent of Republicans.

About half the country believes Trump encourages violence at his campaign events, with just 34 percent saying he doesn’t. The rest aren’t sure. Meanwhile, 27 percent of Republicans say it’s acceptable to “rough up” protesters at political events.

The survey comes in the wake of dozens of arrests and physical altercations tied to Trump’s campaign rallies, including clashes after an event was canceled in Chicago.

Trump, who once offered to pay his supporters’ legal fees if they “knock the crap out of” potential tomato-throwers, has since sought to downplay the frequency of such problems.

I was going to make this response to your post below, but the conversation moved on up here.

There is no bigotry, no racism, no Nazism. All of the issues are practical matters. You’re connecting dots that don’t exist.

There it is, underlined, that key phrase pleading “please tell me it’s not all in my head”.

You’re attracted to Trump because he reassures you it’s not in your head, that They are rapists and They are taking your jobs and They are the ones responsible for the death of the American Dream. That They are unclean and need to be contained, if not outright eliminated to cleanse America–you can’t miss how often Trump uses words like “disgusting” to push that particular authoritarian emotional button.

Trump would have you believe he agrees with you that these are “practical matters” that pose such a grave threat that only a Strong Leader like Trump can protect you and yours.

You’re being played, Rob. Like you were being played around the time of San Bernardino, when I recall we had a similar conversation about the existential threat that somehow only conservatives can see.

You poor guy, your politicians must have your nerves raw and bleeding by now. I think we’ll all be glad when this election is over, no matter how it turns out.

We are pointing out the fact that he says racist things…

we are pointing out that racists support him overwhelmingly…

We are pointing out that he encourages violence against protesters at his rallies…

We are pointing out that he has threatened that his followers will riot if he doesn’t get the nomination…

You respond with “Nuh-uh”

So either you support all these things, or you are intentionally blinding yourself to them…

One thing is clear, you are not using your brain…

History does NOT repeat itself. People are different, countries are different, and the times are different. And there is also the element of blind chance; shit does, after all, happen, or fail to happen on schedule. But is it so out of line to suggest that similar circumstances will tend to affect people in similar ways, favor similar ideas and produce similar results?

The reason fascism and Hitler tend to pop up so often in political discourse (yes even before the internet)is that those historical circumstances periodically repeat themselves, and the response of the societies they occur in are recognizably similar.

As I see it, you start off with a relatively prosperous and stable nation with a substantial middle class. There may be problems, but people are generally optimistic and have confidence for the future. Historical circumstances, such as military reverses, economic difficulties, or civil and social strife (or some combination of them) attack this optimism. People, (especially the middle class) suddenly begin to lose confidence that their future, and that of their children is in trouble. Suddenly, things seem to be sliding down hill, and they start getting scared. They are afraid their economic future is in jeopardy, that their children have no future, that the nation is being humiliated and dictated to on the world stage, that their cultural values are under attack. You know how it works, “I lost my job at the factory and there are Russians in Afghanistan, it must be because abortions are legal now and the blacks are getting uppity.”

In this stewpot of uncertainty, demagogues arise, charismatic leaders who promise to make things all right again, to return the nation to the good ole’ traditional values, the way things used to be. They promise to hunt down the traitors and backstabbers who sold the good, patriotic, god-fearing people down the river. They are going to make things right again. Of course, maybe the good old days weren’t really all that wonderful, but who remembers that? Most people aren’t looking for reasons, they just want excuses.

So the Hitlers (and the Trumps and Cruz’s) bubble up, like turds in a toilet, to exploit this unease, to set up scapegoats, to parcel out blame, to promise to make things like they used to be, to crush the Jews, Liberals, foreigners, smarty-pants media hacks and Kollege Perfessers they blame for the fact that their boss opened a plant in China to make basketball shoes cheaper with child labor. The Hitlers aren’t looking for solutions, they want villains. And the people who follow them can’t tell the difference. Hell, this just happened in Russia. What do you think explains Putin’s popularity?

Rob, maybe we’re crazy, maybe we don’t know what we’re talking about, maybe we have misinterpreted all the clues and all the history through the filters of our own biases. Hell, I’m willing to accept that may even be partially true. But don’t think we”re making all this up because we don’t want freedom and we hate America. Its just the way we see things, and what we see is scaring the shit out of us.