In part their zeal comes from a recognition of this- thats why they cling to the flags of the brutes we have crushed in the past.
They need to be treated as what they are- a threat to humanity, they should be isolated, and treated as lepers. They have the freedom to say whatever bigoted garbage they want and the rest of us have the responsibility to tell them their views are despised by our society and will result in ostracism.

They are- deep down, and in every way that matters, losers. So when Trump promised to finally make them ‘winners’, they could not resist- even if it meant throwing away their supposed values of fiscal responsibility, law and order, etc…

“What do you have to lose?” Trump asked them with a greasy smile.

They will learn the answer to Trump’s question, and they will be very unpleasantly surprised.

And the more I understand this, the deeper I slide into despair.

This is a laudable sentiment when all parties are sane and honest, but in this case it’s suicide by naivety.

When one side is claiming that global warming is a liberal hoax, you can’t reason with them.

When one side is celebrating the ripping of children from their mother’s arms and caging them- they don’t have a point of view to consider other than hate.

You can’t debate fiscal policy when the other side is screaming that you run a pedophile ring out of a pizza joint.

These are not ‘Good people with bad ideas’ – These are bad people using lies to advance a deadly agenda. They are not misguided, or mislead- they have finally found a leader that encourages their most vile desires and they will not let him go.

For decades they had to keep their bigotry under wraps- treat it as the shameful, unacceptable, urge it is. NOW they have those urges encouraged at the highest levels, and they are ecstatic. They are finally able to wallow in the muck openly, like the vile little pigs they always were.

They will do whatever they can to hold on to that, and many more will die before they let go of the sick dream.

Are there complex deep sociological, and anthropological causes for these creatures to exist among us? Sure… for some there is the ingrained fear of those outside your ‘tribe’, for others its deep insecurity, for others it was an abusive upbringing, and for some its just simple mean stupidity… but it really doesn’t matter.

Knowing HOW a mad-dog was infected by rabies may be interesting, and possibly helpful in some long-term abstract way- but it doesn’t really change what your immediate course of action needs to be.

In either case, its really two ways of saying exactly the same thing: different subspecies of humanity tend to react in different ways to what is going on the culture. Unfortunately, they are predictable, and the end result appears to repeat itself.

Sometimes with understanding comes despair.

Sure, Cholera existed before the shit was running in the streets, but the filth provided a reservoir from which it could emerge and take firm hold of the populace.

Fascists and authoritarians have always existed. Yes Putin and his oligarchs seek to erode and subvert democracies… and yes, that is exactly why they worked to build up Trump- and why they boosted brexit and the far-right all across europe. By turning the liberal democracies into authoritarian oligarchies Russia can say to their people “look, the alternatives to our kleptocracy are all just as bad or worse than what you have here…”

But the efforts of Putin and Trump would amount to little if there wasn’t the puddles of human filth willing to provide a growth medium for the disease.
Were there not small minded bigots yearning for a cruel daddy, these fascists would amount to nothing.

Had people said to Hitler ‘shut the hell up and get back to painting, you bigoted little freak!’ then millions would have lived… sadly there was no shortage of filth willing to take up his words, amplify them, and eventually act on them.

As you said, this is a recurring social phenomenon. The reason for this can again be viewed in terms of epidemiology. When a fascist plague burns through a populace and is finally driven into remission, there is a natural resistance to the disease left in the survivors. They are inoculated by history, but this resistance fades over time. As the tired old phrase says- ‘Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it’. This is exactly why fascists erase and rewrite history- it is the cure to their disease.

So we can argue over what is responsible- “is it the disease or is it the filth that allows it to flourish?” … no amount of philosophizing will change the fact that both need dealt with aggressively if we are to survive the plague.

We have human shit running in our streets, we need to decide that we will not tolerate it.

You missed the point, RL. The treachery and stupidity of Trump’s knuckle draggers is not the issue. We can all comfortably agree on that. But this is not just an American phenomenon, something that can be traced to some trauma in our history or pathology in our national character. Its happening all over the world right now, and it has happened historically in the past, most notably in Europe in the 1930s. There is something more fundamental going on, and if it wasn’t Trump and the Deplorables, it would no doubt manifest itself in some other way.

This is a recurring global social phenomenon, and there must be something behind it, some primum mobilis that causes it to erupt periodically. And it is world wide, not just in the USA. I suspect that it is caused by a pampered and sheltered middle class, suddenly faced with hard times after a long period of comfort and personal economic and political progress. They sense a change is coming, that a hard rain is a-gonna fall, one that will affect them negatively and severely and they panic, desperately seeking scapegoats. Demagogues exploit this malaise by exposing and aggravating existing fissures and divisions and targeting class, social, racial conflicts and economic disparities in society. Cynics and opportunists seduce them with a phony nostalgia for a past Golden Age which never really existed and with convenient, easily recognizable scapegoats and conspiracies which can be blamed for all their problems. Not surprisingly, These stereotypes and lies tend to promote and preserve the same dysfunctions and injustices (mostly in the distribution of wealth) in the society that led to the malaise in the first place. You know, its my standard “fascism is the dictatorship of the middle class” rant.

But that is just my theory. I may be mistaken, or, at best, I may have missed something. I seek validation, support, or even a cogent reason why I might be mistaken.
Trump and his barbarians are not the cause of this epidemic of hate, they are not the disease, they are just the symptoms.

Then they voted for and defended Trump who railed against the war (years after the fact) and used it to attack the Bush family… so they had to just grin and accept that contradiction in their beliefs.

NOW that Trump is trying to sell the idea of a war with Iran using the same sort of forged intelligence and the same people, his loyalists will have to do a 180 again and declare that spending trillions on another long war in the middle east is the patriotic thing to do… and once again they will attack all those that oppose it as traitors.

Remember how the ‘PATRIOT’ TB made yearly memorial day posts honoring troops? Do you think he will ever do that again here or elsewhere now that he has thrown his soul behind the man that assailed McCain for being a POW? Will he put an end to that little display of virtue signalling, or will he continue the tradition oblivious to his hypocrisy?

Jody had only one real issue that motivated her- sexual violence against women- do you think she could ever turn around and look at the fact that she voted to make it MORE likely that her grand-daughter could be raped in college, harassed at work? She voted for an admitted sexual harasser, DeVos has taken steps to make it harder for colleges to prevent sexual assault, a rapist is on the supreme court, Trump hired wife beaters… and now, it looks quite likely that women that are raped will be forced to carry their rapist’s baby to term… Jody MUST believe the lies rather than face those facts- It would kill what little is left of her soul to face what she has done.

FrankC has to cling to the lies because he needs to maintain the fantasy that he is the smartest person in the room in his few remaining years- it is the only thing that he has left now. So he uses the lies as a drug, maintaining the smug hallucination that he really ‘owned those libs’ and ‘made the snowflakes cry’. The alternative would be to spend his final days ruminating on the fact that he is just a miserably stupid old man than made stupid choices based on stupid beliefs.

SteveS really doesn’t care how many lies he has to support- as long as pain and cruelty are inflicted on the right people he will be satisfied… Even if the quality of his life is adversely impacted, he will be content to watch others suffering more. For people like him the daily cruelties coming from this administration are their Bread and Circuses. You can do anything you want to the malignantly stupid as long as you can show them others are suffering far more… that is their idea of ‘winning’.

RobVG would have to admit that his daddy issues have him so screwed up that he finds himself irrationally attracted to what he believes are ‘strong’ men- in his twisted little mind he believes cruelty, and violating norms are signs of ‘strength’ instead of pathology. Trump was his way of feeling like a ‘man’ vicariously… Trump was his penis enlargement pill. Do you think he will notice the adverse side-effects and admit he was a fool to fall for the con? Or will he continue to spiral down into the abyss, taking comfort in the fiction that we are a more virile nation… because daddy-Trump says so?

Trump is a stupid man’s idea of what a smart man is, he is a poor-trash vision of what a wealthy man should be. He is the impotent man’s fantasy of what a real man should be.

Trump is what a ‘winner’ looks like in the eyes of self-made losers. If they can’t manage to be winners themselves, then at least they can associate with someone that brands himself as a winner… and most importantly, they can punish those less fortunate than themselves – because the act of cruelty allows them to distract themselves from thinking about what empty failures they really are.

Don’t waste your sympathy for any of them- they made a choice… These are ‘people’ that will happily cheer as the less fortunate innocents are marched into ovens rather than admit they were wrong. Save your sympathy for their victims- they will need it in the years to come.

Sure, maybe the Russians are mounting a clever psychosocial propaganda brainwashing operation against mass populations using mass media and fake news, and exploiting the long discredited xenophobia and racism of the middle classes. But this is a world-wide phenomenon. Fascism is breaking out all over, it can’t just be a few Russian geeks huddled over keyboards. or a handful of skilled demagogues exploiting strictly local grudges and hatreds. Authoritarian fascism is sweeping the world much more effectively than it did in the 1930s.

We need to find out why. This isn’t just Trump.

The Soviets sought to organize the working classes of the world, but there is no Comintern any more, and the targets are no longer the proletarian masses. Now they’re succeeding in mobilizing the bourgeosie, an unholy alliance between the working poor and the propertied elite has emerged, and it threatens to engulf the entire planet.

Cross a single big line- like co-opting and corrupting the nation’s intelligence services to serve your political ends, and you will be immediately stopped. The discrete event shocks people and institutions and they recoil.

The secret is to start by crossing smaller lines, one after another, so closely spaced that they form a gradual continuum when seen through the lens of the nightly news recap…

We have seen that by doing this you can start with name calling (little Marco, low energy Jeb) and by doggedly crossing one line after another on an hourly basis you can get to the point that you are accusing those investigating your crimes of treason and suggest they deserve the death penalty.

You just need followers so mindless, so invested in the lies, that you can be sure they will never once take a step back to consider their slide down this slippery slope. They wont pause to wonder what they would have thought of the latest outrage 2 years ago…