Editor:
Franklin Stover’s letter of Nov. 13 (“Stop Misusing the F Word”) claims Jennifer Fumiko Cahill is wrong to call Trump a dimwitted fascist, and offers some pretty weak arguments to prove it. Thus, he claims Trump’s regime can’t be called fascist because 1) things were worse in “Mussolini’s Italy,” and still are in North Korea, and 2) nothing Trump and his idiot Gauleiters are doing is as fascist as Obama’s attempt to increase enforcement of the net neutrality rules in 2014. (Yeah, he said that.)
As to the first point, sure, the political situation is still better here than in Il Duce’s OG fascist state, or in the current worst country in the world, but is that the standard we should use? I mean, most Americans are also probably better off than if they were in Nazi Germany, Idi Amin’s Uganda, or Pinochet’s Chile (though that might be a close call), but so what? It’s probably worse to burn in hell than to have your toenails ripped out, but that doesn’t mean Trump’s not a fascist.
Second, I admittedly don’t recall the particulars of any brouhaha in 2014 about net neutrality, but I don’t think anyone else, except Mr. Stover, does either. Besides, so what? Should we set the bar so high that a president can only be called a fascist if he/she is worse than Obama, history’s greatest monster besides Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and the Autopen? (I jest, Obama was a moderate progressive, and I’m sure this is all nonsense.)
In sum, Ms. Cahill was completely correct. Trump’s effort to create a kleptocratic fascist state is something we should all oppose, and Mr. Stover should check himself before opining again.
Bill Hassler, McKinleyville
This article appears in The Stopwatch.
