… the media are covering this like it’s a new thing every four months 
APRIL:
U.S. life expectancy continued to fall in 2021 - VCU News - Virginia Commonwealth University
AUGUST:
Life expectancy drops in the U.S. for the second year in a row : NPR
DECEMBER:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64067436
Meanwhile, in FL
I am just certain it will be a thorough and objective, scientifically based review. The conclusion will not be foreordained at all! (/s)
The MAGAts have their new messiah. FFS…
and he’s more of a fascist than the orange asshole.
I understand where you’re coming from, but the orange asshole took minority children away from their parents and threw them into concentration camps along the border. I won’t give him a pass as being somehow less than full fascist. They’re all monsters who need to be stopped.
I wasn’t trying to give the orange asshole a pass, DeSantis just frightens me more, maybe because he seems like he’s more competent.
That’s the difference. Il Douche was too stupid and self-centered to actually get anything done competently. MoRon is more able to execute evil than Il Douche ever was. That is terrifying.
I don’t know if he actually is, or if he’s just been able to get away with more shit, since it’s FL? It’s hard to tell.
That’s a very reasonable point.
I think if he decides to run for President, we’ll get a much better sense of if he’s a more competent bigot than Trump or not… I don’t know if anyone can run on a Trumpian platform and win like Trump did. I don’t know that Trump can win again (I wouldn’t count it out, but he keeps losing and backing losers at this point).
That’s the difference but I don’t know what to make of it.
Trump energized the worst parts of the party by being Trump, incompetence and all. He won by shouting “build the wall” and “lock her up” which were completely inane. America is still suffering the effects of him not knowing how to win, rig, or admit defeat in an election. True, he wasn’t quite competent enough to pull it off the resulting coup…but I don’t think many competent men would have tried.
If Desantis’s competence is scary, so was Trump’s lack thereof, like a mad bull in a preschool. Ultimately I think what makes fascists dangerous has nothing to do with whether they are smart.
That is a concept that needs to go, that fascists are some brilliant tacticians, when in reality, they are just bullies who can appeal to enough people with their cruelty.
Trump was more like a kind of traveling improv show than a traditional political movement 
I think age is an important factor here too. Trump is just too old to be anything but a symbol now. DeSantis is young and energetic. If I were plotting a fascist takeover of the country, I’d get DeSantis on the ballot and keep Trump as an outsider symbol in the background, and maybe increase his legal troubles and other “victimization” in order to rally the masses around him while DeSantis actually executes the items on the agenda.
I don’t know about brilliant tacticians, but charisma is definitely a huge part of it. Hitler had a lot of charisma and was very good at energizing a crowd. So is Trump. His body count isn’t quite as high yet, but give him another 4 years, and we’ll see what happens.
Well if you’re going to go with that line of argument the Trump supporters could accurately point out that he’s 4 years younger than the current incumbent. Besides, Francisco Franco managed to cling to power until shortly before his death in his eighties so age alone doesn’t necessarily stop fascists.
That’s not really how a cult of personality works. It’s non-transferrable by definition.
Plus, those two will never share power; ten pounds of narcissism in a five pound bag…
I honestly hope that Biden doesn’t run again, for that reason and many others (his handling of COVID is very high on that list). Alas, it doesn’t seem like the Democrats have anyone else to offer.
Which does not address whether or not he can win over the hard-core Trumpers.
And where have we seen any republican actually standing up to Trump on a national level, though? You can’t just swap people in and out of a cult of personality, because it’s built on adherence to an individual as “dear leader”…
Which does not take smarts, and is really in the eye of the beholder. Some might find Trump charismatic, but I sure as shit do not.
Fascism is built on bullying, on a massive scale, backed by a take over of the media.
Yeah, let’s fucking not.
jinx!
