[armada651]

The moment they made that name change and stated their expansionist agenda it finally became clear to me that this wasn't just MAGA anymore, this was actual fascism.

Whether you think the current targets are legitimate or not, the fact that the U.S. is going to war without seeking any democratic approval anymore is deeply troubling.

[autoexec]

> The moment they made that name change and stated their expansionist agenda it finally became clear to me that this wasn't just MAGA anymore, this was actual fascism.

I'm pretty sure MAGA was always fascism. I mean, all the signs were there and people were sounding alarm bells almost immediately.

[Saline9515]

This is clearly not fascism, and not very different from what the US is accustomed to. Let's not waste the meaning of words by throwing them at any occasion.

[autoexec]

What do you think fascism is? What we have is a populist, nationalist, racist, far-right regime headed by a man that our highest court has ruled can't be held accountable for his "official" actions and who acts like a dictator (as further evidenced in this case by going to war without congress) who uses to the power of the government to attack/threaten/suppress his "enemies" here in the US. If this isn't textbook fascism you must admit that it at least checks a lot of the same boxes

[CrossVR]

> Let's not waste the meaning of words by throwing them at any occasion.

Honest question, but if this is not fascism, then what is? Aren't you also wasting the meaning of a word by refusing to acknowledge any application of that word?

[mint5]

Are you claiming Harris or Biden would have bombed Iran like this? That does not sound credible, but if the other party wouldn’t have attached Iran then this is not business as usual, it’s the GOP as usual.

[lo_zamoyski]

I an opposed to Trump's unhinged offensive, but let's not fall prey to media narrative. Nobody called similar actions "fascism" before (or they did, as the word is thrown around casually in the US, but then nothing has changed). Similarly, when Obama vastly expanded deportations and the like, nobody cared.

I don't like Trump. At all. I think he's a terrible president on the whole and a shameless opportunist. But I don't like one-sided politics and hypocrisy even more so, and I dislike hysteria. History and long term trends paint us a different picture of current events. Most people's horizons are limited to the shallow, tendentious, cherry-picked, and sensationalist news cycle, unfortunately, regardless of outlet. Should we criticize Trump? Yes. But we should criticize all leadership when they do what they should not be doing.

BTW, the Dept. of War was the original name from 1789 to 1947. Curiously, it was soon after the change to Dept. of Defense that people like Eisenhower began to worry about the Military-Industrial Complex. That should give us pause. The name change conceals the intention, and coincides with a hungry imperial war machine that WWII helped bring into existence. Recall that Americans were largely isolationist before that.

[bluescrn]

But the Iranian regime isn’t at all fascist, right?

[autoexec]

The existence of fascism elsewhere doesn't excuse its existence here.