Firstly, you assert the inappropriateness of Hitler comparisons while making a lengthy Hitler comparison based on the comment of a single relative. In that case, I’ll find two right-wing survivors and win the argument?
Your article is sober in tone, but you accept as fact the assertions of the left that are just those assertions rejected by the right. This does not,logically, do anything to refute the positions of the Trump supporters.
I will take one item, the campaign of disrespect toward the flag and anthem created by the failed 49er quarterback. The “unjustice” you refer to -the purported targeting of young black males by police- is unsupported by the facts. Young black males commit such a wildly disproportionate percentage of violent crime in America that their interactions with police are similarly wildly disproportionate. You remark on the effect while disregarding or misstating the cause.
This was amply demonstrated in a recent study by a Harvard economist “economist of color” at that, that demonstrated that police do not kill young black men disproportionately. In fact, it was young white men who were disproportionately at risk. Are you ignorant of this study? Are you ignorant of the statistics of crime by race? Don’t you believe in science?
Each of your assertions of evidence for “fascistic” tendencies is equally tendentious.
Affirmative action has been subject to argument since first introduced. The notion that a person should acquire positions or opportunities based on racial characteristics is, in the view of many, anathema. It is a direct refutation of the fundamental principle that all men are created equal. Every advantage granted is a disability imposed. The white coal miner’s son is denied admission in favor of the black corporate lawyer’s child. The Chinese immigrant grocer finds his talented daughter denied entry in favor of the 5th generation New Mexican’s one quarter Latino son. We have introduced a system of racial preferences Byzantine in complexity that is rivaled only by the racial codes of the antebellum South, apartheid South Africa, and yes, Nazi Germany.
And that system itself is subject to manipulation and deceit which breeds cynicism toward the entire project. Elizabeth Warren robbed an actual Native American scholar of a precious post at Harvard. I know people who have gotten government contracts, new car dealership franchises, and admission to prestigious universities based on the most tenuous connections to “oppressed” group identities.
But, we are “fascists” if we ignore these things? Tell it to the New York City Fire Department. They’re under one of the most draconian affirmative action hiring quotas in the country. This despite the spectacular heroism of 9–11 where the dreaded “white” “privileged” “toxically masculine” firemen charged the stairs to die in their heroic rescue attempt.
The point is simple: you need to “falsify” your assertions by adopting the argument, and examining the evidence for the arguments’ that you so blithely dismiss as “fascist.”
We watched Harris, Booker. Durbin, and the others this last week. If there’s fascism abroad in the land, you will find it on the left.
