Max Matheson

It’s hard to face the truth of yourself. The guilt and shame and fear that come with it. Is this really who I am? And yet until and unless you do — you will stay just that person. If you ask me, that is what the lie that fascism is socialism, but slavery and segregation weren’t, has done to America. Made it incapable of ever really changing very much.

Fascism didn’t come to America. It didn’t even come back to America. It was born here, nourished here with centuries of slavery and segregation — hence, the Nazis learned it from us — and only slumbered a few short decades, while Americans told themselves proudly that the real monsters were not the people they had once been, but the people they did not want to be.

… trying to run away from the ugly truth, made itself impotent to slow it, stop it, reverse it, too. If you think socialism is fascism, after all — you will fight socialism, but let fascism flourish. And that is exactly what America’s politicians, intellectuals, thinkers, and pundits did, at the crucial moment, upon the election of a demagogue. “The real threat to us is Medicare for all! And what about Hillary’s emails? Who cares if he calls …