It does more than undermine it. It forces the question of what is to be done when a large chunk of your country (30%? 40%?) is braying for open fascism, another large chunk is at least fash-curious, and your precious laws and norms are utterly useless to stop them?
It's probably closer to 20/25%. Half of US citizens don't participate, and more than half of the people that do participate are pretty repulsed by our right-wing.
eh, even then, I think I'm overestimating a bit. And a chunk of that would be fair-weather fascist, they'd only support it if it looked like it was going to be successful and there weren't enough consequences for doing so.
The picture of an "Openly Fascist United States" just seems a little too... camp theater, if that makes sense. Like, in terms of our imperial policy, we're already basically there. "Open Fascism" would just be bringing our international policy back home and implementing it here. And... I think there'd be a crisis of legitimacy before that happened, the country would break apart into regional factions. Those would be where capital-F Fascism, the sort that feeds people into an industrial slaughterhouse, would be at it's most likely.
Because accepting that general sentiment has no baring on policy undermines their “we just need to harder!” worldview.
It does more than undermine it. It forces the question of what is to be done when a large chunk of your country (30%? 40%?) is braying for open fascism, another large chunk is at least fash-curious, and your precious laws and norms are utterly useless to stop them?
It's probably closer to 20/25%. Half of US citizens don't participate, and more than half of the people that do participate are pretty repulsed by our right-wing.
Yeah that's probably a better estimate of how many people would openly support naked fascism.
eh, even then, I think I'm overestimating a bit. And a chunk of that would be fair-weather fascist, they'd only support it if it looked like it was going to be successful and there weren't enough consequences for doing so.
The picture of an "Openly Fascist United States" just seems a little too... camp theater, if that makes sense. Like, in terms of our imperial policy, we're already basically there. "Open Fascism" would just be bringing our international policy back home and implementing it here. And... I think there'd be a crisis of legitimacy before that happened, the country would break apart into regional factions. Those would be where capital-F Fascism, the sort that feeds people into an industrial slaughterhouse, would be at it's most likely.