“Legal residents of the United States sent to foreign prisons without due process. Students detained after voicing their opinions. Federal judges threatened with impeachment for ruling against the administration’s priorities…”

—–Marci Shore,Timothy Snyder and Jason Stanley in the NYT Op-Ed, “We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the U.S.”

I’m trying to decide whether the appropriate response to this pathetic appeal to dubious authority is best answered with my traditional, “Good!” or a more vulgar response, like, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.” That first paragraph in the Times piece certainly shows their expertise: Goebbels could hardly have done any better at misinformation and deceit.

Exactly ONE “legal resident” has been sent to a “foreign prison,” the “Maryland father” who was an illegal immigrant and who had received a lot of “due process.” The “foreign prison” he was sent to was not foreign to him, since it is the only country of which he’s a legal citizen. No students have been “detained” for “expressing their opinions.” No Federal judges have been “threatened with impeachment” either, as any of the judges exceeding their authority to issue dubious injunctions against legitimate Presidential actions should be able to explain. Anyone, even the President, saying “those judges should be impeached” or even “I’d like to impeach those justices” is simply expressing an opinion, not making a “true threat.” Judges can’t be impeached for incompetence or even misjudging their own power. The “threat” might as well have been “I would turn them into toads if I could!” Oooh. Scary.

What kind of fascism “experts” are these who can’t distinguish between the real threat to Nazi judges’ lives and freedom if they displeased Hitler and Donald Trump’s familiar bluster?

I’ll answer that: bad fascist experts. Hypocritical fascism experts. Partisan fascism experts. Irresponsible and unethical fascism experts. Oddly, I can find no record of any of the three expressing alarm when the Democrats set out to imprison the main threat to their party holding power. It seemed awfully fascist-y to me, but heck, I’m no expert, like they are. Democrats using a prop President too old, weak and senile to exert any genuine leadership while undercover, faceless bureaucrats manipulated him for their own political ends also seemed like something that would have troubled real fascism experts: didn’t the name “von Hindenberg” come to mind? No? Huh!

Why doesn’t the public trust “experts” any more? Episodes like this is why. Or the legal “experts” who abused their authority to claim that a judge who impedes law enforcement shouldn’t be exposed and punished. Or the health “experts” who declared that racist demonstrations and riots weren’t a threat to public health during the pandemic, but attending weddings and funerals was. Or those national security “experts” who were certain that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation. Or the climate change “experts”….

I’d like to see all of these assholes leave the country.
Wait…was that a threat????