As tensions escalate between California and the Trump administration over immigration, another potential battlefront is emerging over taxes.
The spat began with reports that the Trump administration is considering cutting funding for California’s university system, the largest higher education system in the nation with about 12% of all U.S. enrolled students.
In response, Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote Friday afternoon in a social media post that California provides about $80 billion more in taxes to the federal government than it receives in return.
“Maybe it’s time to cut that off, @realDonaldTrump,” Newsom said.
That’s not really the case, though. This rise of fascism has been building for decades now. It’s been a slow, steady, drip drip drip. Perhaps not so noticeable except from the outside - Americans are embedded in a pervasive atmosphere of propaganda. The Republicans have been getting more and more authoritarian over the years, more and more extreme, and the Democrats have been letting them. It’s been more than four years since the last violent coup attempt, after all, and those were the same people behind this play.
It’s not progressing fast. You just haven’t noticed its progress until now, when it’s nearly done.
We’re not talking about the rise of fascism. It took decades for that to ferment in Germany and Italy as well.
We’re talking about when they seize power. Then they make their move.
We’re talking about the powergrab of fascists once they’ve laid the groundwork.
That’s the part they need to move lightning fast to achieve a result, before resistance can organize against them. That’s the part in history we’re at right now.
Tom8to, tom@to, IMO. The “groundwork-laying” is also a process of seizing power, there just aren’t quite so many guns going bang.
I think it could be just tom@o
You say tom8o tom@o, I say tom8to tom@to.
What’s a tomatto?
I actually say tomarto haha
America has been fascist since the early 1910s, busting unions and putting capital first. Then Banana Republics were formed because democracy got in the way. And then half of Africa was invaded with American bases and money in an effort to bring the scattered oil fields under American corporate control. And India lost tens of thousands of lives to an American corporate disaster and no one could challenge the super military force guaranteeing popular democracy around the world (except where people actually heeled business interests).
America has been a fascist superpower for over a century. It’s professional name is neoliberalism.
More people really ought to read Against The Fascist Creep.